Morning Reading for May 20

The possession of a man's body by the devil was a real and true thing in the time of our Lord's earthly ministry. It is a painful fact that there are never lacking professing Christians who try to explain away the Lord's miracles. They endeavour to account for them by natural causes and to show that they were not worked by any extraordinary power. Of all miracles there are none which they assault so strenuously as the casting out of devils. They do not scruple to deny satanic possession entirely. They tell us it was nothing more than lunacy, frenzy or epilepsy and that the idea of the devil inhabiting a man's body is absurd.

The best and simplest answer to such sceptical objections is a reference to the plain narratives of the Gospels and especially to the one before us at this moment. The facts here detailed are utterly inexplicable if we do not believe in satanic possession. It is well known that lunacy, frenzy and epilepsy are not infectious complaints and at any rate cannot be communicated to a herd of swine! And yet men ask us to believe that as soon as this man was healed two thousand swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea from a sudden impulse, without any apparent cause for their so doing! Such reasoning is the height of credulity. When men can satisfy themselves with such explanations they are in a pitiable state of mind.

Let us beware of a sceptical and incredulous spirit in all matters relating to the devil. No doubt there is much in the subject of satanic possession which we do not understand and cannot explain. But let us not therefore refuse to believe it. The eastern king who would not believe in the possibility of ice, because he lived in a hot country and had never seen it, was not more foolish than the man who refuses to believe in satanic possession because he has never seen a case himself and cannot understand it. We May be sure that upon the subject of the devil and his power we are far too likely to believe too little than too much. Unbelief about the existence and personality of Satan has often proved the first step to unbelief about God.

For meditation: The perversity of the human heart is rarely given a clearer demonstration than when we read the `explanations' that men make up to explain away the biblical records. Scepticism will do anything rather than believe.