the instrumentality of such physical and moral causes as we can recognise, understand, and, with God's help, obviate.

This being so, there appears to me in those narratives of the New Testament which speak of the casting out of devils, to be no more than a lifting up the veil, which is commonly drawn between first and secondary causes, and giving us a momentary glimpse of that opposition between the very authors of good and evil, which we ordinarily can only witness in their respective instruments. For had we stood by our Lord's side when he was casting out the devils by the lake of Gennesaret, what is it that we should actually have seen? On the one hand, a man, in all visible respects such as ourselves, speaking, walking, breathing, like other men, turning with looks full of power and goodness towards those who were rushing to meet him. In them, on the other hand, what should we have seen but two persons, equally, in all visible respects, merely men?-persons exhibiting all the outward symptoms of violent madness in their conduct, in their gestures, in their words. Had we heard them say to Jesus, "If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine," what do we suppose there would have been in the tone or import of the words more than those of common madness; and should we not have imagined that the madman

spoke under the influence of his disorder, and identified himself with a spirit whom he believed to be within him? Or again, a few minutes afterwards, what should we have seen more than two madmen wonderfully recovered from their disorder, conscious now of themselves, and of their true condition, while at some distance from them a herd of swine seemed suddenly seized with an unaccountable fury, and were all rushing down the cliff into the lake, and there perishing? Should we not, while wondering at the strangeness of the occurrence, have accounted for it, supposing us to have possessed our present notions, by ascribing it to some extraordinary influence of the season, or to some plant which the swine had accidentally eaten? Should we, in short, have seen any thing more of spiritual agency in the matter than we can see now in those cases of madness which occur commonly indeed, but still unaccountably, in dogs and other domestic animals?

This is a faithful account of all that we should have seen, had we ourselves been eye witnesses to the miracle. Yet in that good man, endowed with such mighty power, there dwelt, we know, amidst all the perfection of the human nature, the fulness of the Godhead also; and in those madmen, with all the symptoms of what we call common and natural madness, the Scripture has revealed to us that there dwelt an author of that

madness, of whom, without such revelation, we could have known nothing. That this was so-that a more than natural or human power of good and of evil was working in the transaction, the mere circumstances of the case might have induced us readily to believe. Divine power was surely there, when a single word dispelled in a moment, in the case of two separate persons, a violent access of madness, and restored them at once to their perfect senses; and some evil power setting in motion as it were the physical causes of madness, might well have been supposed to be present, when the words of the seeming madman, asking to be allowed to visit the swine, were so instantly answered by the event; and while they who in all appearance had spoken them were sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in their right mind, the spirit of madness had gone from them into the swine, according to its word, and as before was manifesting its presence and its power only by effects in themselves apparently natural.

But the question is asked, Why have evil spirits ceased to possess men now, if they really possessed them in the time when our Lord was on earth? It has been answered, that with so great an interposition for good as was then shown, when God became manifest upon earth in the person of Christ, an unusual interposition of the powers of evil is conceivable also; devised by them for their

own cause, permitted by God for His own glory. This answer would indeed be of much weight, if we were obliged to allow the fact which the question takes for granted. But how can we be sure that evil spirits have ceased to possess men now? The effects of evil are sufficiently visible now as in the times of our Lord; the spiritual authors of that evil were not more visible then, nor without His interposition and His revelation would they have been more known to us then than they are at this moment. God and God's Spirit still work continually for our good; not less certainly because the working is invisible, and its effects seemingly natural. How can we be sure that evil spirits are not at work as continually, with an agency as real, with a power as untraceable, with results as seemingly natural? All the difference is, that we, having no longer that gift of the spirit of power which could attack evil in a manner at its source, and destroy the effects by a direct removal of the cause, we are now compelled to combat evil in its effects only, to meet secondary causes by secondary, to imitate in short those ordinary workings of God's providence which we call natural causes, instead of those more direct manifestations of Himself which we call miraculous and divine.

There is another question sometimes asked with regard to one particular part of the story, namely, why the evil spirits were permitted to enter into

the swine? I say permitted, for it is a manifest mistake to suppose that they were sent by our Lord into the swine, as His act, and not theirs. But the only answer to this question is another: Why are evil spirits, or why is evil permitted to work at all? Why are they not all shut up at once in the abyss or deep, to use the language of the Jews: hindered, that is, from going to and fro in the earth, to the injury of our bodies and our souls? And this is one of those questions, before which, as I said, a sound mind may repose as quietly as in the possession of discovered truth; for it is a question which never has been answered on earth, and never can be; the gates of Paradise must be entered before the answer to it can be given us. Here there is no perplexity, but a confessed unconquerable difficulty, which to assail in the hope of overcoming it, is madness. Let us rest contentedly before it, acknowledging this fact, and dismissing for ever the restless hauntings which might tempt us to an inquiry so fruitless. But yet, amidst the inscrutable darkness of that principle of the permission of evil which is declared to us in all nature, and with neither more nor less of obscurity in our Lord's permission to the evil spirits in the text, there is still that in their request and in His answer, which is full of warning to us all. Have we cast out any evil spirit from our own hearts, or the hearts of others? Let us