There can be no doubt that the writers of the New Testament shared the popular superstitions of the Jews. {142} We have already given more than one instance of this, and now we have only to refer for a moment to one class of these superstitions, the belief in demoniacal possession and origin of disease, involving clearly both the existence of demons and their power over the human race. It would be an insult to the understanding of those who are considering this question to pause here to prove that the historical books of the New Testament speak in the clearest and most unmistakable terms of actual demoniacal possession. Now, what has become of this theory of disease? The Archbishop of Dublin is probably the only one who asserts the reality of demoniacal possession formerly and at the present day,(1) and in this we must say that he is consistent. Dean Milman, on the other hand, who spoke with the enlightenment of the 19th century, "has no scruple in avowing _his_ opinion on the subject of demoniacs to be that of Joseph Mede, Lardner, Dr. Mead, Paley, and all the learned modern writers. It was a kind of insanity.... and nothing was more probable than that lunacy should take the turn and speak the language of the prevailing superstition of the times."(2) The Dean, as well as "all the learned modern writers" to whom he refers, felt the difficulty, but in seeking to evade it they sacrifice the Gospels. They overlook the fact that the writers of these narratives not only themselves adopt "the prevailing superstition of the times," but represent Jesus as doing so with equal completeness. There is no possibility, for instance, of evading such statements as those in the miracle of the country of the Gadarenes, where the objectivity of the demons is so fully recognized that, {143}