Secondly: certain moral and physical conditions were necessary for its exercise. These may be no longer in existence, but they may have passed away with many other abnormal conditions of human nature which existed in the ancient world.
Thirdly: it is not possible to affirm with certainty that, even at the present day, no supernatural agencies bearing an analogy to possession, are exerted on the mind. This will be only possible, when all those abnormal phenomena which manifest themselves in connection with various debased forms of religion and other cases of phrenzied excitement can be traced to known forces, originating solely in the mind itself.
There is one further objection which requires a brief consideration. It is urged that the writers of the New Testament entertained the belief, that diseases were generally occasioned by demoniacal action, quite independently of possession; and that this belief has received the sanction of our Lord. One case only is alleged in proof of this, that of the woman with the spirit of infirmity. She was no demoniac, but an ordinary diseased person, and the disease is asserted to have been occasioned by demoniacal action.
I reply, that considering the large number of diseases of various kinds mentioned in the New Testament, in none of which is there any allusion to demoniacal agency as their cause, a single example is a narrow foundation on which to build the affirmation that the followers of our Lord held such a theory as to the origin of disease in general. I admit that disorganization of the bodily functions is mentioned among the phenomena of possession. But this differs widely from a bodily evil superinduced without the agency of possession. Let us inquire whether the special instance affords any justification for this wide assertion.
The Evangelist states that the woman was bowed down by a spirit of infirmity, and could in no wise lift herself up. Here it is just as absurd to fasten on him the intention to describe a scientific fact, as when on another occasion it is said that “power” went out of our Lord “and healed them all.” The one stands on the same ground as the other.
In effecting the cure, our Lord uses the words, “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.” Here there is no reference to Satanic agency whatever. The only mention of it occurs in his argument with the ruler of the synagogue on the lawfulness of effecting such cures on the Sabbath day. The words are, “Thou hypocrite, ought not this woman, who is a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, to be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?”
These words are addressed to the ruler in answer to the objection that our Lord was no prophet, because he effected his cures on the Sabbath. If so, as the reality of the miracle was not denied, it was intended to be implied that it had been wrought by the power of Satan, of which the violation of the Sabbath was the proof. The real point of controversy therefore was the lawfulness of effecting cures on this day, not the Satanic origin of the complaint. Was there any conceivable reason why our Lord should not discuss the point with the ruler on his own principles? Why was it necessary to raise a wholly different issue, viz. the Satanic or non-Satanic origin of the disease, instead of confining it strictly to the point, which was the all-important one, that His curing this woman on the Sabbath day was so far from being a proof that He did not come from God, that it was a strong reason for believing that He did so? To have entered on a discussion as to what was the cause [pg 286] of the complaint, would not only have diverted attention from the real question, but would have introduced one wholly foreign to the purposes of His divine mission.
Two suppositions only are possible respecting possession. It must have been either a form of madness produced by natural causes, or a manifestation of superhuman power. As the facts on which a judgment can be formed are meagre, I have not ventured to determine which of these two theories is alone consistent with the facts and phenomena of the New Testament. I have therefore taken either alternative, and shown, that neither does the theory that it was mania interfere with the claims of the Gospels to be accepted as historical documents, nor is the language attributed to our Lord contrary to the truthfulness of His character; nor does the supposition that it was due to superhuman causes contradict the established truths of mental science.