Equally invalid is the objection against a miraculous attestation to a divine commission, on the ground that such testimony can be easily imitated. I reply, that the great mass of the miracles recorded in the New Testament do not easily admit of a fraudulent imitation. I by no means deny that the art of legerdemain is capable of producing results which to an ignorant observer have the appearance of being supernatural. But this class of actions bears not the smallest analogy to the miracles recorded in the New Testament. No art of legerdemain can persuade a man who has been for many years blind to believe that he has recovered his sight, and enable him to act accordingly. But it has been argued; if God is the moral Governor of the universe, is He not bound to prevent a being like Satan from acting for the purposes of evil in the affairs of men? This question may be best answered by asking another. Is He not equally bound to hinder evil men from exerting such terrible influences on others, even long after they are dead? Is He not bound to hinder the possibility of the bringing up of children by their parents in various forms of vice, so as to render them in after life, more wicked than themselves? Yet it is an indubitable fact that such an influence is exerted under the moral government of God. Human life abounds with such cases, which bear a close analogy to Satanic action exerted in the affairs of men. When we can fully fathom the reason for the permission of the one, we shall have made considerable progress in understanding those of the other. The case may be simply stated. There are difficulties in the moral government of the universe, into the grounds of which we cannot penetrate. These press equally on every form of theism. The Satanic supernaturalism described in the New Testament presents a precisely analogous difficulty. This therefore can form no reason why one who believes that God is the moral Governor of the universe, as it now exists, should reject Christianity because the difficulties are of a similar order, and press equally on both. The only escape from them, as I have already said, is the inevitable position assumed by atheism, or pantheism, and the dreary prospect which they afford to the aspirations of the human mind. CHAPTER XI. POSSESSION: IS THE THEORY THAT IT WAS MADNESS SUBVERSIVE OF THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE GOSPELS OR INCONSISTENT WITH THE VERACITY OF CHRIST? There can be no doubt that the subject of possession is attended with real difficulties, whichever view we may take of its actual character.