ws:

The Jews of that period not only believed that the Supreme
Being had the power of controlling the course of Nature, but
that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of subordinate
spirits, both good and evil. Where the pious Christian of the
present day would behold the direct Agency of the Almighty, the
Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author
or ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the
Christian moralist would condemn the fierce passion, the
ungovernable lust, or the inhuman temper, the Jew discerned
the workings of diabolical possession. Scarcely a malady was
endured, or crime committed, which was not traced to the
operation of one of these myriad demons, who watched every
opportunity of exercising their malice in the sufferings and
the sins of men.

Read next the opinion of John Lightfoot, D.D., Master of Catherine Hall,
Cambridge:

... Let two things only be observed: (1) That the nation under
the Second Temple was given to magical arts beyond measure;
and (2) that it was given to an easiness of believing all
manner of delusions beyond measure... It is a disputable
case whether the Jewish nation were more mad with superstition
in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious arts:
(1) There was not a people upon earth that studied or attributed
more to dreams than they; (2) there was hardly any people in
the whole world that more used, or were more fond of amulets,
charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of enchantments.

It is from this people, "mad with superstition" in religion and
in sorcery, the most credulous people in the whole world, a people
destitute of the very rudiments of science, as science is understood
to-day--it is from this people that the unreasonable and impossible
stories of the Resurrection, coloured and distorted on every page with
miracles, come down to us.

We do not believe that miracles happen now. Are we, on the evidence of
such a people, to believe that miracles happened two thousand years ago?

We in England to-day do not believe that miracles happen now. Some of us
believe, or persuade ourselves that we believe, that miracles did happen
a few thousand years ago.

But amongst some peoples the belief in miracles still persists, and
wherever the belief in miracles is strongest we shall find that the