5. THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY OF THE

THE

GADARENES.

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

HE consideration of this, the most important, and, in many respects, the most perplexing of all the demoniac cures in the New Testament, will demand some prefatory remarks on the general subject of the demoniacs1 of Scripture. It is a subject of which the difficulty is very much enhanced by the fact that,-as with some of the spiritual gifts, the gift of tongues, for example, the thing itself, if it still survives among us, yet does so no longer under the same name, nor with the same frequency and intensity as of old. We are obliged to put together, as best we can, the separate and fragmentary notices which have reached us, and must endeavour out of them to frame such a scheme as 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

1 The most common name in Scripture for one thus possessed is Sapovilóμevos (Matt. iv. 24, and often). Besides this, dapovoltig (Mark v. 18; Luke viii. 36); äv@pwπng ir tveúμatɩ áкałáρry (Mark i. 23); ἔχων πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον (Acts viii. 7) ; ἔχων δαιμόνια (Luke viii. 27); ἄνθρωπος ἔχων πνεῦμα δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτου (Luke iv. 33); δαιμονιόληπτος (Justin Martyr, Apol. 2); while ¿vɛpyouμevos is the more ecclesiastical word. Other more general descriptions, καταδυναστευόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου (Acts x. 38); byloúμevos vñò πvevμátwv åraðúptwv (Luke vi. 18; Acts v. 16). In classic Greek, one under the power of an evil daiμwv was said daμovãv (Eschylus, Choëphoræ, 564), kakodaμovãv, and the state was called kakodaчovia, not being, however, precisely a similar condition.

demoniacs were persons whom we at this day should call insane-epileptic, maniac, melancholic. This has been often said,' and the oftener perhaps, because there is a partial truth in the assertion that these possessions were bodily maladies. There was no doubt a substratum of disease, which in many cases helped to lay open the suíferer to the deeper evil, and upon which it was superinduced: 2 so 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 connexion and the difference (Matt. iv. 24; viii. 16; Mark i. 34). But the scheme which confounds these cases with those of disease, and, in fact, identifies the two, does not, as every reverent interpreter of God's word must own, exhaust the matter; it cannot be taken as a satisfying solution of the difficulties it presents; and this for more reasons than one.

And first, our Lord Himself uses language which is not reconcilable with any such explanation. He everywhere 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 unworthy reply, that He fell in with and humoured the notions of the afflicted in order to facilitate their cure, is anticipated by the fact that in his most con

3

1 As by Semler in Germany, Comm. de Dæmoniacis quorum in Novo Testamento fit Mentio, Halæ, 1770-1779; by Hugh Farmer in England, Essay on the Demoniacs of the New Testament, London, 1775.

2 Origen (in Matth. tom. xiii. 6) finds fault with some (iaro í he calls them) who in his day saw in the youth mentioned Matt. xviii. 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.

3 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 Seele, several times observes how fatal all giving in to 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

fidential 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 serious an error in the minds of men as the belief in satanic influences, which did not in truth exist. For this error, if it was an error, was so little an innocuous one, such as might be left to drop naturally away; did, on the contrary, reach so far in its consequences, entwined its roots so deeply among the very ground-truths of religion, that He would never have suffered it to remain at the hazard of all the misgrowths which it could not fail to occasion.

And then, moreover, even had not the moral interests at stake been so transcendent, our idea of Christ's absolute veracity, apart from the value of the truth which He communicated, forbids us to suppose that He could have spoken as He did, being perfectly aware all the while that there was no corresponding reality to justify the language which He used. And in this there is no making a conscience about trifles, nor any losing sight of that figurative nature of all our words, out of which it results that so much which is not literally true, is yet the truest, inasmuch as it conveys the truest impression,—no requiring of men to

more falsehood, but some truth—the truth indeed in love, but still only the truth. 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. i. 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. ii. dist. 8). The German 'besessen' involves a besitzons, as ¿yrafé¿éolai, yet not as a mechanical local possession.

examine the etymologies of their words before they venture to use them. It would have been quite a different 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 it might once have been, vividly linked to the idea of possession by spirits of evil. In this there had been nothing more than in our speaking of certain forms of madness as lunacy. We do not thus imply our belief, however it may have been with others in time past, that the moon has wrought the harm;' but finding the word current, 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 ceasing of the moon to afflict them; the physician to promise his patient that the moon should not harm him any more, would not this be quite another matter, a direct countenancing of error and delusion? would there not here be that absence of agreement between thoughts and words, in which the essence of a lie consists? Now Christ does everywhere speak in such a language as this. Take, for instance, his words, Luke xi. 17-26, and assume Him to have known, all the while He was thus speaking, that the whole Jewish belief of demoniac possessions was utterly baseless, that Satan exercised no such power over the bodies or spirits of men, that, indeed, properly speaking, there was no Satan at all, and what should we have here for a King of truth?

And then, besides this, the phenomena themselves are

1 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.

such as no hypothesis of the kind avails to explain, and they thus bid us to seek for some more satisfying solution. For that madness was not the constituent element in the demoniac state is clear, since not only are we without the slightest ground for supposing that the Jews would have considered all maniacs, epileptic or melancholic persons, to be under the power of evil spirits; but we have distinct evidence that the same malady they did in some cases attribute to an evil spirit, and in others not; thus showing that the malady and possession were not identical in their eyes, and that the assumption of the latter was not a mere popular explanation for the presence of the former. Thus, on two occasions they bring to the Lord one dumb (Matt. ix. 32), or dumb and blind (Matt. 22), and in both instances the dumbness is traced up to an evil spirit. Yet it is plain that they did not consider all dumbness as having this root; for in the history given by St. Mark (vii. 32) of another deaf and dumb, the subject of Christ's healing power, it is the evident intention of the Evangelist to describe one labouring only under a natural defect; with no least desire to trace the source of his malady to any demoniacal influence. Signs sufficiently clear, no doubt, distinguished one case from the other. In that of the demoniac there probably was not the outward hindrance, not the still-fastened string of the tongue; it was not the outward organ, but the inward power of using the organ, which was at fault. This, with an entire apathy, a total disregard of all which was going on about him, may have sufficiently indicated that the source of his malady lay deeper than in any merely natural cause. But, whatever may have been the symptoms which enabled those about the sufferers to make these distinctions, the fact itself of their so discriminating between cases of the very same malady, proves decisively that there were not certain diseases which, without more ado, they traced up directly to Satan; but that they did designate by this name of possession. a condition which