The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion

The constantly increasing influence of Christ naturally heightened the wrath of the Pharisees. A movement which they could not check was in progress against the spirit and the interests of their party. But a powerful impression, wrought by a single miracle, gave the signal for a new and more artful attack. This occasion was the healing a man of imbecile mind, or a melancholy idiot, who went about appearing neither to see nor to hear any thing that passed around him. [422] The people received the cure as a sign of Christ's Messianic power.

It was necessary for the Pharisees to remove this impression from their minds. But how was it to be done? The fact could neither be denied nor attributed to natural agencies. In this dilemma they had recourse to falsehood, and accused him of employing an evil magic, a relief in which still propagated itself among the traditions [423] of Jewish fanaticism. The Prince of Evil Spirits, they said, in order to secure favour among the people for the false prophet who was labouring for Satan's kingdom, had given him power to exorcise inferior spirits from men; thus sacrificing a less object for a greater. [424]

Others, again, whose hostility to Christ and to truth was not so decided (although they were not susceptible of Divine impressions), only refused to acknowledge the miracle as a sufficient sign of Messiahship, and demanded an immediate token from God -- a voice from heaven, or a celestial appearance. [425]

Christ first replied to the most decided opponents, and, to show the absurdity of their accusation, reasoned as follows: "It is a contradiction in terms to suppose that good can be directly wrought by evil; [426] that evil should be conquered by evil; that one should be freed from the power of the Evil One by the power of the Evil One. Could evil thus do the works of good, it would be no more evil." He then applies an argumentum ad hominem to the Pharisees [If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges]. If a charge of the sort, he tells them, were brought against their exorcists, they would soon pronounce it untenable. It follows, then, that this Divine act -- the delivery of a human soul from the evil spirit that had crushed its self-conscious activity -- was wrought by the power and Spirit of God alone.

"But," he continues, "if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you." This single victory proves that a power has come among men which is able to conquer evil -- the power, namely, of the kingdom of God, which ever propagates itself in struggling with evil; the negative presupposes the positive. The similitude that follows illustrates the same truth: "When a strong man, armed, keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils." So, had not the power of evil itself been subdued by a higher power, such individual manifestations of it as the evil spirit in the demoniac could not have been conquered. [427]