Magic Library

if real life was to retain any security and a firm foothold. It is not without reason that John says that Christ, as the Lord and founder of a new era, came to earth to destroy the kingdom and the works of the devil. The fear of almost nameless types of malevolent spirits and dangerous creatures of the imagination had become so harrowing and had spread so generally that it plunged the human world of that time, and especially the Jewish world of that time, into a kind of painful despair. This occurred not merely or primarily in theory or in the schools, but in real life, in civil interaction, and in action across all branches of life. No human being was safe for even a moment from the cunning of the demons; no one was certain that an entire army of demons would not move in on him at any hour and subject him to foreign powers and foreign states of destiny, both physically and mentally. Anyone who feared this was exposed to the influence of demon-belief, and anyone who did not fear it was, for that very reason, not yet secured against temptation and danger, because the wildest superstition had become common sense, darkened all clear notions, and in such a way had prepared an easy game for the influence of the deceptive power of those mischievous creatures of the imagination. One half of the Jews, one might well say, were possessed by demons in Christ's time, and the other half busied themselves with casting out devils. The possessed attacked travelers on public roads, scattered herds of cattle in the pastures, and