Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

But we read of Jesus that without conjuration by any other power, and without the appliance of any further means, he expelled the demons by his word. Three of these cases are especially remarkable.

(1.) The cure of a demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum, has the position of the earliest miracle performed by Jesus, in Mark (1 ch. 21 v.) and Luke (4 ch. 31 v.); while in the Fourth Gospel, the conversion of water into wine is stated to be "the first miracle that Jesus did." In the synagogue of Capernaum, Jesus produces a deep impression by his teaching-a demoniac cries out, in the character of a demon possessing him, that he will have nothing to do with him, and that he knows Jesus to be the Messiah who has come to destroy them, i. e. the demons-Jesus commands the demon to hold his peace and come out of the man, which happens amidst cries and convulsions, and to the great astonishment of the people at the power displayed by Jesus.

Such is the relation. But who gives it? We do not know-for we have no clear evidence as to the writers of the account. What is an "unclean devil"? (Luke 4 ch. 33 v.) How can one spirit, or distinct intelligent existence, take possession of, or absorb the consciousness of another? "And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not." (Luke 4 ch. 35 v.) How could "the devil throw him in the midst "? How did the observers distinguish "the devil” before he came out, so as to know that it was he who was so throwing the man? How did "the devil" come out of him? What came out of him? Of what colour, size, shape, was it? If spirits cannot be seen, how did the spectators know that the devil " came out of him "?

Let any orthodox believer who may be present answer these questions. Will any answer? All are silent! And if all the doctors in divinity in Christendom were present, they would be in the like predicament. And let none be offended because these questions are asked. Remember, we are told that our salvation depends on a belief in a revelation which is affirmed to be attested by these miracles. But what rational man in this nineteenth century can conclude he has any evidence for a miracle here? If the miracle proves the revelation-what proves the miracle?

If we are allowed to consider the narratives as wanting in correctness when they appear to present this cure as occurring early in Christ's ministry, it is not improbable that an epileptic may have been impressed with the wide-spread fame of Jesus and his powerful discourse in the synagogue, until he imagined him to be the Messiah ;-Jesus, in whom the great conception of his own Messiahship was growing, may have spoken to him ;the words may have influenced the poor patient and produced in his nervous frame, at first greater convulsions, (" And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice"-Mark, 1 ch. 26 v.)—until, in his prostrate and exhausted condition, (" thrown him in the midst ") the bystanders concluded that he was delivered;-or, a lucid interval, and greater or less relief may have succeeded. But the permanence of the cure? What testimony is there of that? The writers of the Gospels, whoever they were, may have related this as a cure, together with many others, simply because nothing was known either of the after-health or relapse of the epileptic. Of all the cures ascribed to Christ, however, the relief of persons afflicted with nervous disorders of the less rooted kind, appear to be the most probable and historical. But these are by no means miracles. Nor, although they depicture Jesus as one yearning over the miseries of mankind, and endeavouring to relieve them, do they enhance our conceptions of his mental superiority, inasmuch as they shew him to have merely

received the current mistaken notions of his countrymen with regard to demoniacal possession. Ten thousand such stories could not exalt him in our estimation to the height at which he stands by his sublime moral teaching.

(2.) Another cure of a demoniac is related by Matthew, (17 ch. 14 v.) Mark, (9 ch. 14 7.) and Luke (9 ch. 37 v.) It is that of a boy, whom the disciples could not cure, and occurs on the descent from the Mount of Transfiguration. Legendary variations are met at the very opening of the story. In Matthew, Jesus having descended from the mountain, appears to join the multitude by accident; in Luke, the multitude come to meet Jesus; and in Mark, the multitude run towards him to salute him. This last evangelist, in whom the dramatic tendency will be frequently observed, though not always to the most sensible embellishment of his story, adds, "And straightway all the people, when they saw him, were greatly amazed"! -though what there was in the arrival of Jesus to amaze the multitude, he does not say. Matthew describes the boy as one who was lunatic; and, indeed, the reference of periodical disorders to the influence of the moon was as common in the time of Christ, and in Palestine, as it has been in our own country at past periods. In Mark, Jesus addresses the supposed demon as a "dumb and deaf spirit": so that the inarticulate sounds uttered by epileptics in their fits, seem to have been regarded as the dumbness of the demon, and their incapability of noticing any words addressed to them, as the demon's deafness.

At the close of the narrative in Matthew, Jesus ascribes the impotence of his disciples to their deficient faith: Luke omits this; and Mark not only does so, but, interweaves, after his peculiar dramatic style, a by-scene between Jesus and the boy's father; in which an enlarged description of the boy's malady is given,-Jesus puts the tentative sentence "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth," and "straightway" the father" cries out with tears-Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief"! These are divergencies which mark, still more, the legendary origin of this narrative. And if Mark's adornment of the story could be depended on, it would awaken in us a suspicion that Jesus was by no means confident of his power to cure. Paley says of the Miracles-" They were not secret, nor momentary, nor tentative, nor ambiguous." Did we find the first of these narratives about demoniacs free from ambiguity? The word "tentative" signifies something done by way of attempt, trial, or experiment. Would not the words which Mark here puts into the mouth of Christ, "If thou canst believe me," &c. betoken the desire to attempt, companied with a want of full confidence in his own power to cure?

Let no one suppose that this is an insinuation against the moral excellence of Christ. I mean no such thing. But I desire, above all things, to look into the heart of that young man of Nazareth, so far as the imperfect light of the Gospels enables us to see its inner workings: to behold him struggling with the great enthusiastic conception of his own Messiahship-sometimes feeling less confident of it-and feeling his way towards external proofs of it. I think the Gospels assist us, in some degree, to do this; but amidst their legendary divergencies we cannot always be sure that we have found the right key to the actual experience of the mind and heart of Jesus of Nazareth.

[ocr errors]

Mark seeks to make the scene more effective by other additions; he tells us that the people ran together that they might observe what was passing, that after the expulsion of the demon the boy was, as one dead, insomuch that many said, he is dead;" but that Jesus, taking him by the hand, lifted him up, and he arose. In conclusion,-Luke dismisses the narrative with a

brief notice of the astonishment of the people; but Matthew and Mark pursue the subject by making the disciples, when alone with Jesus, ask him why they were not able to cast out the demon. In Mark, Christ's answer is "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting"-but Matthew adds these words of Christ after a short discourse on unbelief, and the power of faith. The divergencies here are especially worth notice, since they unfold to us how the real sayings of Christ-whether consisting of figures, in the Oriental style, or striking moral maxims-were borne down on the stream of tradition, and attached, in the lapse of time, and by transmission into various localities, sometimes to one part of his supposed history, and sometimes to another. The words of Matthew (17 ch. 20 v.) Because of your unbelief," are neither in Mark nor Luke: Matthew's words "If ye have faith as a grain of mustardseed, &c" (same verse) attached to this narrative of the demoniac are, by Luke, given as a short stray fragment (17 ch. 6 v.) unconnected with any narrative of a miracle, and with the variation of a "sycamine tree" instead of a "mountain": Mark gives the sentence on the faith which removes mountains as the moral of the history of the cursed fig-tree, where Matthew also has it a second time: there, however, it is totally out of place, as we shall see when we come to that narrative. Thus we are left without positive knowledge of the occasion on which this figurative saying of Jesus was really uttered.

(3). The cure of the possessed Gadarenes, (or Gergesenes) is, for several reasons, the most startling of all these stories of demoniacal possession,-for, in this instance, we have not only several divergencies of the evangelists, (Matt. 8 ch. 28 v., Mark, 5 ch. 1 v., Luke, 8 ch. 26 v.) but many demons instead of one, and their entrance into the herd of swine-(so often felt to be a scandal by divines!)—instead of a simple departure of a demon from the human body.

After a stormy passage across the sea of Galilee to its eastern shore, Jesus meets (according to Mark and Luke) a demoniac who lived among the tombs, and was subject to outbreaks of terrific fury against himself, and others. But, according to Matthew, there were two possessed with devils." Harmonists have resorted to many expedients in order to get rid of the difficulty here; but without success. It is not simply a question of number, for Matthew's idea of a plurality of demons is evidently grounded on his 'fact' of a plurality of men. He says nothing about the demons being 'Legion'-and his narrative simply reads as if each man were possessed with a devil: any one reading his narrative, by itself, could have no other understanding of it. It is no reply, then, to tell us that Matthew's two includes the one of Mark and Luke. The harmonists would render us a better service by endeavouring to discover for us, whether Matthew's mention of a plurality of men gave rise to the idea of a vast plurality of demons, and so this idea became incorporated in two later Gospels,-or, whether the Gospel named after Matthew be later than that named after Luke, and the writer of our first Gospel being less credulous, in this particular, than the writer of the third, rejected his 'Legion' story, and reduced the number of the demons to two, giving them, at the same time, just so many human bodies to tenant. But the harmonists' leave us without harmonizing the difficulty: this is the first discrepancy, then, in this narrative. The uncalculating nature of legend is always apparent. The demoniacs are made to recognise Jesus at once as the Messiah; but how they could have learnt that he had any such reputation seems impossible-since they are represented as so "exceeding fierce" that no one could come near them! Again: in Matthew, the demoniac, stricken with terror, deprecates the unwelcome approach of Jesus; in Luke, he addresses Jesus, when arrived, as a suppliant ; in Mark, he eagerly runs to meet Jesus, while yet at a distance.

But our

difficulties are greater when we enquire-When did Jesus command the demons to come out? From Matthew, the answer would be-After the men had spoken. But in Mark and Luke, the narrative is so involved that one cannot extract the answer with absolute clearness: here, at first, the pith of the incident seems to be, that the demoniac had instantaneously recognised and supplicated Jesus; but the narrator drops his original idea, and reflecting that the prayer of the demon must have been preceded by a severe command from Jesus, he corrects his previous omission, and remarks that Jesus had given his command in the first instance !

Mark and Luke, after the command, add that Jesus said 'What is thy name?' and the answer was 'Legion,' according to Luke-Legion, for we are many,' according to Mark. Matthew, as already remarked, has no part of this episode. But if his were the earlier Gospel, a later writer might think it requisite to make the number of evil spirits equal the number of swine-of which Matthew had said there was "a herd of many." The legend thus increases in wildness, till no story in the Thousand and One Nights can be more incredible: a great number of demons possessing one human organisation and subjecting and filling its consciousness! The possibility of this by one devil was incomprehensible enough; but what rational man can be expected to prostrate his reason before this Legion-piled story? And then, the climax!-The devils entered the swine (two thousand they were, the graphic Mark says-but we must not ask for his authority!) by the permission of Jesus, and the whole herd ran down violently into the sea, and were drowned! Who, that thinks it creditable to possess an understanding, can humiliate himself to profess a belief in the reality of such a story, even as the condition of his salvation? Who does not perceive that such a story cannot make a part of a 'Divine Revelation? We cannot, with Woolston, charge Jesus with injury done to the proprietors of a herd of swine. We reject the narrative as a mere legend; and cannot permit it to soil his pure moral character. The questions-How came the devils out? How did they enter into the swine? What evidence had the spectators either of the coming out, or of the entering in ?—are not necessary: the legend contains its own refutation in its monstrousness; and divines would be inexpressibly glad if the New Testament did not contain it. To them it is a grievous eyesore: to the determined and rational enquirer, it serves as a caution against receiving other legends, less revolting to reason, in the Gospels-since it marks the utter credulousness of the writers, whoever they were.

With some reflections of Strauss, on the fact that there are no stories of deliverance from demoniacal possession in the Fourth Gospel, we may conclude our brief enquiry into the credibility of the first class of miracles:

"If in conclusion we cast a rapid glance at the gospel of John, we find that it does not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This omission has not seldom been turned to the advantage of the apostle John, the alleged author, as indicating a superior degree of enlightenment. If, however, this apostle did not believe in the reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the author of the fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to the synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their statements, and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a false opinion, by setting the cures in question in a true light. But how could the apostle John arrive at the rejection of the opinion that the above diseases had their foundation in demoniacal possession? According to Josephus it was at that period a popular Jewish opinion, from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did not visit a foreign land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to liberate himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John's adored master, from whom the favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a hair's

breadth. But if John shared with his contemporaries and with Jesus himself the notion of real demoniacal possession, and if the cure of demoniacs formed the principal part, nay, perhaps the true foundation of the alleged miraculous powers of Jesus; how comes it that the apostle nevertheless makes no mention of them in his gospel? That he passed over them because the other evangelists had collected enough of such histories, is a supposition that ought by this time to be relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a miracle they had already given; and if it be said that he repeated these because they needed correction, we have seen, in our examination of the cure of demoniacs, that in many, a reduction of them to their simple historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or offensive to the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is said to have written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of accommodating himself to their ideas. But we must ask, could or should an apostle, out of mere accommodation to the refined ears of his auditors, withhold so essential a feature of the agency of Jesus? Certainly this silence, supposing the authenticity of the three first gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been an eye-witness of the ministry of Jesus; or, according to our view, at least one who had not at his command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of demons, being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks, were either totally suppressed or kept so far in the back ground that they might have escaped the notice of the author of the gospel."

(To be continued in next number.)

Reviews.

THE LEICESTER MOVEMENT; or Voices from the Frame and the Factory, the Field and the Rail. (Leicester.)

THE FRAME WORK-KNITTERS' ADVOCATE.

(Nottingham.)

THE SNOB; on Leeds subjects, addressed to Leeds Loiners, and to all whom it may or ought to concern. (Leeds.)

HERE are three new penny periodicals-(the first and second 'weeklies,' and the third a monthly'-)which have just sprung up in three of our manufacturing towns. This is exceedingly gratifying. It proclaims, most unmistakeably, the growth of intelligence.

6

The first and second papers are serious; and aim at serious things-the amelioration of the social condition of the working-classes. There must be some parlous' wags in Leeds; and, one may calculate, that their waggery will be felt by the people whose catastrophes they tickle-while the hearty Leeds Loiners will laugh outright at the fun.

EASTERN LIFE, PRESENT AND PAST. By Harriet Martineau. THIS book contains so much that is of the most intense interest to the thinker -it is so entirely unlike common volumes of travels-as to make one wish that it could he printed cheaply, and put into the hands of every intelligent workingman in England. Since that is not done, no error can be committed by extracting some of its choicest reflective passages.

In the extract that follows, Miss Martineau presents us with those striking features of Osiris which shew how nearly he resembles the legendary Christ (not the real and historical Jesus of Nazareth). She has been visiting the sacred island of Philo-said to contain the sepulchre of Osiris ; and the visit awakens a train of reflection of which the following is a part :—

"I believe that, except the Supreme, Osiris was the only deity who was never named. When Herodotus has described the scourgings and lamentings which follow the sacrifices at the feast of Isis, he adds that it is not permitted to him to tell in whose honour they

« AnteriorContinuar »