into the heart, furnished an antidote to superstition more efficacious than any amount of discussion of the truth or falseness of the current explanation of the disease.  On the other hand, if we are not ready to conclude that the action of Jesus has demonstrated the validity of the ancient explanation, we may acknowledge that it would do no violence to his power, or dignity, or integrity, if it should be held that he did not concern himself with an inquiry into the cause of the disease which presented itself to him for help, but adopted unquestioningly the explanation held by all his contemporaries, even as he used their language, dress, manner of life, and in one particular, at least, their representation of the life after death (Luke xvi. 22—­Abraham’s bosom).  His own confession of ignorance of a large item of religious knowledge (Mark xiii. 32) leaves open the possibility that in so minor a matter as the explanation of a common disease he simply shared the ideas of his time.  In this case, when one so afflicted came under his treatment, he applied his supernatural power, even as in cases of leprosy or fever, and cured the trouble, needing no scientific knowledge of its cause.  If accommodation or ignorance led Jesus to treat these sick folk as possessed, it does not challenge his integrity nor his trustworthiness in all the matters which belong properly to his own peculiar work.

250.  There is one incident in the gospels which favors the conclusion that Jesus definitely adopted the current idea,—­the permission granted by him to the demons to go from the Gadarene into the herd of swine, and the consequent drowning of the herd (Mark v. 11-13).  On any theory this incident is full of difficulty.  Bernhard Weiss (LXt II. 226 ff.) holds that Jesus accommodated himself to current views, and that the man, having received for the possessing demons permission to go into the swine, was at once seized by a final paroxysm, and rushed among the swine, stampeding them so that they ran down the hillside into the sea.

251.  In recent years the view has been somewhat widely advocated that his power over demoniacs was to Jesus himself one of the chief proofs of his Messiahship.  His words are quoted:  “If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you” (Matt. xii. 28); and “I beheld Satan falling as lightning from heaven” (Luke x. 18).  The first of these is in the midst of an ad hominem reply of Jesus to the charge that he owed his power to a league with the devil (Matt. xii. 28); and the second was his remark when the seventy reported with joy that the demons were subject unto them (Luke x. 18).  The gospels, however, trace his certainty of his Messiahship to quite other causes, primarily to his knowledge of himself as God’s child, then to the Voice which, coming at the baptism, summoned him as God’s beloved Son to do the work of the Messiah.  Throughout his ministry Jesus exhibits a certainty of his mission quite independent of external evidences,—­“Even if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true; for I know whence I came and whither I go” (John viii. 14).