I must put the question again in real earnestness. This being so, why mention it here? The author admits that it formed no portion of the original Gospel of St. John, and that it is certainly a late interpolation. Now the Gospel of St. John, according to the opinion of the most eminent unbelievers, was not published before A.D. 170. If this was the case (the author himself evidently assigns to its composition a very late date) a late interpolation could not have found its way into its pages until about the year 250, at the earliest 200. What then is the nature of the reasoning before us? We are referred for proof that the followers of Jesus held these opinions to an authority which the author himself admits to have been a late interpolation, which could not have been introduced into this Gospel earlier than 180 years after the ministry of our Lord, as a proof that his original followers believed that demons inhabited springs and fountains. Such reasonings furnish their own refutation. The exposure of one more fallacy of this description will be sufficient. We are told that, “Not only one evil spirit entered into a body, but many took possession of the same individual. There are _many instances mentioned in the Gospels_, such as Mary Magdalene, out of whom went seven demons, and the man whose name was legion, because many demons had entered into him.” I ask, where are these “many instances”? The plain fact must be stated, that the two here referred to, constitute the only ones which are mentioned as facts by the Evangelists. Besides these there is the parable of the unclean spirit going out of the man above alluded to, who, when he could find no rest returned to his former habitation in company with seven other spirits more wicked than himself. It should be observed that in two of the cases the number given is the mystical number “Seven”; and that one of them occurs in a parable, the moral of which is, to warn the Jews, that although they had got rid of the evil spirit of idolatry, they were in danger of falling into the greater evil of Phariseeism and hypocrisy. But to return to the argument. The great mass of the author’s citations for the purpose of proving that the Jews at the time of the Advent, and among them the followers of Jesus, were a prey to these grotesque beliefs respecting the action of demons, are made from authors who are separated by an interval of centuries from the ministry of our Lord. I submit, therefore, that such authorities are utterly valueless to prove that His disciples and early followers were a prey to these gross delusions. Nor has he adduced an atom of valid proof from the New Testament itself. The references above referred to have either been made in a most careless manner, or have been used to assist in proving a foregone conclusion.