The words which are ascribed to our Lord by the Evangelist when He stilled the tempest will throw light on this subject. St. Mark gives them as follows: “He rebuked the winds and said to the sea, Peace, be still.” The word here rendered “Be still” is in the Greek far more emphatic, _Be gagged_ (πεφίμωσο). In the case of the demoniac our Lord is represented as rebuking the evil spirit. Here He rebukes the waves. Now it is only possible to rebuke rational agents. Such an expression would therefore be only accurate if addressed to a being who was capable of hearing it, and who was uttering load cries. It may be objected that the expression favours the notion that the speaker supposed the roaring of the waves to be the voice of an evil spirit, who was exciting the tempest, or, in other words, that He gave countenance to the heathen belief, that it was the voice of Æolus, the spirit of the storm. Whatever amount of superstition may be attributed to the Jews at the time of the Advent, it will scarcely be urged that the followers of Jesus attributed the roaring of the gale to the voice of a demon. Still it may be urged on the principles above referred to that the words uttered by our Lord tended to confirm superstitions notions as to the nature and origin of storms. I argue, on the other hand, that these expressions prove indisputably that the language used by Him was not always intended to be a literal description of fact, any more than the numerous similar addresses to the inanimate creation which we find in the Psalms.