The story of the healing of this man, usually called the Gadarene demoniac, is told in the previous verses of the chapter.
1. There is some uncertainty regarding the locality. The place is given in the manuscripts in three different forms — country " of the Gadarenes," " of the Gergesenes," and " of the Gerasenes." Gadara was six miles from the Sea of Galilee, and therefore impossible. Gerasa was thirty miles away, and out of the question. Still, the probability is that we should accept the reading Gerasenes, and refer it, not to the city of Gerasa, but to an obscure place of the same name, close to the lake, which had been lost sight of. Gergesa may be a corrupted form of this name.
2. Before passing to the subject, notice that three requests, singularly contrasted with each other, are made to Christ in the course of this miracle of healing the Gadarene demoniac —
(1) the evil spirits ask to be permitted to go into the swine ;
(2) the men of the country, caring more for their swine than their Saviour, beg Him to take Himself away, and relieve them of His unwelcome presence ; (3) the demoniac beseeches Him to be allowed to stay beside Him. Two of the requests are granted ; one is refused. The one that was refused is the one that we might have expected to be granted.
X3S
136 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
For, ah ! who can express
How full of bonds and simpleness
Is God;
How narrow is He,
And how the wide, waste field of possibility
Is only trod
Straight to His homestead in the human heart;
Whose thoughts but live and move
Eound Man; who woos his will
To wedlock with His own, and does distil
To that drop's span
The attar of all rose-fields of all level*
The Vaeiety of Christ's Instructions
Three distinct instructions given by Christ to His followers are found in the Gospels.
1. Sometimes He charged them to say nothing whatever about what He had done. In the end of this very chapter we find the injunction laid emphatically upon those who knew that He had raised Jairus' daughter from the dead : " He charged them much that no man should know this."
There are four special cases of this injunction to silence, and they occur after the healing of four of the greatest of human ills — dumbness (Mark vii. 36), blindness (Matt. ix. 30), leprosy (Mark i. 44), and death (Mark v. 43); to which must be added the command laid on the unclean spirits (Mark iii. 12). And in two cases (Mark i. 44 ; Matt. ix. 30) a particularly strong word is used to express a stern, urgent, even impassioned request or command.
2. He charged this man to go home and tell his friends. The explanation of the difference between the one command and the other is to be found in the circumstances. In the previous cases silence was necessary for Christ's sake. In this case speech was necessary for the sake of the man himself. Moreover, the danger to the work of Christ in Decapolis was not as the danger would have been in Galilee.
* CoTentry Patmore.
ST. MARK 137
3. He commanded His disciples after the Eesurrection te go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature (Matt. xxviii. 19). In the early part of His ministry silence is en- joined that the work may not be hampered. But the work is saving souls, and the consideration for one soul makes an ex- ception in the case of the demoniac. At the end, when the work is accomplished, the demand for silence is revoked. The order now is that the good news should be made known in all the world, and it is laid as a charge on every one of His disciples.
IL
The Conflict between Duty and Desire.
The great lesson of the text is here. And it is that (1) desire is not always duty, but that (2) duty must come before desire, and that then (3) desire and duty will agree together. The demoniac, no longer a demoniac, but clothed and in his right mind, desired to be with Jesus ; but Jesus bade him go home and tell the story of his healing. He went, and found his great pleasure in telling the news, at which all men marvelled.
i. Desire.
The request of the man commands sympathy. Had I been such as he, each man seems to say, it is the very boon I should have craved. The brief period of time between the healing and the departure seemed far too short to utter the gratitude welling up in his heart. It may be that he was not free from the fear that if the Great Healer departed, the old evil, which man had tried in vain to master, would anew take possession of him. He must live among the Gadarenes, an object of their dull curiosity, and of their unslumbering suspicion. He must live among those who would always remember him as the man at whose healing their herds of swine were destroyed, and who would bear him a grudge they could not forget. And most of all, his life would be lonely, his unique experience would shut him out from the intimate sympathy of any other. Present with Christ, listening