Part 59 (2/2)

Scenes similar to these, in their essential character, have arisen more recently in Protestant countries, but with the difference that what has been generally attributed by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics to Satan is attributed by Protestant ecclesiastics to the Almighty. Typical among the greater exhibitions of this were those which began in the Methodist chapel at Redruth in Cornwall--convulsions, leaping, jumping, until some four thousand persons were seized by it. The same thing is seen in the ruder parts of America at ”revivals” and camp meetings. Nor in the ruder parts of America alone. In June, 1893, at a funeral in the city of Brooklyn, one of the mourners having fallen into hysterical fits, several other cases at once appeared in various parts of the church edifice, and some of the patients were so seriously affected that they were taken to a hospital.

In still another field these exhibitions are seen, but more after a medieval pattern: in the Tigretier of Abyssinia we have epidemics of dancing which seek and obtain miraculous cures.

Reports of similar manifestations are also sent from missionaries from the west coast of Africa, one of whom sees in some of them the characteristics of cases of possession mentioned in our Gospels, and is therefore inclined to attribute them to Satan.(407)

(407) For the cases in Brooklyn, see the New York Tribune of about June 10, 1893. For the Tigretier, with especially interesting citations, see Hecker, chap. iii, sec. 1. For the cases in western Africa, see the Rev.

J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, p. 217.

III. THEOLOGICAL ”RESTATEMENTS.”--FINAL TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW AND METHODS.

But, happily, long before these latter occurrences, science had come into the field and was gradually diminis.h.i.+ng this cla.s.s of diseases.

Among the earlier workers to this better purpose was the great Dutch physician Boerhaave. Finding in one of the wards in the hospital at Haarlem a number of women going into convulsions and imitating each other in various acts of frenzy, he immediately ordered a furnace of blazing coals into the midst of the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and declared that he would burn the arms of the first woman who fell into convulsions. No more cases occurred.(408)

(408) See Figuier, Histoire de Merveilleux, vol. i, p. 403.

These and similar successful dealings of medical science with mental disease brought about the next stage in the theological development. The Church sought to retreat, after the usual manner, behind a compromise.

Early in the eighteenth century appeared a new edition of the great work by the Jesuit Delrio which for a hundred years had been a text-book for the use of ecclesiastics in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition the part played by Satan in diseases was changed: it was suggested that, while diseases have natural causes, it is necessary that Satan enter the human body in order to make these causes effective. This work claims that Satan ”attacks lunatics at the full moon, when their brains are full of humours”; that in other cases of illness he ”stirs the black bile”; and that in cases of blindness and deafness he ”clogs the eyes and ears.” By the close of the century this ”restatement” was evidently found untenable, and one of a very different sort was attempted in England.

In the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1797, under the article Daemoniacs, the orthodox view was presented in the following words: ”The reality of demoniacal possession stands upon the same evidence with the gospel system in general.”

This statement, though necessary to satisfy the older theological sentiment, was clearly found too dangerous to be sent out into the modern sceptical world without some qualification. Another view was therefore suggested, namely, that the personages of the New Testament ”adopted the vulgar language in speaking of those unfortunate persons who were generally imagined to be possessed with demons.” Two or three editions contained this curious compromise; but near the middle of the present century the whole discussion was quietly dropped.

Science, declining to trouble itself with any of these views, pressed on, and toward the end of the century we see Dr. Rhodes at Lyons curing a very serious case of possession by the use of a powerful emetic; yet myth-making came in here also, and it was stated that when the emetic produced its effect people had seen mult.i.tudes of green and yellow devils cast forth from the mouth of the possessed.

The last great demonstration of the old belief in England was made in 1788. Near the city of Bristol at that time lived a drunken epileptic, George Lukins. In asking alms, he insisted that he was ”possessed,” and proved it by jumping, screaming, barking, and treating the company to a parody of the Te Deum.

He was solemnly brought into the Temple Church, and seven clergymen united in the effort to exorcise the evil spirit. Upon their adjuring Satan, he swore ”by his infernal den” that he would not come out of the man--”an oath,” says the chronicler, ”nowhere to be found but in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, from which Lukins probably got it.”

But the seven clergymen were at last successful, and seven devils were cast out, after which Lukins retired, and appears to have been supported during the remainder of his life as a monument of mercy.

With this great effort the old theory in England seemed practically exhausted.

Science had evidently carried the stronghold. In 1876, at a little town near Amiens, in France, a young woman suffering with all the usual evidences of diabolic possession was brought to the priest. The priest was besought to cast out the devil, but he simply took her to the hospital, where, under scientific treatment, she rapidly became better.(409)

(409) See Figuier; also Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernale, article Posseses.

The final triumph of science in this part of the great field has been mainly achieved during the latter half of the present century.

Following in the n.o.ble succession of Paracelsus and John Hunter and Pinel and Tuke and Esquirol, have come a band of thinkers and workers who by scientific observation and research have developed new growths of truth, ever more and more precious.

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