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Let oak branches smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain yield to fore feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to banks unscaleable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a quarry fifty feet deep, and as many high; yet, "without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage, lo! all that remains together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, now strong as stink, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover, he is now piece-meal, in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?
Thus wizards, men possessed with second sight, and demoniacs of every degree the victims of the Middle Ages became the subject of explanations so natural, that their very simplicity often seemed to me the seal of their truth.
The high priests served only the maraes of the first rank. The orero, who were preachers or poets; the oripou, or night runners; the guardian porters of the idol. The sorcerers or demoniacs. Thus there were six ranks in the service of the temple. The high priest was supreme under the king, and decided when a human sacrifice was demanded by the gods.
What is most important of all is to note the exact parallel existing between the demoniacs described in the New Testament and those persons who at all times are tormented by envy and lust and anger and greed and other evil passions which dominate the human soul.
We had never believed that there could be a smile such as we have witnessed upon the lips of the young fanatics and of the old demoniacs who, from their safe seats, are never weary of looking on at the mutual slaughter of the nations, of those who kill one another for the pleasure, the pride, the ideas, and the interests of the onlookers.
Nevertheless, to do those demoniacs justice, I had got through time imperceptibly by their pestilent help; and I was startled to see, by my watch, how late it was.
The calm which was breathed over the stormy lake is peace of a lower kind than that which filled the soul of the demoniacs when the power that made discord within had been cast out. Even that peace was lower in kind than that which brought sweet repose in the assurance of pardon to this poor paralytic. Forgiveness speaks of a loftier blessing than even the casting out of demons.
At all events, no one can now demonstrate that Jesus did not bewitch the unclean spirits out of the two demoniacs into the two thousand swine; but I confess that the shallow rationalistic explanation seems to me far better calculated to bring clearly to light the influence which Jesus could exercise over the most abandoned men. One more instance.
The demoniacs of New Testament history cannot have been more transformed; and I know of no stranger experience than to listen to such men, as I have times and again, speaking of their past selves as entities cast off and gone, and of their present selves as new creatures. It is, indeed, one that throws a fresh light upon certain difficult passages in the Epistles of St.
The city is full of demoniacs." "There is something great about him!" the woman declared. "He seems to be the instrument of miracle." "Is it that?" John asked in an amused tone. She studied him for a moment that was tense with meaning.
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