It is obvious that, with the necessary abandonment of the theory of "possession" and demoniacal origin of disease, the largest class of miracles recorded in the Gospels is at once exploded. The asserted cause of the diseases of this class, said to have been miraculously healed, must be recognized to be a mere vulgar superstition, and the narratives of such miracles, ascribing as they do in perfect simplicity distinct objectivity to the supposed "possessing" demons, and reporting their very words and actions, at once assume the character of mere imaginative and fabulous writings based upon superstitious
tradition, and cannot be accepted as the sober and intelligent report of eye-witnesses. We shall presently see how far this.inference is supported by the literary evidence regarding the date and composition of the Gospels.
The deduction, however, does not end here. It is clear that, this large class of Gospel miracles being due to the superstition of an ignorant and credulous age, the insufficiency of the evidence for any of the other supposed miraculous occurrences narrated in the same documents becomes at once apparent. Nothing but the most irrefragable testimony could possibly warrant belief in statements of supernatural events which contradict all experience, and are opposed to all science. When these statements, however, are not only rendered, _à priori_, suspicious by their proceeding from a period of the grossest superstition and credulity, but it becomes evident that a considerable part of them is due solely to that superstition and credulity, by which, moreover, the rest may likewise be most naturally explained, it is obvious that they cannot stand against the opposing conviction of invariable experience. The force of the testimony is gone. We are far from using this language in an offensive sense concerning the Gospel narratives, which, by the simple faith of the writers, present the most noble aspect of the occurrences of which superstition is capable. Indeed, viewed as compositions gradually rising out of pious tradition, and representing the best spirit of their times, the Gospels, even in ascribing such miracles to Jesus, are a touching illustration of the veneration excited by his elevated character. Devout enthusiasm surrounded his memory with the tradition of the highest exhibitions of power within the range of Jewish imagination,