Let an English historian and divine, who will be acknowledged as no prejudiced witness, bear testimony upon some of these points. "Nor is it less important," says the late Dean Milman, "throughout the early history of Christianity, to seize the spirit of the times. Events which appear to us so extraordinary, that we can scarcely conceive that they should either fail in exciting a powerful sensation, or ever be obliterated from the popular remembrance, in their own day might pass off as of little more than ordinary occurrence. During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took place in an age, and among a people, which superstition had made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand on the ever-ready belief. The Jews of that period not only believed that the Supreme Being had the power of controlling the course of nature, but that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of subordinate spirits, both good and evil. Where the pious Christian of the present day would behold the direct agency of the Almighty, the Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author or ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the Christian moralist would condemn the fierce passion, the ungovernable lust, or the inhuman temper, the Jew discerned the workings of diabolical possession. Scarcely a malady was endured, or crime committed, but it was traced to the operation of one of these myriad daemons, who watched every opportunity {99} of exercising their malice in the sufferings and the sins of men."(1) Another English divine, of certainly not less orthodoxy, but of much greater knowledge of Hebrew literature, bears similar testimony regarding the Jewish nation at the same period. "Not to be more tedious, therefore, in this matter," (regarding the Bath Kol, a Jewish superstition,)" let two things only be observed: I. That the nation, under the second Temple, was given to magical arts beyond measure; and, II. That it was given to an easiness of believing all manner of delusions beyond measure."(2) And in another place: "It is a disputable case, whether the Jewish nation were more mad with superstition in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious arts:--I. There was not a people upon earth that studied or attributed more to dreams than they. II. There was hardly any people in the whole world that more used, or were more fond of, amulets, charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of enchantments. We might here produce innumerable instances."(3) We shall presently see that these statements are far from being exaggerated.