But in the case of the demoniac, the real difficulty consists in the results which are alleged to have happened to the swine. I have already obviated some portion of this as far as the form of the narrative is concerned. But there remains the fact that the swine are stated to have rushed into the lake and perished. As to the reality of such an occurrence there can have been no mistake. The mere mode of expression offers no explanation, nor can a mistake respecting such an occurrence have originated in any possible deception of the imagination. If it was not a fact it must have been a fictitious invention. Can any explanation of it be given? It has been suggested that the swine were driven down the cliff by the madman. Against this supposition, it has been urged that no animals are less easily driven than swine. How then could it have been possible to drive two thousand of them into the water? But there is no necessity to assume that they were driven at all. The scene as it is described by the Evangelists was well calculated to inspire animals with fright. It would however have been impossible to frighten two thousand of them. Granted: but large [pg 263] herds of animals follow their leaders implicitly. When under excitement one makes a leap, the others will follow. All that would have been necessary, if we suppose that the herd was near the edge of the cliff, was that the leaders should have received the requisite impulse from the madman, and under its influence rushed wildly down the cliff, and been followed by their companions.
But the case is different when our Lord speaks to others, and not to the demoniacs themselves. His observations to the Pharisees on this subject I have already considered. There remains the striking one addressed to the disciples: “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” The circumstances of the case are these. The disciples had failed to cure the youth, whether a demoniac or a simple lunatic. They ask our Lord why it was that they had failed. He tells them that it was because of their unbelief. Now it is impossible for us to say what was the nature of the influence of faith in affecting miraculous cures, and why the want of it prevented success. It is sufficient to draw attention to the fact that it is uniformly laid down in the New Testament, that in the case of subordinate agents working miracles faith was necessary for their accomplishment. Our Lord also usually required faith in the recipients of his cures, but not always. But to his disciples when they attempted to perform a miracle faith was indispensable to their success. The question was not what was the nature of the disease, but why in this particular case they had failed to cure it. Our Lord replied that in this instance not only was faith necessary to effect the cure, but a very unusual degree of it. If the question had been what was the cause of the child's disease, and if our Lord know that it was not possession, but [pg 264] mania, it is quite possible that He would have refused to answer it, as He did on other occasions when curious questions were put to him, and would have deduced some moral lesson from the fact. This it will be remembered was the course which He pursued when He was asked whether only a few would be saved. But the inquiry was not what caused the disease, but why the attempt to cure it had proved a failure. Such being the question, there is nothing inconsistent with truthfulness in our Lord's answer. He avoided entering into an explanation as to what was a physical cause of the disease, which was quite foreign to his divine mission. He therefore simply told them that their failure was owing to their unbelief, and then added, in language couched in their own forms of thought, and which would not therefore open a discussion on subjects foreign to the purposes of his mission, “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Those who lay stress on difficulties of this kind are in the habit of overlooking the plain fact, that our Lord's teaching was specifically addressed to the living characters of the day, and to their existing lines of thought, and cannot without reference to them be directly translated into our own. This remark is no less true of the moral teaching contained in the Gospels, than of their historical statements. It is even more so, for a great number of the moral precepts of Christ cannot be applied as practical guides until they have been adapted to the altered conditions of thought and of society.[4] They are in fact principles given in the form of precepts. If our Lord's words had been reported so as to make them square with the lines of thought of every age, they would have given us, not [pg 265] his actual teaching but a modification of it. It is our duty by a careful study of the great principles on which it is based to apply it to our present wants. It may appear to some far more desirable that it should have been capable of a direct instead of an indirect application, yet the fact is as I have stated it. Want of attention to this has occasioned no inconsiderable number of the difficulties of the New Testament.
One or two remarks will be all that is necessary for illustrating the position which some have adopted that our Lord's mode of dealing with demoniacs was intended by Him as part of the process of cure. I should not have alluded to this subject at all unless the view in question had been propounded by a very eminent writer. I have already considered its main principles under the previous head.
It ought to be observed that the care of demoniacs, whatever view we may take of possession, belongs to a class of our Lord's miracles which are distinct from all others. All the others are described as wrought on the human body, or on external nature. The Evangelists do not record a single miracle beside these that was wrought on the human mind. This is a remarkable fact. In the course of his ministry He encountered every form of moral and spiritual disease, from the weaknesses of his disciples and attached friends to the opposition of his most avowed enemies. Now, although He emphatically asserted that He was the physician of the soul, and although for the spiritual diseases of men He felt the most profound sympathy, never once is Jesus represented as exerting his supernatural power for their care. On the contrary, He is uniformly represented as having recourse to moral and spiritual means and not to miracles to effect it. Physical diseases He cures instantaneously, moral ones [pg 266] slowly and with effort. This fact is worthy of deep attention as showing that our Lord uniformly acted in conformity with the laws of the moral universe. If the Gospels are fictions, why is the Great Physician of Souls never represented as performing a sudden or miraculous cure in the moral and spiritual worlds, in the same manner as He does in the material? The need of miraculous intervention to secure Simon Peter from the moral and spiritual danger which surrounded him was as great as to prevent him from sinking in the water. Yet no other than moral and spiritual influences were called into action.
The following is the bearing of this fact on the question before us. If the cure of a demoniac was the expulsion of a demon, it involved the liberation of a moral nature from its thraldom, and at the same time the cure of the bodily organisation as far as its disordered condition enabled the demon to exert his power. If, on the other hand, it was the cure of simple mania, still the act had a direct bearing on the moral nature of the sufferer. In either case the use of moral means as well as supernatural agency would be especially appropriate. If demoniacs were madmen, our Lord was fully justified in displaying towards them the highest degree of sympathy, and in bringing to bear on them the mighty moral and spiritual forces which abode in his lofty personality. The same remark would be equally true if the sufferer was held in thrall by demoniacal power. Each class of miracles in the mode of their performance is exactly suited to the condition of those on whom our Lord was operating. On either supposition He was dealing not merely with physical forces, but with moral agency, and He dealt with it accordingly.
I conclude, therefore, that if it may be taken as [pg 267] established that possession involved nothing but simple mania, there is nothing in the facts as they are recorded in the New Testament inconsistent with that supposition, or which affects the credit of the Gospels as historical narratives. Nor are they inconsistent with the idea that their writers were favoured with such supernatural assistance in composing them as was adequate for the purpose of giving us such an account of the actions and teachings of Jesus as was necessary for communicating all the great truths of the Christian revelation. Nor is the supposition inconsistent, as it has been alleged to be, with His divine character and truthfulness.
I will examine in the next chapter the supposition that possession was not mania, but an actual objective fact.