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ner passions, or life's outward calamities and temptations. Thus Augustine, making application of all parts of the miracle:-"We are sailing in this life as through a sea, and the wind rises, and storms of temptations are not wanting. Whence is this, save because Jesus is sleeping in thee? If he were not sleeping in thee, thou wouldest have calm within. But what means this, that Jesus is sleeping in thee, save that thy faith, which is from Jesus, is slumbering in thine heart? What shalt thou do to be delivered? Arouse him and say, Master, we perish. He will awaken; that is, thy faith will return to thee, and abide with thee always. When Christ is awakened, though the tempest beat into, yet it will not fill, thy ship; thy faith will now command the winds and the waves, and the danger will be over."*

Nor shall we in any wise do wrong to the literal truth of this or any other of Christ's miracles, by recognizing the character at once symbolic and prophetic, which, no doubt, many of them also bear, and this among the number. As the kernel of the old humanity, Noah and his family, was once contained in the Ark which was tossed upon the waves of the deluge, so the kernel of the new humanity, of the new creation, Christ and his apostles, in this little ship. And the Church of Christ has evermore resembled this tempested bark, in that the waves

* Enarr. in Ps. xciii. 19: Si cessaret Deus et non misceret amaritudines felicitatibus seculi, oblivisceremur eum. Sed ubi angores molestiarum faciunt fluctus animæ, fides illa quæ ibi dormiebat, excitetur. Tranquillum enim erat, quando dormivit Christus in mari: illo dormiente, tempestas orta est, et cœperunt periclitari. Ergo in corde Christiano et tranquillitas erit et pax, sed quamdiu vigilat fides nostra: si autem dormit fides nostra, periclitamur.....Sed quomodo illa navis cùm fluctuaret, excitatus est Christus à fluctuantibus et dicentibus, Domine, perimus: surrexit ille, imperavit tempestatibus, imperavit fluctibus, cessavit periculum, facta est tranquillitas, sic et te cùm turbant concupiscentiæ malæ, persuasiones malæ, fluctus sunt, tranquillabuntur. Jam desperas et putas te non pertinere ad Dominum; Evigilet fides tua, excita Christum in corde tuo: surgente fide, jam agnoscis ubi sis;....Evigilante Christo tranquilletur cor tuum, ut ad portum quoque pervenias. Thus again (In Ev. Joh., Tract.49): Fides tua de Christo, Christus est in corde tuo.....Intrant venti cor tuum, utique ibi navigas, ubi hanc vitam tanquam procellosum et periculosum pelagus transis; intrant venti, movent fluctus, turbant navim. Qui sunt venti? Audisti convicium, irasceris: convicium ventus est, iracundia fluctus est: periclitaris, disponis respondere, disponis maledictum maledicto reddere, jam navis propinquat naufragio; excita Christum dormientem. Ideo enim fluctuas, et mala pro malis reddere præparas, quia Christus dormit in navi. In corde enim tuo somnus Christi, oblivio fidei. Nam si excites Christum, id est, recolas fidem, quid tibi dicit tanquam vigilans Christus in corde tuo? Ego audivi, Dæmonium habes, et pro eis oravi; audit Dominus et patitur; audit servus et indignatur. Sed vindicari vis. Quid enim, ego jam sum vindicatus? Cùm tibi hæc loquitur fides tua, quasi imperatur ventis et fluctibus, et fit tranquillitas magna. Cf. Serm. 63; Enarr. in Ps. lv. 8; and Enarr. 2a in På. xxv. in init.

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of the world rage horribly around it, in that it has evermore been de livered out of the perils which seemed ready to overwhelm it, and this because Christ is in it; who being roused by the cry of his servants, rebukes these winds and these waters, before they utterly overwhelm this ship. In the Old Testament Ezekiel gives us a magnificent picture of a worldly kingdom under the image of a stately and gorgeous galley, which he describes with every circumstance that could heighten its glory and its beauty (xxvii. 4-9); but that ship with all its outward bravery and magnificence utterly perishes; "thy rowers have brought thee into great waters; the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas," and they that have hoped in it and embarked in it their treasures, wail over its wreck with a bitter wailing; (ver. 26— 36;) this kingdom of God meanwhile, which seems by comparison but as the slight and unhonored fishing boat that every wave would ingulf, rides triumphantly over all, and comes safely into haven at the last.

* Tertullian (De Bapt., c. 12): Cæterùm navicula illa figuram Ecclesiæ præterebat, quod in mari, id est seculo, fluctibus, id est persecutionibus et tentationibus, inquietatur, Domino per patientiam velut dormiente, donec orationibus sanctorum in ultimis suscitatus, compescat seculum et tranquillitatem suis reddat. Ambrose: Arbor quædam in navi est crux in Ecclesiâ, quâ inter tot totius sæculi blanda et perniciosa naufragia incolumis sola servatur. Compare a passage of much beauty in the Clementine Homilies (COTELER. Patt. Apostt., v. 1, p. 609) beginning thus: Εοικεν γὰρ ὅλον τὸ πρᾶγμα τῆς ἐκκλησίας νηὶ μεγάλῃ, διὰ σφοδροῦ χειμῶνος άνδρας φερούσῃ ἐκ πολλῶν τόπων ὄντας, καὶ μίαν τινὰ ἀγαθῆς βασιλείας πόλιν οἰκεῖν θέλοντας, K. T. 2. The image of the world as a great ship, whereof God was at once the maker and the pilot, was familiar to the Indians (PHILOSTRATUS, De Vita Apollonii, L. 8, c. 35; VON BOHLEN, Das Alte Indien), and the same symbolic meaning lay in the procession of Egyptian priests bearing the sacred ship (the navigium auratum, CURT., 1. 4. c. 7) full of the images of the gods. In Egypt it was the favorite manner to represent the gods as sailing in a ship. (CREUZER's Symbolik, v. 2, p. 9, 3rd edit.) All this was recognized in the early Christian art, where the Church is continually set forth as a ship, against which the personified winds are fighting. (Christliche Kunst-Symbolik, p. 159.) Aringhi describes an old seal-ring in which the Church appears as this ship, sustained and supported by a great fish in the sea beneath, (Christ the 'IXOYE, according to Ps. lxxii. 17, Aquila,) on its mast and poop twe doves sitting, so that the three Clementine symbols, the ship, the dove, and the fish, appear here united in a single group.

V.

THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY OF THE GADARENES.

MATT. viii. 28-34; MARK v. 1-20; LUKE viii. 26-39.

BEFORE entering upon this, the most important, and, in many respects, the most difficult of the demoniac cures in the New Testament, it is impossible to avoid making generally a few prefatory remarks on the subject of the demoniacs* of Scripture. It is a It is a subject of which the difficulty is very much enhanced by the fact that, as in the case of some of the spiritual gifts, the gift, for instance, of tongues, the thing itself, if it still survives among us, yet does so no longer under the same name, nor yet with the same frequency and intensity as of old. We are obliged to put together, as best we can, the separate notices which have come down to us, and from them seek to frame some scheme, which will answer the demands of the different phenomena; we have not, at least with certainty, the thing itself to examine and to question, before our eyes.

It is, of course, easy enough to cut short the whole inquiry, and to leave no question at all, by saying these demoniacs were persons whom we should call insane-epileptic, maniac, melancholic. This has been often said, and the oftener perhaps, because there is a partial truth in the view that these possessions were bodily maladies.

There was no

* The most common name in Scripture for one thus possessed is daiμovišóμevos, (Matt. iv. 24, and often.) Besides this, daioviolɛis, (Mark v. 18; Luke viii. 36;) ἄνθρωπος ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ, (Mark i. 2, 8;) ἔχων πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, (Acts viii. 7 ;) ἔχων δαιμόνια, (Luke viii. 27 ;) άνθρωπος ἔχων πνεῦμα δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτου. (Luke iv 33.) Other more general descriptions, karadvvaσrevoμévos únd toû diaßóĥov, (Acts x. 38;) xλovμevos únò ñvevμátwv åkáláprwv. (Luke vi. 18; Acts v. 16.) In classic Greek, one thus possessed was said δαιμονᾷν, κακοδαιμονᾷν, and the state of possession was called κακοδαιμονία.

doubt a substratum of disease, which in many cases helped to lay open to the deeper evil, and upon which it was superinduced:* and in agreement with this view, we may observe that cases of possession are at once classed with those of various sicknesses, and at the same time distinguished from them, by the Evangelists; who thus at once mark the relation and the difference. (Matt. iv. 24; viii. 16; Mark i. 33.) But the scheme which confounds these cases with those of disease, does not, as, I think, every reverent handler of God's word must own, exhaust the matter; it cannot be taken as a satisfying solution; and this for more reasons than one.

And first, our Lord himself uses language which is not reconcilable with such a theory; he every where speaks of demoniacs not as persons merely of disordered intellects, but as subjects and thralls of an alien spiritual might; he addresses the evil spirit as distinct from the man; "Hold thy peace, and come out of him." (Mark i. 25.) And the poor reply, that he fell into and humored the notions of the afflicted in order to facilitate their cure,t is cut off by the fact that in his most confidential discourses with his disciples he uses exactly the same language. (Matt. x. 8; and especially xvii. 21, "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.") The allegiance we owe to Christ as the King of truth, who came, not to fall in with men's errors, but to deliver men out of their errors, compels us to believe that he would never have used language which would have upheld and confirmed so great an error in the minds of men as the supposition of Satanic influences, which did not in truth exist. For this error, if it was an error,

* Origen (in Matth., tom. 13, c. 6) finds fault with some, (iarpoì, he calls them,) who in his day saw in the youth mentioned Matt. xvii. 14, only one afflicted with the falling sickness. He himself runs into the opposite extreme, and will see no nature there, because they saw nothing but nature.

Not to say that such treatment had been sure to fail. Schubert, in his book, full of wisdom and love, Die Krankheiten und Störungen der menschlichen Scele, several times observes how fatal all giving into a madman's delusions is for his recovery; how sure it is to defeat its own objects. He is living in a world of falsehood, and what he wants is not more falsehood, but some truth-the truth indeed in love, but still only the truth. And I know that the greatest physicians in this line in England act exactly upon this principle.

It is hardly necessary to observe, that by this "going out" that is not implied, which Arnobius (Adv. Gent., 1. 1, c. 45) in the rudest manner expresses, when he speaks of gens illa mersorum in visceribus dæmonum. The notion of a ventriloquism such as this, of a spirit having his lodging in the body of a man, could only arise from a gross and entire confusion of the spiritual and material, and has been declared by great teachers of the Church not to be what they understand by this language. (See PET. LOMBARD, Sentent., 1. 2, dist. 8.)

was so little an innocuous one, that might have been safely left to drop naturally away, was, on the contrary, one which reached so far in its consequences, entwined its roots so deeply among the very groundtruths of religion, that it could never have been suffered to remain at the hazard of all the misgrowths which it must needs have occasioned.

And then, moreover, even had not the matters at stake been so important, our idea of Christ's absolute veracity, apart from the value of the truth which he communicated, our idea of him as the Verax, no less than the Verus and the Veritas, will not permit us to suppose that he used the language which he did, well knowing that there was no answerable thing, on which the language was founded. And in this there is no making a conscience about gnats, nor denying that figurative nature of all our words, out of which it results that much which is not literally true, is yet most true, inasmuch as it conveys the truest impression,-no requiring men to look into the derivations of their words before they venture to use them. It had been one thing for the Lord to have fallen in with the popular language, and to have spoken of persons under various natural afflictions as "possessed," supposing he had found such a language current, but now no longer, however once it might have been, vividly linked to the idea of possession by spirits of evil. This had been no more than our speaking of certain forms of madness as lunacy; not thereby implying that we believe the moon to have, or to have had, any influence upon them;* but finding the word, we use it: and this the more readily, since its original derivation is so entirely lost sight of in our common conversation, its first impress so completely worn off, that we do not thereby even seem to countenance an error. But suppose with this same disbelief in lunar influences, we were to begin to speak not merely of lunatics, but of persons on whom the moon was working, to describe the cure of such, as the moon's ceasing to afflict them; or if a physician were solemnly to address the moon, bidding it to abstain from harming his patient, there would be here a passing over into quite a different region; we should be here directly countenancing superstition and delusion; and plainly speaking untruly with our lips; there would be that gulf between our thoughts and our words, in which the essence of a lie consists. Now Christ does every where speak in such a language as this. Take, for instance, his words, Luke xi. 17-26, and assume him as knowing, all the while he was thus speaking, that the whole Jewish

* There are cases of lunambulism, in which no doubt it has influence; but they are few and exceptional. (See SCHUBERT, p. 113.) I am speaking of using the term to express all forms of mental unsoundness.

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