There is no instance known in which an intelligent, well-educated person
has become possessed; the terrible misfortune falls exclusively upon
rude and coarse natures, a fact which explains the coarseness and
rudeness of so-called demons. Medicinal remedies are seldom of much
avail, as the disease has already reached a stage in which the mind is
at least as much affected as the body. Exorcising has frequently been
successful, but only indirectly, through the firm faith which the
sufferer still holds in his innermost heart. The great dogma that Christ
has come into this world to destroy the works of the Evil One, has
probably been inculcated into his mind from childhood up, and can now
begin once more, after long obscuration, to exercise its supreme power.
The cure depends, however, not only on the presence of such faith, but
rather on the supremacy which the idea of Christ's power gains over the
idea of the devil's power. Hence the symptoms of possession not
unfrequently cease under a fervent invocation of the Saviour, if the
exorciser is able by his superior energy of will to create in the
patient a firm faith in the power of the holy name. This expulsion of
the demon is, of course, nothing more than the abandonment of the
struggle by the evil principle in the sufferer's soul, by which the good
impulses become once more dominant, and a healthy, natural state of
mind and body is restored.
It must, however, not be overlooked that the views of possession have
changed essentially in different nations and ages. At the time of
Christ's coming the belief in actual possession, the dwelling of real
demons in the body of human beings, was universal, and to this belief
the language of Holy Writ naturally adapts its records of miracles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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