Surely the only fact which these words are intended to convey is that Judas allowed his whole moral and spiritual being to be overpowered by the influence of the evil one. It is quite possible that the Evangelists might have thought that the influence was exerted by actually going in or coming out of a man. But this is a mere physical theory as to the mode of action, and certainly is not a point on which the writings of the New Testament anywhere affirm that a supernatural knowledge was imparted to their authors. It follows therefore that the expressions “going out from the man,” and “entering into the swine,” may only denote the cessation of the influence of the demons over the man, and its exertion on the swine, without determining the mode in which that influence was exerted. Surely when our Lord promised that He would come to the man who loved him and make his abode with him, that did not imply a local indwelling of his person but an indwelling of influence. With such expressions in abundance before us, in which it is obvious that they were never intended to denote anything local, it is absurd to fix it on the sacred writers in this particular case. They nowhere assert that the demons were seen to pass from the man and enter the swine. It was simply a matter of inference from the facts which they witnessed that they had done so. The man ceased to rave and became a rational creature. The swine rushed down into the lake and perished. They also affirm that the result took place by the permission of Jesus. Yet it is somewhat remarkable that it is only Matthew who attributes to him the word “Go.” Mark and Luke only mention the request of the demons, and the result which followed. There is nothing therefore derogatory to the character of the Evangelists as historians in supposing that the facts received a colouring from their own subjective impressions, though it would be so if under such circumstances they had allowed those impressions to assign a different meaning to our Lord’s words from that which he actually conveyed. This conclusion at which we have arrived, that our Lord’s meaning is accurately reported by the Evangelists, disposes of the first alternative. We will now proceed to examine the second, viz., that our Lord knew that possession was mania, and that He adopted the current notions of the times in speaking of it. The all important question is, how far does this affect his veracity? On this point Archbishop Trench has laid down the following position broadly: “If Jesus knew that the Jewish belief in demoniacal possession was baseless and that Satan did not exercise such power over the bodies or spirits of men there would be in such language that absence of agreement between thoughts and words in which the essence of a lie consists.”