any apparent supernatural and miraculous interference with the order of nature?
Let an English historian and divine, who will be acknowledged as no prejudiced witness, bear testimony upon some of these points. "Nor is it less important," says the late Dean Milman, "throughout the early history of Christianity, to seize the spirit of the times. Events which appear to us so extraordinary, that we can scarcely conceive that they should either fail in exciting a powerful sensation, or ever be obliterated from the popular remembrance, in their own day might pass off as of little more than ordinary occurrence. During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took place in an age, and among a people, which superstition had made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand on the ever-ready belief. The Jews of that period not only believed that the Supreme Being had the power of controlling the course of nature, but that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of subordinate spirits, both good and evil. Where the pious Christian of the present day would behold the direct agency of the Almighty, the Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author or ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the Christian moralist would condemn the fierce passion, the ungovernable lust, or the inhuman temper, the Jew discerned the workings of diabolical possession. Scarcely a malady was endured, or crime committed, but it was traced to the operation of one of these myriad daemons, who watched every opportunity
of exercising their malice in the sufferings and the sins of men."(1)
Another English divine, of certainly not less orthodoxy, but of much greater knowledge of Hebrew literature, bears similar testimony regarding the Jewish nation at the same period. "Not to be more tedious, therefore, in this matter," (regarding the Bath Kol, a Jewish superstition,)" let two things only be observed: I. That the nation, under the second Temple, was given to magical arts beyond measure; and, II. That it was given to an easiness of believing all manner of delusions beyond measure."(2) And in another place: "It is a disputable case, whether the Jewish nation were more mad with superstition in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious arts:—I. There was not a people upon earth that studied or attributed more to dreams than they. II. There was hardly any people in the whole world that more used, or were more fond of, amulets, charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of enchantments. We might here produce innumerable instances."(3) We shall presently see that these statements are far from being exaggerated.
No reader of the Old Testament can fail to have been struck by the singularly credulous fickleness of the Jewish mind. Although claiming the title of the specially selected people of Jehovah, the Israelites exhibited a constant and inveterate tendency to forsake his service for the worship of other gods. The mighty "signs and wonders" which God is represented as incessantly working
on their behalf, and in their sight, had apparently no effect upon them. The miraculous even then had, as it would seem, already lost all novelty, and ceased, according to the records, to excite more than mere passing astonishment. The leaders and prophets of Israel had a perpetual struggle to restrain the people from "following after" heathen deities, and whilst the burden of the Prophets is one grand denunciation of the idolatry into which the nation was incessantly falling, the verdict of the historical books upon the several kings and rulers of Israel proves how common it was, and how rare even the nominal service of Jehovah. At the best the mind of the Jewish nation only after long and slow progression, attained the idea of a perfect monotheism, but added to the belief in Jehovah the recognition of a host of other gods, over whom it merely gave him supremacy.(1) This is apparent even in the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me;" and the necessity for such a law received its illustration from a people who are represented as actually worshipping the golden calf, made for them by the complaisant Aaron, during the very time that the great Decalogue was being written on the Mount by his colleague Moses.(2) It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, at a later period, and throughout patristic days, the gods of the Greeks and other heathen nations were so far gently treated, that, although repudiated as Deities,
they were recognized as Demons. In the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, where "idols" are spoken of in the Hebrew, the word is sometimes translated "demons;" as, for instance, Psalm xcvi. 5 is rendered: "For all the gods of the nations are demons."(l) The national superstition betrays itself in this and many other passages of this version, which so well represented the views of the first ages of the Church that the Fathers regarded it as miraculous. Irenæus relates how Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, brought seventy of the elders of the Jews together to Alexandria in order to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, but fearing that they might agree amongst themselves to conceal the real meaning of the Hebrew, he separated them, and commanded each to make a translation. When the seventy translations of the Bible were completed and compared, it was found that, by the inspiration of God, the very same words and the very same names from beginning to end had been used by them all.(2) The same superstition is quite as clearly expressed in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, for instance, speaking of things sacrificed to idols, says: "But (I say) that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I would not that ye should be partakers with