f the multitudes
did not arise from credulity in the least, but was the expression of
that state of mind which must exist (no matter how carefully it is
concealed), when some unlooked-for occurrence, totally inexplicable on
any natural principles, presents itself. I cite it to show how utterly
unfamiliar that age was with even the pretence of the exhibition of
miraculous powers. If there be any substratum of truth whatsoever in the
accounts of the slowness of belief on the part of the Apostles, it is a
proof that our Lord's most familiar friends were anything but the
superstitious persons which certain writers assume them to have been.

SECTION XXIII.

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION.

The question of Demoniacal Possession now demands a passing notice.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" ascribes all such phenomena to
imposture or delusion; and, inasmuch as these supposed miracles of
casting out of evil spirits are associated with other miracles of Christ
in the same narrative, he uses the odium with which this class of
miracles is in this day regarded, for the purpose of discrediting the
miracles of healing and the Resurrection of Jesus.

I cannot help expressing my surprise at the difficulty which some
writers, who desire fully and faithfully to uphold the supernatural,
seem to have respecting Demoniacal Possession. The difficulty seems to
me to be not in the action of evil spirits in this or in that way, but
in their existence. And yet the whole analogy of nature, and the state
of man in this world, would lead us to believe, not only in the
objective existence of a world of spirits, but in the separation of
their characters into good and evil.

Those who deny the fact of an actually existing spiritual world of
angels, if they are Atheists, must believe that man is the highest
rational existence in the universe; but this is absurd, for the
intellect of man in plainly very circumscribed, and he is slowly
discovering laws which account for the phenomena which he sees, which
laws were operative for ages before he discovered them, and imply
infinitely more intellect in their invention, so to speak, and
imposition and nice adjustment with one another, than he shows in their
mere discovery. A student, for instance, has a problem put before him,
say upon the adjustments of the forces of the heavenly bodies. The
solution, if it evinces intelligence in him, must evince more and older
intelligence in the man who sets hi