144.  The similarity of the symptoms of so-called possession to recognized mental and physical derangements such as insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria, suggests the conclusion that possession should be classed with other ailments due to ill adjustment of the relations of the mental and physical life.  If this conclusion is valid, the idea of actual possession by evil spirits becomes only an ancient effort to interpret the mysterious symptoms in accordance with wide-spread primitive beliefs.  This explanation would doubtless be generally adopted were it not that it seems to compromise either the integrity or the knowledge of Jesus.  The gospels plainly represent him as treating the supposed demoniac influence as real, addressing in his cures not the invalid, but the invading demon.  If he did this knowing that the whole view was a superstition, was he true to his mission to release mankind from its bondage to evil and sin?  If he shared the superstition of his time, had he the complete knowledge necessary to make him the deliverer he claimed to be?  These questions are serious and difficult, but they form a part of the general problem of the extent of Jesus’ knowledge, and can be more intelligently discussed in connection with that whole problem (sects. 249-251).  It is reasonable to demand, however, that any conclusion reached concerning the nature of possession in the time of Jesus must be considered valid for similar manifestations of disease in our own day.

145.  What astonished people in Jesus’ cures was not so much that he healed the sick as that he did it with such evidence of personal authority.  His cures and his teachings alike served to attract attention to himself and to invite question as to who he could be.  Yet a far more powerful means to the end he had in view was the subtle, unobtrusive, personal influence which without their knowledge knit the hearts of a few to himself.  In reality both his teaching and his cures were only means of self-disclosure.  His permanent work during this Galilean period was the winning of personal friends.  His chief agency in accomplishing his work was what Renan somewhat too romantically has called his “charm.”  It was that in him which drew to his side and kept with him the fishermen of Galilee and the publican of Capernaum, during months of constant disappointment of their preconceived religious ideas and Messianic hopes; it was that which won the confidence of the woman who was a sinner, and the constant devotion of Mary Magdalene and Susanna and the others who followed him “and ministered to him of their substance.”  The outstanding wonder of early Christianity is the complete transformation not only of life but of established religious ideas by the personal impress of Jesus on a Peter, a John, and a Paul.  The secret of the new element of the Christian religion—­salvation through personal attachment to Jesus Christ—­is simply this personal power of the man of Nazareth.  The multitudes followed because they saw wonderful