Our Lord discriminated between healing the sick and casting out demons.  He distinguished between forms of disease due to possession and the same diseases when dissociated from it, as, for example, cases of dumbness.  His whole attitude, both in His actual dealing with the possessed and in His referring to the subject, gave His complete adhesion to the reality of the awful thing.  It is vain to say that He humoured the delusions of insanity in order to cure them.  That theory does not adequately explain any of the facts and does not touch some of them.  It is perilous to try to weaken the force of the narrative by saying that the evangelists were under the influence of popular notions (which are quietly assumed to have been wrong), and hence that their prepossessions coloured their representations.  If the mirror was so distorted, what reliance can be placed on any part of its reflection of Jesus?  There can be no doubt that the Gospel narrative asserts and assumes the reality of demoniacal possession, and if the representation that Jesus also assumed it is due to the evangelists, what trust can be reposed in authorities which misrepresent Him in such a matter?  On the other hand, if they do not misrepresent Him, and He blundered, confounding mere insanity with possession by a demon, what reliance can be reposed in Him as our Teacher of the Unseen World?  The issues involved are very grave and far-reaching, and raillery or sarcasm is out of place.

But the question is pertinent:  By what right do we allege that demoniacal possession is an exploded figment and an impossibility?  Do we know ourselves or our fellows so thoroughly as to be warranted in denying that deep down in the mysterious ‘subliminal consciousness’ there is a gate through which spiritual beings may come into contact with human personalities?  He would be bold, to the verge of presumption or somewhat further, who should take up such a position.  And have we any better right to assume that we know so much of the universe as to be sure that there are no evil spirits there, who can come into contact with human spirits and wield an alien tyranny over them?  The Christian attitude is not that of such far-reaching denial which outruns our knowledge, but that of calm belief that Jesus is the head of all principality and power, and that to Him all are subject.  It is taken for granted that the supposed possession is insanity.  But may it not rather be that to-day some of the supposed insanity is possession?  Be that as it may—­and perhaps those who have the widest experience of ‘lunatics’ would be the least ready to dismiss the possibility,—­Jesus recognised the reality that there were souls oppressed by a real personality, which had settled itself in the house of life, and none of us has wide and deep enough knowledge to contradict Him.  Might it not be better to accept His witness in this, as in other matters beyond our ken, as true, and to ponder it?