Regarding the kingdom of God as a thing of externals, they were fortified against recognizing in Jesus himself or in his doctrine any sign that he was the enemy of Satan, and might even persuade themselves that such a cure was only one of Satan's tricks for the advancement of his kingdom with the many by a partial emancipation of the individual. But our Lord attributes this false conclusion to its true cause--to no incapacity or mistake of judgement; to no over-refining about the possible chicaneries of Beelzebub; but to a preference for any evil which would support them in their authority with the people--in itself an evil. Careless altogether about truth itself, they would not give a moment's quarter to any individual utterance of it which tended to destroy their honourable position in the nation. Each man to himself was his own god. The Spirit of God they shut out. To them forgiveness was not offered. They must pay the uttermost farthing--whatever that may mean--and frightful as the doom must be. That he spoke thus against them was but a further carrying out of his mission, a further inroad upon the kingdom of that Beelzebub. And yet they were the accredited authorities in the church of that day; and he who does not realize this, does not understand the battle our Lord had to fight for the emancipation of the people. It was for the sake of the people that he called the Pharisees _hypocrites_, and not for their own sakes, for how should he argue with men who taught religion for their own aggrandizement? It is to be noted that our Lord recognizes the power of others besides himself to cast out devils. "By whom do your children cast them out?" _Did you ever say of them it was by Beelzebub? Why say it of me_? What he claims he freely allows. The Saviour had no tinge of that jealousy of rival teaching--as if truth could be two, and could avoid being one--which makes so many of his followers grasp at any waif of false argument. He knew that all good is of God, and not of the devil. All were _with_ him who destroyed the power of the devil. They who were cured, and they in whom self-worship was not blinding the judgment, had no doubt that he was fighting Satan on his usurped ground. Torture was what might be expected of Satan; healing what might be expected of God. The reality of the healing, the loss of the man, morally as well as physically, to the kingdom of evil, was witnessed in all the signs that followed. Our Lord rests his argument on the fact that Satan had lost these men.