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Updated: April 30, 2025
Well, I must devise something to myself; I must do something better than this Demonological trash. It is nine o'clock, and I am weary, yea, my very spirit's tired. After ten o'clock Mr. Daveis, an American barrister of eminence, deputed to represent the American States in a dispute concerning the boundaries of Nova Scotia and New England, with an introduction to me from Mr. Ticknor, called.
The Romans, who were remarkably fertile in these sorts of demonological inventions, suggested numerous ways of divination.
The demonological belief of the Christians was inherited from the doctrine of the Jews, who were believers in demons and the 'possession by the devil. Jesus himself cured by casting out of devils. Following his example, Christians everywhere became exorcists.
It must be obvious, by this time, that, if the account of the spiritual world given in the New Testament, professedly on the authority of Jesus, is true, then the demonological half of that account must be just as true as the other half.
The second answer is so obviously valid that it needs no discussion. I draw attention to it simply in justice to those agnostics who may attach greater value than I do to any sort of pneumatological speculations; and not because I wish to escape the responsibility of declaring that, whether Jesus sanctioned the demonological part of Christianity or not, I unhesitatingly reject it.
And I go further and add, that, exactly in so far as it can be proved that Jesus sanctioned the essentially pagan demonological theories current among the Jews of his age, exactly in so far, for me, will his authority in any matter touching the spiritual world be weakened.
This subject is poetically and more beautifully illustrated in the following demonological stanzas, which are so appropriate to the occasion, that we cannot resist quoting them as a further prelude to our subjects: When the devil for weighty despatches Wanted messengers cunning and bold, He pass'd by the beautiful faces And picked out the ugly and old.
Finally, in these last years of the nineteenth century, the demonological hypotheses of the first century are, explicitly or implicitly, held and occasionally acted upon by the immense majority of Christians of all confessions.
These unquestionably have been made subservient to demonological purposes, which, with the ignorant, have passed off for supernatural agency.
And, in the second place, if Jesus taught the demonological system involved in the Gadarene story if a belief in that system formed a part of the spiritual convictions in which he lived and died then I, for my part, unhesitatingly refuse belief in that teaching, and deny the reality of those spiritual convictions.
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