It ought to be observed that the care of demoniacs, whatever view we may take of possession, belongs to a class of our Lord’s miracles which are distinct from all others. All the others are described as wrought on the human body, or on external nature. The Evangelists do not record a single miracle beside these that was wrought on the human mind. This is a remarkable fact. In the course of his ministry He encountered every form of moral and spiritual disease, from the weaknesses of his disciples and attached friends to the opposition of his most avowed enemies. Now, although He emphatically asserted that He was the physician of the soul, and although for the spiritual diseases of men He felt the most profound sympathy, never once is Jesus represented as exerting his supernatural power for their care. On the contrary, He is uniformly represented as having recourse to moral and spiritual means and not to miracles to effect it. Physical diseases He cures instantaneously, moral ones slowly and with effort. This fact is worthy of deep attention as showing that our Lord uniformly acted in conformity with the laws of the moral universe. If the Gospels are fictions, why is the Great Physician of Souls never represented as performing a sudden or miraculous cure in the moral and spiritual worlds, in the same manner as He does in the material? The need of miraculous intervention to secure Simon Peter from the moral and spiritual danger which surrounded him was as great as to prevent him from sinking in the water. Yet no other than moral and spiritual influences were called into action. The following is the bearing of this fact on the question before us. If the cure of a demoniac was the expulsion of a demon, it involved the liberation of a moral nature from its thraldom, and at the same time the cure of the bodily organisation as far as its disordered condition enabled the demon to exert his power. If, on the other hand, it was the cure of simple mania, still the act had a direct bearing on the moral nature of the sufferer. In either case the use of moral means as well as supernatural agency would be especially appropriate. If demoniacs were madmen, our Lord was fully justified in displaying towards them the highest degree of sympathy, and in bringing to bear on them the mighty moral and spiritual forces which abode in his lofty personality. The same remark would be equally true if the sufferer was held in thrall by demoniacal power. Each class of miracles in the mode of their performance is exactly suited to the condition of those on whom our Lord was operating. On either supposition He was dealing not merely with physical forces, but with moral agency, and He dealt with it accordingly.