sgivings, upheld the idea that insanity is largely or mainly
demoniacal possession, basing their belief steadily on the sacred
Scriptures; and this belief was followed up in every quarter by more
and more constant citation of the text "Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live." No other text of Scripture--save perhaps one--has caused the
shedding of so much innocent blood.

As we look over the history of the Middle Ages, we do, indeed, see
another growth from which one might hope much; for there were two great
streams of influence in the Church, and never were two powers more
unlike each other.

On one side was the spirit of Christianity, as it proceeded from the
heart and mind of its blessed Founder, immensely powerful in aiding the
evolution of religious thought and effort, and especially of provision
for the relief of suffering by religious asylums and tender care.
Nothing better expresses this than the touching words inscribed upon a
great medieval hospital, "Christo in pauperibus suis." But on the other
side was the theological theory--proceeding, as we have seen, from the
survival of ancient superstitions, and sustained by constant reference
to the texts in our sacred books--that many, and probably most, of the
insane were possessed by the devil or in league with him, and that the
cruel treatment of lunatics was simply punishment of the devil and his
minions. By this current of thought was gradually developed one of
the greatest masses of superstitious cruelty that has ever afflicted
humanity. At the same time the stream of Christian endeavour, so far
as the insane were concerned, was almost entirely cut off. In all the
beautiful provision during the Middle Ages for the alleviation of human
suffering, there was for the insane almost no care. Some monasteries,
indeed, gave them refuge. We hear of a charitable work done for them at
the London Bethlehem Hospital in the thirteenth century, at Geneva in
the fifteenth, at Marseilles in the sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in
the south of France, by certain Franciscans in northern France, by the
Alexian Brothers on the Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of
Europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effort in the
Christian Church was stimulated by the Mohammedans. Certain monks, who
had much to do with them in redeeming Christian slaves, found in the
fifteenth century what John Howard found in the eighteenth, that the
Arabs and Turks made a large a