I conclude, therefore, that if it may be taken as established that possession involved nothing but simple mania, there is nothing in the facts as they are recorded in the New Testament inconsistent with that supposition, or which affects the credit of the Gospels as historical narratives. Nor are they inconsistent with the idea that their writers were favoured with such supernatural assistance in composing them as was adequate for the purpose of giving us such an account of the actions and teachings of Jesus as was necessary for communicating all the great truths of the Christian revelation. Nor is the supposition inconsistent, as it has been alleged to be, with His divine character and truthfulness. I will examine in the next chapter the supposition that possession was not mania, but an actual objective fact. CHAPTER XII. POSSESSION, IF AN OBJECTIVE REALITY, NEITHER INCREDIBLE NOR CONTRARY TO THE ASCERTAINED TRUTHS OF MENTAL SCIENCE. I now proceed to the consideration of the remaining alternative, the truth of which the form of the narrative seems most to favour, viz., that our Lord accepted the distinction between possession and mania; and that during those times possessions were actual occurrences. In considering this subject, it will be necessary to pay attention to the distinction to which I have referred in the previous chapter, that even if many of the phenomena that accompanied possession were due to superhuman agency, the Gospels are by no means pledged to any particular theory of the _modus operandi_ by which the phenomena were brought about. What I mean is that these phenomena might have been due to a superhuman agency, without involving the fact that the demon had a local habitation either in the body or the spirit of the man. All that the Gospels can be taken to affirm is, that the evil spirit in some way or other, of which we are ignorant, held the man in a state of thraldom, made his mental powers the subject of a divided consciousness, overpowered the functions of his reason and his will, and through his action on the mind used for his own purposes the organs of his body. The writers of the New Testament are pledged to no theory as to how such results were effected. They have simply reported the phenomena as they presented themselves to their observation. In doing this, the language which they have employed denotes local habitation; but the words used in stilling the storm make it quite clear that the literal meaning cannot be pressed. Considering the general character of these narratives, it is impossible to pledge them to the particular mode in which these results were brought about.