Daily Kennebec journal., 1910-07-20

no pleasure in the suffering of his
creatures and will not permit that any
should suffer eternally. therefore his
provision that all shall have. through
Christ. an opportunity for regaining
perfection and eternal life, and that
whosoever will not avail himself Of
this great privilege must die the sec
ond death-must be annihilated.
While Jesus and the three favored
Apostles were in the mount of trans
figuration, supposed to have been
Mount Tabor at the foot of the noun
tain there was man whose son was
lunatic, whom he had brought that
the Lord might expel the demon. The
Apostles had already been out. as the
Lords representatives. in various
parts of the country OF Palestine. cur
ing the sick and expelling demons in
his name; so they assayed to cast out
this demon but could not. The Re-
vised Version speaks of the sufferer as
an epileptic. Indeed. all higher criti-
cism disputes that there is such a
thing as obsession by evil spirits. 1t
is a common saying today among the
higher critics that what our Lord and
the Apostles mstook for demon pos
session was merely insanity. epilepsy.
etc OF course the word disease is
broad enough to cover any kind of
ailment whether it be a direct affec-
ton from the adversary. or an indirect
one through heredity. In either case
there is loss of ease, dis ease. discom-
fort. We. however. have more con-
fidence in the wisdom of the Lord and
his chosen Apostles and mouth pieces
than we have in all the doctors of
theology and doctors of medicine in
the whole earth. We therefore accept
this narrative just as it reads. that
Jesus rebuked the devil and cast
him out of the boy, who was cured
from that very hour.
The disciples who had been unsuc-
cessful in casting out this demon,
called the Master away from the hear
ing of the multitude and asked him
why they had failed when they at
tempted to cast out the demon. He
replied. Because of your little faith"
Another account says that he stated,
This kind cometh not out except by
fasting and prayer" In other words.
the lesson to the Apostles was that
(IIClI SIcdtCSl po"Cl "ouiu iSSUie
from their living very near to God.
living lives of self denial and prayer.
OF course. fasting to be seen of men
is not here inculcated. nor do we sug-
gest that the works of penance on the
part of disciples would make them
more efficient in the understanding of
the Lords mystery: rather the
thought is, the nearer one lives to God
the more of the Divine power may be
exercised by and through him.
1t is perhaps difficult for us to un-
derstand our Lords reference to their
having little faith. for they surely ex-
ercised considerable faith in making
an attempt to cast out the demon
Faith, to be successful, must be back
ed by spiritual power; and our Lord
assures us that even with a small
amount of faith we would be able to
remove mountain and nothing would
| be impossible. We are not to sup
pose that our Lord meant that his fol-
lowers should try to remove noun
tains as a diversion. nor as proof of
their faith. for by so doing they
would be seriously interfering with the
interests of others who would be more
convenienced by having the mountain
remain. This they would have no
right to do We assume therefore that
the thought must be that if in the full
fillment of the Divine command it
should be necessary to have a noun
tain removed. and if the commission
had been given to one of the Lords
followers to remove the mountain, and
if he could exercise the faith to Obey
the command, the result would cor
respond to the faith exercised All
that the ma jorty of us could do would
be to exercise as much faith as pos
sible and ask the Lord for more. and
also seek to cultivate a greater degree
of faith.