(1.) Devils, who came out of many, cried out that Jesus was Christ, the Son of God; but he rebuked them and suffered them not to speak, because they knew him. (2.) Some expressed fear of his power thus, "Let us alone, what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? to torment us before the time? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God." (3.) The following remarkable event is recorded: A man with an unclean spirit, untamable, who had burst asunder his chains and fetters, and was always, night and day, in the mountains and among the tombs, crying and cutting himself with stones, saw Jesus afar off, ran and worshipped him, exclaiming, "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, the Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not." Jesus asked him, "What is thy name?" and he replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." Jesus cast out the legion, and, at their own request, gave c them permission to enter a herd of two thousand swine feeding close by, with the result that they all ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and were choked. What became of the devils is not mentioned. Paul (1 Cor. x. 20) states, "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God," devils here being synonymous with the idols or gods of the Gentiles. In the following four passages in which devils are mentioned in the Old Testament (Lev. xvii. 7; Deut. xxxii. 17; 2 Chron. xi. 15; Psalm cvi. 37), the word is used in exactly the same sense as by Paul. "Devils," then, as indwelling unclean spirits, madly swaying their victims, or producing lunacy, blindness, dumbness, or other infirmities, are beings or influences quite unknown to the Old Testament writers. Moreover, in the Old Testament the heathen gods, though called devils, are derided as powerless. (See Elijah's mockery of Baal, and such passages as Psalm cxxxv. 15, 18.) In the fourth Gospel, too, there is scarcely any confirmation of the unclean spirits. The Jews, indeed, tell Jesus that he hath a devil, and is mad, showing a belief on their part of possession in some form; but John does not corroborate one single instance of the devil-manifestations and exorcisms so prominently set forth in the other Gospels. If, then, in Jesus' time there was a notion current among the Jews that madness and natural diseases and defects were manifestations of the so-called evil principle, or were evil spirits or influences, whence was this most erroneous doctrine derived? Certainly not from their own Old Testament writings. So far, therefore, the Old Testament discredits the accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the devils and their influences. It does not recognise beings or powers acting in the way described. And John's silence constitutes a fatal defect in the evidence in support of these manifestations.