Verse 41 In speaking of the general phenomena of nature, the sacred writers, no doubt, often employed the modes of expression commonly in use in their day, without intending any inspired sanction of the philosophical opinions on which such expressions were based. On this principle, it has been maintained that the cases of demoniacal possession which are referred to in the New Testament, were simply cases of insanity, or of other natural disease, in speaking of which the evangelists used the language indicating a supernatural agency, either in a figurative sense, or else in accommodation to the ideas of their day; and one of the main grounds for this opinion is, that the symptoms detailed in the various cases which are recorded, correspond very precisely with the symptoms of certain natural diseases. Now, it is doubtless true that not only the symptoms detailed, but many expressions used in narrating the events connected with these cases, indicate clearly that the sacred writers regarded the demoniacs as diseased. In one instance, in fact, a sufferer is described by one evangelist (Matthew 17:15,16) as a lunatic, brought to be cured; and by another (Luke 9:38-40) as possessed with a devil. The question, therefore, is not, as it has sometimes been considered, whether the evangelists regarded the demoniacs as diseased, but whether they intended really to refer their evident mental and bodily maladies to the influence of infernal beings. And, in this view of the subject, it must be admitted that the sacred writers ascribe so distinct and positive a personality to the agencies producing these sufferings, and connect these agencies so directly with that invisible world in regard to which it would seem the special object of inspiration to instruct them, that we cannot safely deviate from a strict construction of their language.