Those who lay stress on difficulties of this kind are in the habit of overlooking the plain fact, that our Lord’s teaching was specifically addressed to the living characters of the day, and to their existing lines of thought, and cannot without reference to them be directly translated into our own. This remark is no less true of the moral teaching contained in the Gospels, than of their historical statements. It is even more so, for a great number of the moral precepts of Christ cannot be applied as practical guides until they have been adapted to the altered conditions of thought and of society.(4) They are in fact principles given in the form of precepts. If our Lord’s words had been reported so as to make them square with the lines of thought of every age, they would have given us, not his actual teaching but a modification of it. It is our duty by a careful study of the great principles on which it is based to apply it to our present wants. It may appear to some far more desirable that it should have been capable of a direct instead of an indirect application, yet the fact is as I have stated it. Want of attention to this has occasioned no inconsiderable number of the difficulties of the New Testament. One or two remarks will be all that is necessary for illustrating the position which some have adopted that our Lord’s mode of dealing with demoniacs was intended by Him as part of the process of cure. I should not have alluded to this subject at all unless the view in question had been propounded by a very eminent writer. I have already considered its main principles under the previous head.