141.  Jesus drew the multitudes after him not only by his teachings, but also by his mighty works.  He certainly was for his contemporaries a wonder-worker and healer of disease, and, in order to appreciate the impression which he made, the miracles recorded in the gospels must be allowed to reveal what they can of his character.  The mighty works which enchained attention in Galilee were chiefly cures of disease, with occasional exhibitions of power over physical nature,—­such as the stilling of the tempest and the feeding of the five thousand.  The significant thing about them is their uniform beneficence of purpose and simplicity of method.  Nothing of the spectacular attached itself to them.  Jesus repeatedly refused to the critical Pharisees a sign from heaven.  This was not because he disregarded the importance of signs for his generation,—­witness his appeal to his works in the reply to John (Matt. xi. 4-6); but he felt that in his customary ministry to the needy multitudes he had furnished signs in abundance, for his deeds both gave evidence of heavenly power and revealed the character of the Father who had sent him.

142.  One of the commonest of the ailments cured by Jesus is described in the gospels as demoniac possession, the popular idea being that evil spirits were accustomed to take up their abode in men, speaking with their tongues and acting through their bodies, at the same time afflicting them with various physical diseases.  Six specific cures of such possession are recorded in the story of the Galilean ministry, besides general references to the cure of many that were possessed.  Of these specific cases the Gadarene demoniac shows symptoms of violent insanity; the boy cured near Caesarea Philippi, those of epilepsy; in other cases the disease was more local, showing itself in deafness, or blindness, or both.  In the cures recorded Jesus addressed the possessed with a command to the invading demon to depart.  He was ordinarily greeted, either before or after such a command, with a loud outcry, often accompanied with a recognition of him as God’s Holy One.

143.  The record of such maladies and their cure is not confined to the New Testament.  The evil spirit which came upon King Saul is a similar case, and Josephus tells of Jewish exorcists who cured possessed persons by the use of incantations handed down from King Solomon.  The early Christian fathers frequently argued the truth of Christianity from the way in which demons departed at the command of Christian exorcists, while in the middle ages and down to modern times belief in demoniac possession has been common, particularly among some of the more superstitious of the peasantry in Europe.  Moreover, from missionaries in China and other eastern lands it is learned that diseases closely resembling the cases of possession recorded in the New Testament are frequently met with, and are often cured by native Christian ministers.