how it is proper in one case, but improper in another; and that fasting, therefore, still more than the sabbath, was made for man, not man for fasting.

Another trait in the character of Jesus which we ought to follow, is his faithful and sublime indifference to the opposition of party, or of power, or of sect, in his discharge of the solemn and august mission which was committed to his hands. He tells the Pharisees that they were superstitious hypocrites, not fearing the wrath of that powerful ecclesiastical faction. On the other hand, he drives the moneychangers from their temple, not fearing the revenge of the money interest, the most powerful then, as it is not the least powerful now. He defies the wrath of the crafty Herod, telling him plainly of his craft; and he stands the most kingly one, when at the tribunal of Pilate, accused as a criminal before an earthly judge.

Let us in these respects imitate him; let us care little for prospects of honour, for preferment in the church, for increase of power, for any thing that man can give; but let us fearlessly and faithfully do the duty that devolves upon us. We may be honoured, we may be popular, we may be great, we may be rich, but we must be faithful as ambassadors for God, and servants to his people.

Yet, while we mark in the conduct of Jesus this sublime indifference to all contingent persecution, we must notice also the beautiful gentleness that shines through it. Look at him on one occasion, when he took their babes from the bosoms of their ragged mothers, and laid his hands upon them, and blessed them, and told these down-trodden ones that of such was the kingdom of heaven. Watch him again sympathizing with the sisters of Bethany, weeping with them, and bringing back their lost brother to their circle; or with the widow of Nain, restoring her only son to be her comfort and her support. Look at him again in his

last dread agony, when he committed his mother—a beautiful example to us-to the charge of John; and when he addressed the daughters of Jerusalem, "Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves."

Because he is our sacrifice, our precious sacrifice, our only trust, our only atonement, our only righteousness— we must not lose sight of him as our perfect example, our model, our precedent in every difficulty in which humanity can be placed. Whether I look at the silence, or at the speech of Jesus-at what he did, or at what he taught, or at what he suffered, or at what he was everywhere, I see a heart in which every sound of human joy and sorrow found an echo-I see one whose life throughout was a perfect model, and whose example is now left with us that we may follow in his steps. And following him as our sacrifice and our example upon earth, and our works following us as the evidence of what we have been to the world through which we have passed, it shall be written over our dead ashes, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord;" and to our glad souls it shall be said, "Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

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LECTURE XIII.

NATURE SITTING AT THE FEET OF JESUS.

And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion : for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand ;) and were choked in the sea. And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done. And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.-MARK v. 1–17.

WE learn, from the close of the previous chapter, that Jesus had just shown himself the Lord of the storms, the controller of the elements by which our world is assailed; and in the commencement of this chapter he shows himself in a light still more glorious-the Lord of the inner

storms by which the human mind is deranged. In the first case, he stills the sea, and there is a calm; in the second, he casts out the demon, and he that was possessed is sitting at his feet, clothed and in his right mind. Now in opening this miracle, which I have taken as the next in succession, a great difficulty has been felt by some, and expressed by not a few, as to there being or not being any real distinction between what are called demoniacal possessions in the New Testament, and mania, or maladies of various sorts and degrees of intensity. One fact alone seems to me almost conclusive on the subject, and it is this, that the diseases to which the body is incident, and demoniac possessions with which men have been afflicted, are stated by our Lord himself as distinct and separate things. Thus he says, for instance, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, iv. 24, "And his fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, [that is, one class of afflicted beings; then here is another class,] and those which were possessed with devils, [there is a second class,] and those which were lunatic;" there is a third class. Now this is not mere repetition of the same idea in varied phraseology, but it is the enumeration of three distinct classes of maladies; and, in these three distinct classes, possession with demons is stated to be a separate one. I might show the very same distinction in Matt. viii. 16, and also in Mark i. 33. I will refer only to the last, namely Mark i. 33: "And all the city was gathered together at the door; and he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, [that's one class,] and cast out many devils, and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him." Here again the distinction is made broad, clear, and decided between one class of disease, lunacy, or mania, or any other, and this specific class of suffering, called demoniacal possession.

In the next place, the language of our Lord on the occasion of his casting out devils, is such as to warrant us in concluding that it was an actual, or literal, demoniacal possession. When he approached the person that was possessed with a demon he said, "Hold thy peace;" and again he said, transferring his address from the man and addressing the demon, "Come out of him, thou unclean spirit." Now such an address to a mere physical disease would be a perfect playing upon words; and if we believe that Jesus ever spoke as never man spoke, we must conclude that there was a reality in this, and that he did not merely express himself in a figurative manner. But Strauss, and some of those who see myths, because they see through a mist, in every page of the word of God, and other infidels of the same Rationalistic school in Germany, say that Jesus accommodated his language to the popular and prevailing notions of the people among whom he sojourned. Were my estimate of Jesus the same as theirs, I could perhaps conceive such accommodation at least possible; but I believe that Jesus was not only the truth-speaker, but the truth itself: he came not to make a lie the basis of his mission, but to dislodge the lie, and destroy it by the application of truth. He came to put an end to all deceptions, to all hypocrisies, to all falsehoods, and to establish supreme in each man's heart, and ultimately in the world itself, the sovereignty of pure truth and of perfect righteousness. I admit that we sometimes apply a word that means something very different in its first application, to things to which it is in some degree now inapplicable; for instance, in the present day we call persons who are deranged, lunatics; we speak of a lunatic asylum; we use the term lunacy. The origin of these words was this: people supposed in the first instance that the moon exercised a specific power over certain individuals, and they