It is now even unorthodox to deny that the agonies of nature are part of the providence of God: but herein orthodoxy is in direct antagonism to what it maintains as the authentic teaching of Jesus. "Then was brought unto him one possessed of a devil, blind and dumb; and he healed him, insomuch that the dumb man spake and saw. And all the multitudes were amazed and said, Is this the Son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. And knowing their thoughts he said, Every dominion divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand; and if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then shall his dominion stand?" Those therefore who believe these to be the words of Jesus, and yet believe blindness, dumbness, and other physical diseases to be in any sense of divine providence or even permission, are believing in a God whom Jesus implicitly pronounced to be Satan. And those who do not believe that Jesus healed such diseases, nor believe in a personal Satan, may still regard the above legend as characteristic. The separation of Good and Evil into eternally antagonistic dominions could not have been affirmed by any Jew other than Jesus (or John the Baptist, probably however an Oriental dervish). Though the Jews popularly believed in Beelzebub and other devils, they were all regarded as under the omnipotence and control of Jahveh, who proudly claimed that he was the creator of all evil, and who even had lying spirits in his employ. Whether Jesus believed in the personality of the evil principle, in any strict sense, may be questioned. He may have meant no more than Emerson, who pictured ill health as a ghoul preying on the heart and life of its victims. Memories of similar teachings may have given rise to the tales of healing afterwards associated with Jesus. But the personality of evil is a more philosophical generalization than the personification of a power representing both the good and the evil phenomena of nature. Evil acts in concrete forms, and often in combinations of forces which can not be analysed and distributed into particular causes. History records instances of moral epidemics driving whole peoples as if down a steep place into seas of blood, as if by some pandemoniac possession, impressing the ordinarily humane along with the vindictive, the lawless and destructive. A great deal of crime seems disinterested, and still more is due to the fanatical inspiration of cruel deities, whose names become in other religions the names of devils. Out of manifold experiences in the tragical annals of mankind came the terrible Ahriman.