Scripture and the similar affections of the same kind in our own day is, that preternatural knowledge was exhibited by the former, while it is not displayed by the latter. Demoniacs are represented as possessing great strength, as being bound with chains and fetters, and breaking them; as exceedingly fierce and dangerous, as unsociable, dwelling in the wilderness and amongst the tombs; as frequently attempting, in a fit of ungovernable fury, to commit suicide. All these are the symptoms of different kinds of madness. strength of a madman has passed into a proverb. The one point of distinction, then, between the demoniac of Christ's day and the lunatic of ours is preternatural knowledge.

The

Now this is easily accounted for upon the principle which I have already laid down, namely, that demon power is exerted in producing all kinds of evil confusion and disorder in the world. God suffered, or, it may be, compelled the demons to exhibit their preternatural knowledge, that they might thus reveal that spiritual power and presence which are usually concealed behind the secondary causes which strike our senses. This view of the matter is in perfect harmony with one of the great purposes of the mission of Christ. He came to revive in men's minds the conception of this world as the field of a great spiritual conflict between God on the one hand and the powers of evil and of hell on the other. Hence, when God came forth in the person of Jesus Christ, and revealed himself as the great worker for good in all the agencies of nature and of mind, Satan was permitted or compelled to manifest himself in a similar manner, to prove to men the reality of his agency. The same thing has happened during the progress of every miraculous dispensation. The power of God, as manifested through Moses, was confronted with the power of demons, as manifested through magicians.

During the whole period of the Jewish dispensation, which was miraculous throughout, there were witches and wizards in the land, and manifestations of demon knowledge through many of the heathen oracles, which were the great antagonists of Judaism. But when Divine miracle ceased, satanic miracle was compelled to cease also. The principle which seems to regulate

the conflict between God and the powers of evil, the law of the fight seems to be, that Satan shall have the right to interfere to promote evil in a manner similar to that in which God interferes to promote good. This right seems to have resulted from the introduction of sin, Satan's great act of conquest. Through it he has gained a kind of right to act as the god of this world, and to perform signs and wonders, full of all deceivableness of unrighteousness, that thus he may mock the God of heaven, and delude his victims to their own destruction. But in the exercise of this right and power the demons have ever been bounded by the limitation of their own nature as finite created beings, and also by the almightiness of God, who, as the original and rightful king of the world, has ever retained the right and the power to say to the evil one, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no further."

That there have been manifestations of preternatural knowledge, in connection with madness and insanity, is a truth not only taught in Scripture, but rendered highly probable by the superstitious reverence which, in all ages and nations unenlightened by the Gospel, has been paid to persons suffering under these afflictions. This is the case throughout the east in Mohammedan and heathen countries, and also amongst all savage nations. The insane and the mad are reverenced as persons who are specially possessed by the gods, and through whom the will of the gods is revealed to man. How can this superstition be accounted for except by ascribing it to the fact, that in some distant age of miracle the demon power which afflicts them was permitted to manifest its presence by the utterance of preternatural knowledge? I conclude, then, that the great point of difference between the demoniacal possession of Christ's day and the madness of our own, did not consist in the presence of Satanic power in the one and its absence in the other, for Satanic power is present in both; but in the fact that the Satanic presence was then permitted to manifest itself by the utterance of preternatural knowledge, which it is not permitted to do now.

When we consider the case of a man like this demoniac in the country of the Gadarenes, the question arises, What view are we to take of his moral

condition? Are we to suppose that a man possessed of the devil, or afflicted with madness, is a worse man than auy other? I answer, No. Job was not a worse man than any other, though the devil was permitted so far to take possession of his body as to afflict him with a loathsome disease, and to cover him with sore boils. Paul was no worse than other men, though a messenger of Satan was sent to buffet him. And so a man may be no worse than others though God should permit Satan to possess him, both body and soul, so as to afflict him with a raving madness, like that of the demoniacs described in the New Testament.

But the condition of the demoniac ought not to be regarded as having no connection whatever with our fallen state. I believe that every evil which the devil inflicts upon the children of men is the result of the fall and corruption of our nature; if it were not for that, demons could have no power over us. If there were no sin, there would be no pain, no sickness, disease, or death. The stream of human depravity, as it flows on through the different individuals of the human race, seems to produce different kinds of breaches and dilapidations in different persons, so as to expose one to one form of devilish malice and another to another. It makes a breach in one person's nature, so that she is exposed for eighteen years to a spirit of infirmity, and is bowed together, and can in nowise lift up herself. A breach is effected in another nature, so that demons are able to take away the power of hearing and of speech, and the person is described as possessed by a dumb and deaf demon. While in a third all the defences of our nature are so broken down on every side, that the full tide of hellish power flows in upon him; a legion of devils possesses him, each one influencing him according to his own wicked and malignant inclination.

But let us now look a little more closely at some of the most remarkable particulars of the narrative before us. The first thing which strikes us in this case is the abject submission of the demons to Jesus Christ. As soon as he landed on the coast, the demons recognised him as their Lord, and they caused the man to rush towards Jesus Christ, and to worship him, for Mark tells us, that "when he saw Jesus afar

off he ran and worshipped him." But the worship which the demons paid to Christ was the abject grovelling worship of slavish fear, and not the worship of love and of sonship. They made the man cry out, "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee torment me not." The torment which they dreaded consisted in being cast out of the man into the deep, the abyss, the bottomless pit, the dark and miserable state which is their proper dwelling-place. They besought him that he would not command them to go into the deep. We do not know enough about fallen spirits to be able to speak with any degree of confidence of the difference between their condition while doing evil here on earth and their condition in hell. From the request of the demons in this instance we infer that they are more miserable in hell than on earth. On earth they are indulging their malignity, their hatred against God and man, but in hell they are confined in chains of darkness, gnashing their teeth with impotent fury while they think of the evil they would do, but cannot.

Now when you consider the feelings of dread and terror which these demons expressed towards Jesus Christ, you must all be struck with the resemblance between them and the feelings which his presence excites in the hearts of unregenerate sinners. Unregenerate sinners are declared to be the children of the devil; and here we see how they wear their father's likeness. The language of every unrenewed heart, when Christ approaches, is, "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high; we beseech thee that thou torment us not." They expect nothing but torment from Christ. It does not enter into the feelings of their hearts that Christ has come to bless and to save them. No; they expect that he will torment them by reminding them of their past sins, by requiring them to give up their guilty indulgences, by causing them to see the awful holiness and inflexible justice of God, by rousing up their slumbering consciences, and exciting in them the fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. Is not this, my fellow-sinners, the case with you? Can you look upon yourselves without seeing the moral resemblance between you and the demon powers who besought Christ that he

would not torment them? And will you, I ask, my brothers, be content that this likeness should remain? Ought not the perception of it to make you shudder at yourselves? If you wear the likeness of the fallen spirits, will you not have to share their doom, to dwell in the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels? And shall this be so? Oh! strive to be reconciled to Christ by faith. Sinners! Jesus Christ, the Son of God most high, has not come to torment you; but he has come to bless every one of you, in turning you away from your iniquities, in bestowing upon you the forgiveness of sins, the new heart, and the new spirit, and the inheritance among all them that are sanctified. Believe the assurance, and then, instead of trembling, your heart shall rejoice in God your Saviour.

After the first expression of fear on the part of the demons, we are told that Jesus asked the question, "What is thy name?" and received the answer, "Legion;" because, we are told, many devils had entered into him. Christ's object in asking this question was, that he might elicit from the demons an acknowledgment of the number and the force of the enemy whom he was about to cast out and to vanquish, that thus he might manifest his own glorious power. We live in an unbelieving age; an age in which the devil has established his dominion by persuading men not to believe in his existence and agency; an age which has lost the perception of the spiritual, and fallen under the dominion of the sensuous and phenomenal. Such an age feels no interest in the exhibition of Christ's glorious and resistless might over the powers and legions of hell. There is a moral reason why God has permitted or compelled the demons to speak and to manifest themselves. Our trust and confidence in Christ will decline in the degree in which we lose our faith in demon power and demon agency. Men who do not recognise the influence of the demons in the world, who see nothing but visible secondary causes, will live without Christ. But when we return to the old faith of the Christian world, the faith of the apostles and prophets; when we feel that we are compassed about with the powers of darkness; that we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, with the rulers of the

darkness of this world, with spiritual wickedness in high places; then we shall turn with profoundest interest to the page of God's word, which reveals a whole legion of fallen spirits as trembling in the presence and vanquished by the word of an almighty Saviour. Then we shall undertake all things in dependence upon Christ's almightiness; then we shall lie down and take our sleep in the arms of Jesus, feeling that he, and he alone, maketh us to dwell in safety; and that we can face the terrors of this world, where Satan's seat is, only in the strength of him who has overcome the world, and who is able to tread down Satan under our feet, and to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

The next incident in the narrative, namely, the request of the demons to be permitted to enter into the swine, is what men of the world listen to with scornful incredulity, and about which they make themselves merry. They have just as much reason for doing so as the eastern prince I mentioned had for listening with these feelings to the Englishman who told him that in his country, at certain seasons of the year, the water in the rivers became hard as the solid rock. Apart from Divine revelation we know nothing about the state of fallen spirits, or the conditions under which they are permitted to work mischief in this world, or are consigned to the prison-house of hell. God's revelation assures us, that the demons made the request, "Suffer us to enter into the swine." If we might draw a general conclusion from this one incident, we should say that the condition on which some fallen spirits are permitted to remain and do mischief in this world is, that they should have possession of some living being, either man or beast; and that when they lose their hold upon the living creation they are locked up in the prison house of hell. To some persons it seems a thing in itself incredible that spiritual beings should have power over the animal creation; but there is no reason for supposing it to be impossible. And if the nature of fallen spirits be supremely malignant, we can easily understand why they should take delight in torturing the animal creation. The language of the apostle Paul in the epistle to the Romans, as well as God's sentence upon fallen man, implies that the curse of

sin and of demon power has fallen upon the whole creation, both animate and inanimate: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake;' "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."

The permission which the demons asked for was granted, and the consequence was, that the whole herd ran violently down a steep place, and perished in the sea. Christ permitted them to do what they desired, and their own act was the means of frustrating their purpose. The destruction of the swine of which they had taken possession was the means of restoring them to the dark abyss which they feared to be cast into. God always has made, and always will make, the devil's own act the means of frustrating his purpose and overturning his dominion. His great act, the crucifixion of Jesus, has given a deadly blow to his dominion on earth, from which he will never recover. And all the powers of hell shall find at last that their inroad upon this earth has been the means of increasing their own everlasting misery and confusion; God shall feed them with the fruit of their doings, and fill their bellies with their own devices.

Some persons have objected to this miracle, that in it Christ was guilty of a robbery and a wrong upon the owners of the herd of swine. The answer to this cavil, if, indeed, it be worth an answer, is, That Christ has a right to do as he likes with his own; he is the lord of the whole earth; all the beasts of the forest are his, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. Man holds property in stewardship from Christ, and not in absolute proprietorship. If God in his providence sends a murrain or a flood, and destroys thousands of sheep and oxen, no one will say that he is guilty of a wrong; he is only destroying what is his own; and if, while doing this, God were to make himself visible in a human form, this would make no difference in his right to do it; for he is still God, the universal Lord, whether clothed with the form of man or dwelling amidst the splendours of the uncreated light. And this is all that was done in the case before us. God chastises men often for their sins by the destruction of their property. If these Gadarenes were Jews, it was a sin in them to keep swine-a violation of their law; and Christ, the Lord and head of their

dispensation, had the same right to punish them as the merchants and bankers in the temple, who made his Father's house a den of thieves.

Let us now look at the effect produced upon the man upon whom this great miracle was wrought. We are told that he was seen sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." This language describes the cure of what we should call ordinary madness. He was in his right mind now; he had been out of his mind before. His sitting at the feet of Jesus implied, that Christ followed up the miracle by communicating some instruction, to which he listened with the reverence and docility which would naturally be awakened by the stupendous deliverance of which he had been the subject.

But the man besought Jesus that he might be with him. Some persons have supposed that he feared lest the demons should come and take possession of him again, and that he wished to be near Christ, that he might be defended from their power by the almighty Being who had already delivered him. But I do not think this was his motive. During the time in which he had been sitting at the feet of Jesus he must at least have learned that Christ professed to be a great teacher sent from God, and that his apostles, by whom he was surrounded, were to be his missionaries and witnesses to the world; he wished, therefore, to show his gratitude to Jesus by becoming one of these missionaries. That this was his motive I think is clear from Christ's answer to him. Jesus sent him away, saying, “Go home to thy house, and show how great things God hath done unto thee;" for God had done it-according to Christ's own declaration, "The Father which dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." This was a most suitable answer if the man was wishing to become an apostle; but if he had only desired to be defended from the demons, it would have been more appropriate for Christ to have said, They dare not come back now that I have cast them out; or, I am able to protect thee at a distance as well as when

near.

But Jesus did not exclude this man from the ministry of the word, as some have supposed. He sent him to preach to his family, his friends, and fellow

citizens. Not only because, being in himself such a wonderful monument of the Redeemer's power, he was most likely to be useful amongst those who had known his former awful condition, but also because Christ would not leave himself without a witness amongst these Gadarenes. They prayed him to depart out of their coasts; but he resolved that there should be one amongst them who should bear witness to his glorious power, and direct them to him as the Messiah and the Saviour of the world. The man gladly accepted the commission, and went his way, and "published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done for him." It is always so with the man who has felt the blessed power of Christ he longs to tell

"to all around

What a dear Saviour he has found."

There is one more point in the narrative demanding our attention before we conclude, and that is, the conduct of the people who had lost their swine. They prayed him that he would depart out of their coasts. The feeling of these people was widely different from that of Peter, when, after the miraculous draught of fishes, he fell down before Jesus, and cried, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Peter's was the feeling of unworthiness; the feeling in the hearts of the Gadarenes was that of selfish worldliness; they were afraid they would lose more swine if Jesus stayed with them. We should have thought that any men who had the hearts of men in them would have rejoiced in the deliverance of an immortal fellow-creature from the thraldom of the devil, even though the deliverance had been attended with some loss of worldly property; and that they would have been proud to welcome the great Saviour and Deliverer to their city. But, no; they prayed him to depart out of their coasts; they thought more of a herd of swine than of an immortal man or

of their own souls; they were more afraid of worldly loss than of the power of the devil. It is very shocking to see this detestable feature of human nature thus broadly revealed. We feel, while contemplating it, that the Gadarenes themselves were little better than swine, and that they deserved to be abandoned to the power of the demons. But, oh! what is more common? The slaveholders of America will not suffer Christ to come near their slaves, for fear he should raise them from brutes into men, and so make them less profitable. They have made it death to teach a slave to read. But we need not go so far from home to find an illustration. There are Gadarenes enough here amongst

us.

How many are there who exclude Christ and Christian principle from their own conduct, and from the conduct of all who are in their employment; who will not employ a Christian man for fear his principles should interfere with their profits? Oh! my brethren, there are thousands and thousands of men who, if they saw that Christ's influence would act injuriously upon their trades and their profits as clearly as the Gadarenes saw what had, through him, happened to their swine, would, like them, instantly beseech him to depart out of their coasts. Let us examine ourselves, my brethren; let us ask the solemn question, Is worldly profit and pleasure dearer to me than Christ and salvation? And if it is, we may be sure that we are Gadarenes in our hearts; and, if we remain so, he will, sooner or later, take us at our word, and depart from us, and leave us to the lust of our own hearts, until we shall be filled with our own devices; when we shall seek him, but shall not find him; we may stretch forth our hands, but he will hide his eyes; we may make many prayers, but he will not hear, for that we hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord.

ers.

To criminate and re-criminate never yet was the road to reconciliation. Do you make trial of the soft answer which turneth away wrath?

It takes two to make a quarrel; if you determine not to be one, quarrelling will