We have pointed out, more than once, that the best way to explain an idea away is to explain how it arose. Add to this a clear statement of how the older view conflicts with the new outlook which has been born of tested knowledge, and the disproof is as complete as may be. Let us apply this method to the stories told of Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus was reputed to have the gifts of an exorcist. That Jesus, if he did actually live, believed in demons cannot be doubted. In Mark, the crowd exclaims: "With authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." Again, the scribes from Jerusalem say: "He hath Beelzebub. By the prince of the devils he casteth out the devils." Wherever Jesus went, crowds of sick people flocked to him to be healed of their various complaints. But they undoubtedly did the same to every prophet or medicine-man who came along. A man could not be a prophet if he did not have a special _mana_, or power, either in his own right or as the representative of his deity. And we must not think of these healers as charlatans or impostors. Everybody believed that disease was a matter for religion. Why? Because they did not know anything about toxins and bacteria and amoebic infection. The demon-theory of disease was everywhere dominant outside, perhaps, certain circles in Greece. "It is beyond a doubt," writes F. C. Conybeare, "that Jesus regarded fever, epilepsy, madness, deafness, blindness, rheumatism, and all the other weaknesses to which flesh is heir, as the distinct work of evil { 128} spirits. The storm-wind which churned the sea or inland lake into fury is equally an evil spirit in the Gospel story. In the Vedic poems it is the same; and, indeed, we have here a commonplace of all folklore."
The stories told about Jesus in the synoptic gospels can be paralleled in the literature of the time throughout the Roman world. The use of spittle as a sovereign remedy was universal. In his essay upon miracles, Hume called attention to the story told about the Emperor Vespasian by Tacitus. Vespasian was a little more careful than Jesus, for he had physicians examine the eyes of the blind suppliant before he exerted his touch and spittle as healing agents. But, then, Jesus could not be so careful about such things as an emperor.