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the dominion of Satan, their cure evinces the presence and the power of a greater than Satan-the presence and the power of God. For no one can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man, and then he will spoil his house. Satan cannot cast out or spoil Satan: evil cannot vanquish evil. The power, therefore, by which I have bound and spoiled Satan, and expelled his powers, and healed his victims, and loosed his captives from their bondage, cannot be evil, cannot be from Satan: it must be good and holy-it must be from God." The argument is most perfect and irrefragable, whether we suppose, with the Jews of that day, that living wicked spirits tabernacled in, and tormented the sufferers whom Jesus healed and restored to their right mind; or, that they were cases of cerebral disease, purely physical in their nature—yet, like all physical disease, a portion of the triumph obtained in the realms of nature, by the principle of evil, through the sin and fall of man.

But there is another point to be remarked in the answer of our Lord. He asks "If I, by Beelzebub, cast out daimonia, by whom do your children cast them out?"

First, then, it appears from this, as we have elsewhere said, that the Jews had the power of casting out duimonia, either by the process handed down from the days of Solomon, who was so great a natural philosopher, and wrote so many books, now lost, "of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes" (1 Kings, iv. 33), or by some other means.

Secondly-who is this Beelzebub— this "LORD OF FLIES," as his name denotes-introduced by the three first evangelists in this dialogue, and in one other passage evidently referring to it, "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub (Matt. x. 25), but no where else mentioned in the New Testament? Is this, like Satan, "the adversary," which term, in laying down the foregoing principle of judgment, our Lord, it will be

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observed, prefers employing, an ancient, recognised, and orthodox name for the chief of the fallen angels, the author of evil and of death in the universe? Or, is it a name borrowed from some petty neighbouring system of idolatry, pythonic superstition, or demonology, with which parties among the Jews themselves, had, to some extent, become infected, and to which the attributes of Satan had thus become ultimately transferred by the more orthodox? We have strong ground for supposing the latter to be the case. In the first place, the very name "Lord of Flies" bears this superstitious impress, and, what is remarkable, corresponds exactly with the great devil-fly, Daruj Nesosh of the Magian system, who, in the Vendidad Sade, the most important among the sacred books of the Parsees, is described as tormenting man, and whom Hormuzd, the good principle, or deity, is represented as instructing the prophet Zertusht, or Zoroaster, to drive away, by a succession of ablutions, from one part of the body to another, and ultimately to expel from the toes to the regions of torment.

"When the pure water has reached the crown of his head, the Daruj Nesosh shall go to the back of the head; when the pure water shall go to the back of the head, this devil shall go to the front; when the pure water has reached the front, the devil shall go to the right ear; when the pure water has reached the right ear, the devil shall go to the left ear, and in this manner he shall be driven about till he reaches the toes, and then be driven out in the form of a fly."

But, independently of this analogy in the name and character, we have only to turn to 2 Kings, chap. i., to be convinced of the true origin of this Beelzebub. We read there, in verses 2 and 3, that when Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria, and was sick, he sent messengers, and said unto them, "Go, enquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this disease;" and, thereupon, the prophet Elijah is sent to meet and reproach the messengers with these words:"Is it not because there is not a God

Lecture on the Vendidad Sade, by Dr. Wilson; vide also the preface to Richardson's Persian Dictionary; and the Zend-Avesta, as translated by Anquetil du Perron, for a full account of this exorcism of the Devil-fly.

in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron?" From this it appears, that at Ekron there was an oracular or pythonic shrine, dedicated to this Baal-zebub, which, in the Hebrew, is essentially the same name as Beelzebub, and that even the Jews themselves occasionally sent to consult it. Now we have to observe, that at all the analogous pythonic shrines which exist in India, the oracular and the sanatory go hand in hand; and exorcism of persons supposed to be possessed, is reduced to a system. And it is a very singular fact, for the correctness of which we can vouch from our own knowledge, that in the oracular and exorcist shrines of Kanoba, whom we take to be a perfect counterpart to the Ekronite Baal-zebub, as well as to the Egyptian Kanobos, the supposed daimons, i.e., the epileptic, hysteric, and nervous paroxysms, are frequently expelled by other parties, alleging themselves to be, for the time, possessed by, and to wield the power and authority of Vetalu, the prince of Hindoo devils. Is it not extremely probable, that something of the same kind was done at the exorcist seances of those vagabond Jewish perierchomenoi above alluded to, in forms and words borrowed from the rites of the Ekron deity, which probably live at this day in Hindostan? And if this be so, does not our Lord's answer to the Pharisees convey, not only a noble vindication of the divine character of his own cures, by the moral inconsistency involved in their accusation, but, also, a silent reproof of the superstitious notions current regarding Beelzebub, and the supposed expulsion of demons through such a demoniac power?

To complete this branch of the subject, on the terminology of the Gospel narratives, we may observe that the terms "wicked spirit" and "unclean spirit," are everywhere therein used, as convertible with duimon, invariably applied to cases of physical suffering and derangement, and never to those of moral evil; for wherever this last is clearly intended, if the words Satan or diabolos, be not used, it is the wicked one, which is employed. The passage regarding the "unclean spirit," quoted above from Matt. xii. 43, is no exception to this remark, if the interpretation of Gilpin and Newcome be correct; and if it be understood to refer, in the popular language

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of the Jews, to the case of relapsed maniacs, as affording a striking exemplification of the moral condition of the Jews in their now relapsed and impenitent state. The very phrase πνεύματα τα πονηρα, which is rendered "wicked spirits" in this and similar is in others translated "evil passages, spirits," as, for example, in Acts, xix. 12, 13, 15, 16; and the original word is undoubtedly equally applicable to physical, or to moral evil.

But we must further remark, as the sense of the word zwμɑ, or “spirit,” in these narratives of the Gospel miracles, is very important, that the language of the Hindoos-that ancient people, who preserve, still fresh and unchanged amidst a modernized world, so much of the manners and ideas of the highest antiquity, and thus afford a living commentary on many points, that were otherwise obscure in Holy Writ, and other ancient records throws a great additional light upon this particular subject. We noticed, in our former paper, the close connexion in the mind, as well as in the speech of the Hindoo, between wind, spirit, and nerve, or nervous æther; a connexion so intimate, that the same word, which at one time denotes the plastic element, at another signifies a living and moving intelligence; and, in a third application, expresses a diseased or excited condition of the nerves or the brain. This connexion, which is so perceptible in the terms wara and waren, current in the vernacular dialect of the Mahrattas, who, according to the opinion of Professor Orlebar, are the most legitimate representatives, both in language and sentiment, of the ancient Hindoos, is to be traced also in Sanscrit, the classic language of the Bramhins, of all ancient languages which still exist, perhaps the most ancient certainly the most wonderful for its scientific structure, and its exquisite synthetic beauty. In this language, WAYOO is the radical and common term for the elemental wind, as in the following verse, taken from the Hindoo Law-giver Menu's account of the creation (Menu, cap. i. v. 76) :—

"Akashat too vikoorvanat survugundhuvuhuh: shoochë:

Bulvan jayute WAYOCH: su vui spurshugoono mutuh."

"From ether then operating a change, the all-odourbearing, pure,

And powerful WIND is born; and that is held endowed with the quality of touch."

This is an example of its most simple

and primitive use; though, even here, the endowing wind with the quality of touch-i. e., making it the medium of touch, as light is of vision-shows the inseparable connexion in the Hindoo intellect between the wind and the nervous system. But, in the following and many similar passages from the hymns in the Rig-Vedu, the most venerable probably of all existing writings, if we except, perhaps, the book of Job, containing the ritual of a worship instituted before idolatry, in the strict and grosser sense of that word, arose among mankind; and probably, not long after, or even before the separation of nations on the plains of Shinar, we have this same WAYOO endowed with life and worshipped— an invisible spirit, whose presence, heralded by Eolian murmurs, is wooed by the sacrificer to partake of the juice of the moonplant:

"WAYUVA yahi durshunte-me soma urunkritaha, Tesham pahi shroodhee huvum!" "Come, oh WAYOO! [living wind]-these moon

plants, diligently prepared, await thy presence drink thou thereof: hearken to our invitation !"

"WAYOO tuvu pruprinchutee dhena: jigati dashooshe ooroochee somu pituye."

"Oh! WAYOO [living wind], thy voice resoundeth the praises; it advanceth to the house of the sacrificer, to quaff the juice of the moonplant."*

From this most ancient deification of the element into a moving power, the brush of whose wing was visible on the waving grass and the bending corn, which it swept in its passage; and whose voice, wild and mournful, was heard rushing at intervals through the otherwise silent solitude, like some solemn sacrificial chant, or the swell of choral anthem from some far-off fane-but whose form was ever invisible of whom no man could tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth, we are prepared for seeing it gradually become, as the

of the

Greeks, and the spiritus or breathing of the Latins, and the oв of the Hebrews and Arabs, the figurative representative of, and eventually the very name for spirit itself, that wonderful and analogous agent, which speaketh forth from the invisible, and, itself unseen, produces such sensible effects upon the material universe. We are prepared,

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too, to find it ere long applied to those sudden appearances in, and utterances from, the human frame, which, foreign to its daily movements and its familiar voice, were deemed the result and the evidence of the presence of a spirit, different from that which made its habitual tabernacle in the tenement of clay. Accordingly, although the Sanscrit, in its copiousness, possesses another term for pure spirit, abstracted alike from all notion of individuality and of corporeal contact, and applied also to the human soul, as the manifestation of that universal spirit in a state of isolation and false individualization, like the air of the atmosphere isolated and quasi-individualized in an earthen vessel-namely, the word atma, or, in its crude form, atmun [a term, by the way, which also signifies wind, and which seems closely related to the Greek arus-breath, vapour, derived from a root which signifies to breathe]; yet this term, except where, by a condescension to popular notions, used in its secondary sense of the human soul or self, seems more employed in reference to spirit regarded as a subject for metaphysical inquiry, or abstract contemplation-spirit self-subsisting, eternal, infinite, universal, and quies. cent than for a spirit in any way limited or individualized, or witnessed in active operation upon organised living beings. For, although the whole of the vital functions are alleged to be performed through a power derived from this universal atma, which exists pervadingly in every living being, and in which all living beings exist, as ves. sels of many shapes and sizes exist in the atmosphere which both fills and surrounds them; though, to use the language of St. Paul, in it they live, and move, and have their being; yet it is always represented as something, though close and most intimately present, still ever aloof from us; the witness of all things, itself unseen; unmoved and immoveable in our motions; untouched, untarnished by our actions. In a word, it corresponds to the idea of a pure, all-comprehending intelligence, infinite, absolute, universaltranscending alike all bodily existence, all ideas of action and motion, and all true individuality; a subject of speculation to the philosopher, of con

Sunhitu of the Rig-Vedu, hymn ii. verses 1 and 3.

templation to the sage, of experience or realization to the yogee, or mystic, who, withdrawing himself from external things, and calling in his mind, by resolute effort, from the five windows of the senses, where it sits looking forth on the outer world, and gathering it up, and concentrating it in the innermost recess of his own being, there beholds this spiritual sun arise within and around him, plunges himself into its luminous depths, and thus becomes co-universal, co-luminous, and co-spiritual with it. Such, so universal, so devoid of personality, of action, and of motion, is the idea of spirit conveyed by the word atma. On the other hand, whenever spirit is contemplated, if we may so speak, less spiritually, and less universally; as locally limited in shape or space; as possessing, therefore, the attribute of motion; as connected with the ideas of rushing, of filling, of agitating the human frame-then it is WAYOO, the personified element of wind, that, like the Greek μa, is employed to convey this idea. Thus we find it used in the incantations addressed to evil spirits: we find it also employed in the very singular ceremony of pranuprutishta-i.e., the consecration, or, more literally, the life infusion into idols destined for worship; the curious rituals of which might suggest profound reflections to thoughtful men, on some of the disputes which divide and embitter the Christian world. We find it used in a variety of connexions to indicate a motive spirit in the human body-a nervous spirit it may be different from the sublime, quiescent, eternal atma; different also from the human mind or intellect; maintaining by a dynamic opposition with this mind, the balance of healthy, normal life, and in certain peculiar states-spiritual states shall we say, or nervous states?-obtaining an ascendancy and mastery over this regulating mind itself. We find it also, like waren, employed in reference to those convulsive tremblings and other manifestations, which are looked upon as the result of a spiritual possession. But, what is of most importance, and more immediately germane to our subject, this same word wayoo [wind or spirit] is employed in all standard or medical works, and even in the popular lan

guage of the present day, to denote all forms of disease depending upon disarrangement of, or injury to, the nervous and cerebral systems. Thus, hemiplegy is termed pukshu-wayoo-i.e., the half-wind or half-spirit: palsy is called kumpu-wayoo, the trembling wind or trembling spirit: dnyanu-wayoo, the knowledge-wind or knowledge-spirit, denotes that kind of delirium which makes the patient chatter volubly on learned or abstruse matters; and dhunoor-wayoo, the bow-wind or bow-spirit, designates that affection of the nerves or the spine, which bends the patient double like a bow, which literally bows him down; the very "spirit of infir mity," which "bowed together" the woman whom our Lord loosed from this bondage of Satan on the Sabbathday (Luke, xiii. 11). These several wayoos, winds, or spirits, are, we see, named from their effects on the human frame and functions: they are, in a word, diseases personified, and designated from their peculiar symptoms and results.

We

Have we not here the very key to the employment of the correlative Greek μr in a precisely similar manner in the Gospels, in accordance with the popular language of the day; the popular ideas of the Jews following, apparently, the same train of thought, the same mystic or personifying process as those of the Hindoos? We discern the correspondence clearly in the case of the woman who had the spirit of infirmity-the dhunoor-vayoo, the "bow-spirit," or bow-wind, which bent her together like a bow. also see that the affection which made the patient deaf and dumb, is termed a deaf and dumb spirit (Mark, ix. 25); that which made him blind and dumb, is named a blind and dumb spirit (Matt. xii. 22). Is not "unclean spirit," then, a popular term, origi. nating in the same figurative and personifying process, to designate a form of madness which led the sufferer to exhibit acts and habits of self-neglect, uncleanness, and abandoning of clothes: such as all persons to whom the datura stramonium, or thorn-apple, is administered, as it constantly is in India for the purpose of inducing stupefaction, and thereby facilitating robbery, invariably exhibit while under its ininfluence?* Of the daimoniac in the

*From a case of poisoning by camphor, detailed in the Medical Times of 1st April, last, p. 451, it would seem that this drug produces similar effects. It is

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country of the Gadarenes, who is called, in Mark, v. 2, "a man with an unclean spirit," Luke says, (viii. 27), "There met him out of the city a certain man who had devils (daimonia) long time, and wore no clothes." And on his cure he is described (Luke, viii. 35) as "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind”—and in Mark, v. 15, as " sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind." And very remarkable is what we read of Saul, of whom it is said, 1 Sam. xix. 9, 10:"The evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand and Saul sought to smite David, even to the wall, with his javelin"—an evident deseription of madness-and of whom it is further related, that, after having sent two sets of messengers to take David, who were seized with a contagious spirit of prophecy, "when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying" (1 Sam. xix. 20)—he himself went to Naioth in Ramah, where Samuel and the prophets were-" And the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on, and prophesied, until he came to Naioth in Ramah." And now let us remark what he does in his prophetic fury-" And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night." -1 Sam. xix. 23, 24.

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In the Old Testament we find the same act attributed, under different points of view, to God and to Satan. Thus we read, in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1"And again the anger oF THE Lord was kindled against Israel, and HE moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Juda.' While, in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, on the contrary, we read of the very same fact-" And SATAN stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." Are we not justified, then, upon the same principle of interpretation, to which we must have recourse, in order to harmonize these and similar passages, in concluding, that the very same state which is described in the first passage of Samuel, by the phrase, "The evil spirit from the Lord was

upon Saul," is meant also in the last passage by the words" And the Spirit of God was upon him ;" and that the prophesying here attributed to him was a delirious raving-like the dnyanu-wayoo, or delirious knowledgespirit of the Hindoo physicians—since in the latter instance, as in the former, his actions were those of one deranged?

And is not the phrase "wicked spirit" applied, on similar principles, to the more violent, and apparently more malevolent forms of madness? A spirit, from its very nature, could not possibly be blind-it is called blind, or deaf, or dumb, because the human body which it affects becomes So. On the same grounds we may safely conclude these πνεύματα, or spirits, whether we consider them as winds attacking the nerves and brain -as nervous spirits or as nervous and cerebral affections-are in the other cases called "unclean," and "wicked," not because they (whatever they may be) are themselves of a nature morally impure or malignant, but because the human patients, in whom they appear, exhibit these characters in their outward actions, while under their influence.

We believe the foregoing offers a true explanation of the language of the Gospels regarding these affections. This figurative language may be the result of popular superstition alone. It may, on the other hand, have originated accidentally, as it were, from those notions on physiology which connected the nerves with the element of wind, and therefore, through the medium of language, with the idea of spirit. The use of the same terms to denote physical conditions, which were applied to spiritual powers, may have first engendered the idea of the influence of the latter on the former, and led to those personifications of disease; and thus language will have first helped to create superstition, which it certainly has tended to confirm and keep alive. But it seems to us more probable, that the connexion between the nerves, the wind, and spirit was not wholly accidental-that these notions did not arise out of the fortuitous

there stated of the patient, who had swallowed two drachms of camphor, that "after some gambols he went into his own room, whence he came out very soon, stripped entirely naked, dancing, and seeking to leap out of a window." Had the immediate cause been unknown, would not the Jews have deemed this man possessed of an unclean spirit?

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