LECTURE V. THE AGENCY OF EVIL SPIRITS. DEMONIACS; AND ESPECIALLY THOSE TO WHICH NEW TESTAMENT. WE come now to consider the difficult, yet LECT. V. interesting subject of demoniacs, or possessions, as this directs our attention to one of the ways by which evil spirits have, in the estimation of most professing Christians, carried on their intercourse with this world, in order to oppose the plans of God, as well as to injure mankind, and to gratify their own love of mischief and sin. Here it is natural to ask, what is meant by possessions, or by demoniacs? To this question Farmer's Farmer would answer, "A man is said to be a the term demoniac, or to be possessed, when the demon within him is supposed to occupy the seat of the soul, and perform all its functions in the body. During his possession, the demoniac was silent: it was the demon alone that spoke in him. Z definition of demoniac not correct. LECT. V. He was considered as being the very spirit by which he was possessed. Hence, the demon and the demoniac were of ten, in common speech, confounded together," He affirms that "the doctrine of possessions implies that demons can unite themselves to the human body in the same way that the soul is united to it by God, so as to govern all its organs." And he maintains, that "if they can thus deprive men of their speech, and sight, and reason, and then restore them to the use of these faculties, they can rival the glory of the prophets of God."* But there is much in these statements that is objectionable, and there is reason to fear, that, though he might not be sensible of it, he gave this description of possessions in order to place the theory of those who maintained their reality as disadvantageous a light as possible, that it might be more easily refuted. But this definition will not be accepted by his opponents; all that we mean by possessions is, that the evil spirits brought those to whom the term could be applied so far under their influence, as to be able to vex and torment them, both in their bodies and in their souls, in various ways and degrees, and to cause them to think, and speak, and act, as they otherwise would not have done. By a possessed person we mean one who, according to the language of the New Testament, is held, Another definition. * Farmer on Demoniacs, p. 250. not always der the power of the demons. or afflicted, or grieved by a demon; according LECT. V. to the language of the woman of Canaan, “My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil," Matt. xv. 22. And it is evident from some of the Demoniacs cases of demoniacs which are recorded in the equally unScriptures, that they were not at all times equally under the influence of the demons; that they had their paroxysms, and their intervals of comparative freedom and ease. Luke ix. 38, "And behold a man of the company cried out, saying, Master, I beseech thee look on my son, for he is my only child; and lo, a spirit taketh him, and he suddenly crieth, and it teareth him, that he foameth again, and bruising him, hardly departeth from him." This is quite different from the spirit's uniting itself with the person as the soul. does to the body, as Farmer represents it. Indeed, it may be questioned whether ever the possession was perpetual, so as to imply that the demon was always present with the person whom it harassed and vexed. And this reminds us of the unfairness of one part of Farmer's description of a demoniac. We by no means allow that the evil spirit could restore sight, or speech, or hearing to those whom it had deprived of them; at least, if the deprivation had been caused by a derangement of the organs, and not merely by an influence exerted by the power of the demon during the interval of possession. Whenever the Saviour expelled the devil, he also restored the use of the faculty that had been lost. |