WE now come to the consideration of the section in which the King is seen acting in power in every realm.

In the course of His Manifesto He had presented a great deal of life; but dreams are of no avail unless deeds follow. Men cannot live by merely gazing on a vision. The vision may arrest, may attract; but unless it can be translated into victory, it is of very little use to men. And so, now that the ethic was unfolded, the Manifesto uttered; now that the wondrous words had fallen upon the listening ears of His disciples, and of the crowds, the natural and inevitable question was: What can this Man accomplish? Is He equal to doing, as well as dreaming? Is it possible for Him to realize a victory, as well as project a vision?

In this paragraph we see that He began to answer that question by a series of simple and yet sublime manifestations of the fact that the Unfolder of the ethic, is also the Giver of dynamic; that He is not merely a Dreamer come to suggest better ways to men; but a Doer, equal to reaching them in the places of their need, and making them doers also.

In chapters eight and nine of this Gospel, we have nine manifestations of His power; and these arrange themselves naturally into three groups of three each. He gave three illustrations of power; and immediately afterwards we find the effect produced on the people by what they saw. Then three other illustrations of power, and again the effect produced. Finally, three further illustrations of power, and once again the effect produced. In looking at these two chapters let us be careful not to imagine that Jesus Christ presented Himself to the people, and asked them to observe what He was able to do. There was nothing theatrical in these manifestations of power; they were natural, necessary, and beautiful; but they have been so grouped that, looking back, we may see how, having taught in wondrous words, He now triumphed in equally wondrous works.

The first three illustrations were those of the cleansing of the leper, the healing of the centurion's servant, and the restoration of Peter's wife's mother. Immediately afterwards a man said to him: "Teacher, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest."

Then moving beyond the realm of the physical, He proved Himself Master of the elements, in the stilling of the storm; Master of the great world of spiritual forces, as He cast out the demons; Master of disease and its source of sin, as He cured the palsy and forgave sin. Immediately after these things we read, "They were, afraid, and glorified God."

Then we have the third group of three-the raising of the child of Jairus, the healing of the woman who touched Him; and the healing of the blind. Then we read, "The multitudes marvelled."

We have now to deal with the first of the three groups only; the leper, the centurion's servant, and Peter's wife's mother.

Let us first take a general survey of the passage. As Jesus commenced these deeds of His Kingship, we are arrested by the peculiarity of that commencement. Here is God's attested King; gathering first a small nucleus of loyal souls. He had enunciated the ethic of His Kingdom; now the moment had come in which He was about to accomplish something. He did not form a party, formulate a policy, or plan a campaign. There is nothing more remarkable in all His ministry than the fact that He never held consultations with men, or attempted to form a party in our sense of the word, or gave men a programme. He was not restricted by party, policy, or programme.

Glancing over the movement of these seventeen verses we notice, first, that the King began to deal with need at its lowest, in the physical realm; with leprosy, palsy, and fever. This King, in order to set up His Kingdom, did not stay on the summit of the mount; He went down to the depth of the leper's condition. The first call to the King was the call of the most needy man. We shall come to a higher plane presently, and find Him dealing with spiritual qualities and quantities; but the first exhibition of His power was given in the realm of the most conscious need.

We notice in the second place, as He commenced His work, that He acted in response to appeals, and voluntarily also. First there came the cry of a leper, separated from the crowd, and yet in the vicinity of the crowd, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean"-it was a cry of need and He responded to it. In the second place, it was the cry of a man, not for himself, but for another, for his servant-"My servant lieth in the house, sick of the palsy." And Jesus said, "I will come and heal him." In the third place, His action was in response to the appeal of friends (see Luk 4:38). In the first case He was yet on the mountain; in the second He had entered the city; in the third He had entered into the narrowest circle the home of Peter.

Then notice, He commenced His work with the unfit in more senses than one. If we had been with Him, and had been Hebrews, as His disciples were, we should have been greatly startled. First, He touched a leper, an outcast, whom no man must dare to touch. Secondly, He healed the servant of a Roman, who was outside the covenant of Israel, and with whom there could properly be no communication. Thirdly, He touched a woman, who, according to Jewish ideas, did not count. He began with the unfit persons for whom there was no provision in the economy of the nation. A great many people have been sorely troubled about this touching of the leper, saying that in doing so He broke the law. But He was not as other men. On another occasion they said, "This Man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." They meant to say; Pollution is mightier than purity; though He be pure, contact with sinners will produce pollution in Himself. But He was such that He could be a friend of sinners, and suffer no contamination by contact, but rather surcharge them with His purity. We dare not become friends of sinners, save in the power of His redeeming life, or their pollution will be communicated to us. When He touched them, He imparted His purity to them, and the proportion in which Christ actually possesses us and dwells in us, is the proportion in which we can become the friends of sinners. If we touch a leper, we catch the leprosy because our every fibre is weakened through the agency of sin; but the very material life of the Son of God was absolutely strong, and perfect, and pure, and when He touched a man He took no contamination, for there was nothing in Him upon which leprosy could fasten; but rather He communicated the strength and virtue and purity of His Manhood to the leper, and healed him. So also He answered a Roman's prayer; and thus overstepped all narrow and provincial bounds; and the cool, healing hand of the Master touched the hand of a woman, and the fever left her.

At the end of this section we read, "And when even was come, they brought unto Him many possessed with demons; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were sick." That reads so easily and seems so simple, but let us continue our reading"-That it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases."

Here we need to pause for a moment. When He healed with a word, with a touch, what did He? "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases." It is a very superficial exposition which makes it appear that the King, as He came to touch and heal, took into His own heart, sympathetically only, the feeling of the pain and the weakness. This action of healing was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, and we cannot interpret this working of the power of the King save in the light of that prophecy. There is a growing revelation through the teaching of Isaiah until we come to the culminating glory of the great Servant of God suffering to save, and in that sense the fifty-third chapter is the very heart of the prophecy. Here we see that word being fulfilled; " He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him." Briefly, it is the chapter of atonement, of vicarious suffering; the chapter in which we see the King dealing, not with the superficial externality of things; but getting down until He touched the deep underlying reason of all suffering and evil in the moral and material realm alike. In order to deal with these He took hold of sin itself; and when He healed the leper, the centurion's servant, Peter's wife's mother, with a word and a touch; and the multitude, halted for a moment with surprise, brought unto Him many possessed with demons, He perfectly understood that all the disability He corrected was the outcome of man's sin; that at the back of physical leprosy lay sin, not necessarily in the actual leper, but in the past of the race. When He dealt first with physical need, He knew that His right to work these miracles was the right of the coming Cross in which He should gather into His very heart the sin that lay at the back of all these things. In the Cross was the right by which He distributed His virtues to the impure, and gave of His strength to the sick. Thus the King revealed the fact that His power in dealing with disability was based upon His passion. We shall see this yet more clearly when we come to another group ; He said to the sick of the palsy, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven;" and when men criticized Him, He said, "Which is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say, Arise, and walk?" He acted as knowing that physical disability and moral malady are linked, and whenever He healed disease it was in the right of His coming Passion, in which He would deal not merely with these manifestations, but with the root of evil from which they sprang. And so it was in the power of the Cross, ante-dating the historic accomplishment of a Divine purpose, that He healed the leper, and the servant, and the woman sick of the fever.

All this does not mean that immediate physical healing is secured to us in the Atonement. This is not so, any more than immunity from natural dying is immediately secured. Ultimately freedom from disease and triumph over death are ours through the Cross, but for the period of probation sickness is permitted, always with some value in the Divine purpose, even though at the moment we may not know what that value is.

Notice one other thing about these actions of the King. Not only did He accomplish at cost, He restored to the natural. This is a day in which we are spending a very great deal of time discussing the possibility of the miraculous. As men get to see more clearly, they will understand that a miracle is not a setting aside of law, but that it is rather an operation in a realm of law not yet discovered by men living on a lower plane. We are constantly discovering laws unknown to our fathers, and applying them. Every miracle Jesus wrought, He wrought, not to prove His Deity, not essentially in the power of His Deity, but in the power of a perfectly poised humanity through which God could work. These miracles of Jesus, so far from being violations of law, were restorations of men to the life according to law. Leprosy is unlawful; cleansing is lawful. Fever is due to violation of law; and this Man by a touch restored to law. The King came to restore a lost order.

Finally, as we survey this first of the three groups, we see that the one thing the King was doing was that of drawing attention to Himself. If we said that of any other man, it would be to utter his condemnation; when we say it of Him, we are all conscious of the eminent fitness of the action. This Man, meekest of the meek, proceeded from beginning to end along a line that demanded that men should attend to Him, listen to Him, obey Him. The King Who had uttered words of wisdom that astonished men, now came to do such things that must of necessity make the people look at Him, listen to Him, decide concerning Him. In quiet, kingly attitude, He proceeded through all these miracles of healing in perfect naturalness. "If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean," and in a moment came the word of the King, "I will, be thou made clean." "Only say the word, and my servant shall be healed;" and the word was spoken, "Go thy way ; as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee." The touch of the King, and the woman was cured.

Now let us turn from general examination to a more particular one.

Mark how the leper came to Jesus. He came with a known need. "If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." If we are coming to the King, we must know what we want. All the prayers that storm heaven are brief. There is a place for the longer prayer. There is a place for the adoration and the pouring out of the heart; but it is when a man knows what he wants, that he takes hold of God. "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." It is hardly a prayer, it is a statement, an affirmation, a cry of need. Next, his attitude was submissive-he worshipped. His cry was an honest cry, "If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." Why question the willingness of Jesus? Because the man was not sure that Jesus would be willing, and he was honest enough to say so. If we look closely we see that this man had learned a lesson, that the will of the King is supreme; "If Thou wilt, Thou canst." He did not question His power. It is not that he questioned His willingness unkindly, but that he recognized that it must be as He willed. It is when a soul gets there that he makes contact with all the power of Jesus Christ. To state it boldly, the Master, Jesus Christ, could not possibly do other than answer this man as He did. This King had come to claim the surrender of the will, and the man yielded. "If Thou wilt." And glorious and Kingly, like the flashing of the sun illuminating the morning, came the answer, "I will, be thou made clean." When the man's will bent to the will of Christ, Christ's will touched the man's will, and through that contact there was communicated to him the power and virtue of the King.

Then He sent him away, telling him not to tell any one of this miracle, to keep silent about it. That is the first intimation that Christ's estimate of the physical is that it is secondary. He always prevented men talking about physical miracles because He did not deal with things-on-the-surface. In the fourteenth chapter of the Book of Leviticus you will find that when a man was healed of leprosy he had to offer sacrifice. Through all the Hebrew economy men were taught that this is the basis of man's approach to God. Clean or unclean, there must be the ceremonial law of sacrifice. Christ's was not accomplished, and until it should be this man must go back to Moses and offer the shadow of sacrifice. The healing that had come to him was at the cost of infinite sacrifice, of which all others were but shadows.

The next case is that of a man coming to Christ, not for himself, but for another; and the first fact to be noticed is, that he stated his need, and Jesus said, "I will come and heal him." When reading the New Testament nothing is more wonderful than the tremendous assumptions of Jesus. The man came to him in trouble. Christ did not say, I will come and see what I can do. He said, "I will come and heal him." There was perfect confidence in Himself. It was the quiet, but dignified voice of a great authority.

The centurion said, "Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof: but only say the word, and my servant shall be healed." Notice the centurion's faith, "Speak the word and my servant shall be healed." And then notice his philosophy of authority. "For I also am a man under authority, having under myself soldiers; and I say to this one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." The centurion was not putting himself into contrast with Jesus, but was saying, What is true of me is true of Thee; Thou art also under authority, and because Thou art under authority Thou art able to exercise authority. This is the true philosophy of government. And so, "when Jesus heard it, He marvelled." The word "marvelled" does not mean necessarily that He was surprised, but that He admired his faith, that it startled Him by comparison with the faith of other men. What was it in the faith of the centurion at which Jesus marvelled? Probably the intelligence of it.

We hear a good deal about simple faith. But here is a man whose faith is based upon a true philosophy of life. With the leper it was the consciousness of a great need in himself, a great might in the Master. But when the centurion came, Jesus marvelled at his faith and said, "Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." It was a moment of great joy for Jesus. But with the joy a great shadow came, for He saw the exclusion of the very children of the King, who, disobedient to the King, should be cast out.

In the case of the woman in a fever, the appeal was made by her friends. He touched her, and the fever left her, and she arose and ministered unto them. The Revised Version says, "She arose and ministered unto Him." He touched her, the fever left her, and she responded by becoming His servant.

Then we have that last brief account of the wonderful eventide. It is a great picture-the incapable and suffering gathered to Him, possessed of evil spirits, and all manner of diseases; and the King, by speaking a word, imparting health, and all in fulfillment of prophecy.

In conclusion; as to the King we learn from these first three movements, that the Dreamer is the Doer, that the Teacher is a Man of action, that the Unfolder of the great task is the Giver of a new dynamic; and these facts, first revealed in the physical, are for us to-day true supremely in the spiritual. If not, He has merely revealed a great ideal.

You are a leper and need cleansing; palsied and need healing; fever-stricken and need to feel the touch of* His coolness and His balm. Oh, blessed be God, the Teacher is the same, great in words; but to a poor struggling heart, greater yet in works. If there be something in your life, something of moral depravity, something of incapability, some evil desire that prevents your doing the thing you would, come to Him as the leper came, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst. . . ." Come as the centurion came, "Speak the word only;" He is close to you, and if you will only look into His face with all the pain of your incompetence, and sigh in trust, He will touch you, and break the power of cancelled sin, and set the prisoner free.

THIS section of the Gospel consists of a brief paragraph, revealing certain effects produced by the works already recorded; and of further illustrations of His power.

"Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave commandment to depart unto the other side." This decision on His part called forth the words which show the effect produced on the minds of some who had seen His works. One man said to Him, "Teacher, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest;" and another said, "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father." These were typical cases, and reveal what, in all probability, was going on in the minds of vast numbers of the people. The King's methods of dealing with these first impressions made by His words and by His works are clearly revealed.

Then follows the account of how the King crossed the sea in the boat with His disciples; and we have a new manifestation of His power operating in a new realm; a manifestation made, not to the multitude, but to His own, who were in the boat with Him. As to actual realization at the moment the whole Kingdom of God was in that boat the King and His subjects; and to that inner circle He revealed a new plane upon which He moved with the same quiet, Kingly authority, as that which they already had seen Him exercise upon the plane of physical disease.

Finally, we have the story of the demoniacs; and the King's power is seen exercised in yet another sphere. With quiet dignity and authority, free from all perturbation and feverishness, He approached that strange and mystic realm, of which men have ever been more or less conscious the spirit-world. This manifestation was to the whole company of people, and not merely to His own.

Let us consider first the effects immediately produced by the words already spoken, and the works already manifest.

We see the multitudes, and we see the action of Jesus because of the multitudes-a somewhat strange action as it appears at first-and then we have these two illustrations of the feelings of probably hundreds of people gathered round about Christ.

The multitudes were growing in number. He had gone up into the mountain, taking with Him a few disciples, and to them He had enunciated the ethic of His Kingdom. As He taught the disciples, the multitudes had climbed the mountain, had come nearer to Hun, and heard Him, and by the time the last sentence of that marvellous Manifesto had passed His lips, it is recorded that those outside the little group to whom He was primarily speaking, "were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as One having authority, and not as their scribes." When He was come down from the mountain these multitudes followed Him, and He entered into Capernaum.

As we have seen, at the beginning of His ministry, "He came and dwelt in Capernaum," in "Galilee of the Gentiles," which was despised because contaminated with Gentile thought and Gentile connection. He now came back into the same city, and the multitudes who had followed Him from the mountain were swelled in number by the city folk. They all knew of the leper cleansed on the way down the mountain; of the servant of the centurion healed from a distance; of the fever-stricken woman restored in the house of His disciple. Attracted first by His words, their interest was deepened by these things. Then, suddenly, as already noticed, when Jesus saw them, "He gave commandment to depart unto the other side."

This was a strange action, one which inevitably arrests our thought. He was attracted by the crowds; the crowds sought Him; and yet, over and over again, just as the crowds were gathered, just as the moment seemed ripe for proclaiming the Kingdom, asserting His claim, stirring up the populace, beginning the march, He withdrew Himself from them. But He never left them because He did not love them; He left them because He did love them. These people were impressed with material values only, and Jesus withdrew in order that, having fixed and centered attention upon Himself, He might presently return to them for deeper matters, and higher things.

If we study this ministry of Jesus Christ, whether in His propaganda as King, which is specifically brought before us in Matthew, or whether in any of the other phases, as taught in the other gospels, we find this constantly that our Lord discounted the value of His miracles. That is to say, He never appealed to men by miracle, save as a secondary method. The whole philosophy of this may best be expressed in His own words, when He said to Philip, "Believe Me ... or else" if you are not equal to that, if you cannot be persuaded by the supreme credential, by the final argument "believe Me for the very works' sake." But the "works' sake" is secondary. Jesus did not work miracles in order to convince men; and when men, impressed by works of wonder wrought in the material realm, wanted to see what other thing He could do, He took ship and left them, with a larger intention in His mind.

It was just as our Lord was leaving that the events transpired which constitute our two illustrations. A scribe came to Him and said, "Teacher, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest." And then a disciple said, "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father." But we will first take them together. When Luke told the same story, he introduced a third man, who said, "I will follow Thee, Lord; but first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at my house." Most people imagine that none of these men followed Christ. There is not a word to prove that they did not follow Him. We are not told the sequel, and we have as much right to think that they ultimately followed Him, as that they did not.

Let us look at this first man, the scribe. He was one of the literary men of his time. He had listened to Jesus in all probability, and had watched Him. Just as his interest was becoming deeper, he saw that Jesus was leaving the crowds, and was going towards the boat, and, pressing through the crowds, he said to Him, "Teacher, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest." We call this impulsiveness. Would that there were a great deal more impulsiveness of this kind in the world to-day 1 May. God give us a new baptism of emotion! Here was a man who laid bare his heart to Jesus Christ; and to whom, therefore, Jesus could lay bare His heart. This He did in the unveiling of His poverty. He looked at the man and said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." That was heart answering heart. When a man out of his heart said, I am going to follow Thee, Lord, the Lord told that man what He did not tell to every one-the secret of His poverty, the secret of His homelessness. Some one has written about the blessed poverty of Christ. There is no such thing as blessed poverty. Poverty was part of the curse He bore, the curse that rested upon humanity on account of sin. It was part of His sorrow, and He told this man of His sorrow of homelessness.

Yet this is not the deepest note. This scribe, impulsive, daring, had undoubtedly been moved by the physical miracles; and it seems to me that Jesus not merely told of His own personal poverty, but uttered a. great word revealing His ideal of life. He called Himself the Son of Man. It was Christ's favourite description of Himself; He seems to have loved it. It is on the lips of Jesus an illuminative word, standing for humanity as true to the ideal. It would seem as though Jesus looked at that scribe, captivated by His words, impressed by His works, and said to him in effect; For what are you coming after Me? Do not forget that the Son of Man is homeless in this world. The ideal Man in the midst of such conditions as I am in, and as you will be in, if you follow Me, will have no anchorage here. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man," the Master of the new order, the King of the new Kingdom, in the midst of present conditions, can have no home. Thus, to the man who bared the deepest thing in his heart, Christ revealed the cross. Not Christ's Cross for the man; that is not revealed here; but the man's cross, if he would come into the Kingdom and into power. To him Christ said, Everything must be lost. You must be homeless if you would be with Me. Every tie that binds you and hinders you and fetters you must be dropped. Men who are coming after Me wherever I go, must come to homelessness, must understand that there is no rest until the Kingdom is built; the Son of Man can only be homed in the very Bosom of God.

Then another man spoke to Him, and Luke tells us that it was in answer to something that Jesus said to him. Jesus said, "Follow Me," and the man replied, "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father." Notice that Matthew calls this man a disciple, so that when Jesus called him to "follow," it was not a call to discipleship, but to service, for Luke again introduces something which Matthew omits. Jesus said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the Kingdom of God."

What was the trouble in this man's case? There was in his heart a conflicting affection-that for his father. We have hardly caught the real value of this story; we have treated it as though this man wanted to attend a funeral, and asked time to do so. Dr. George Adam Smith tells of how he was one day trying hard to persuade a young man to go with him as a guide into a district not frequented by travellers. Healthy and robust he stood by his tent, a genuine Arab; and there, sitting in the doorway of the tent, was his father, of patriarchal appearance, but well and healthy. The intended journey would have occupied some months at least, and the young man at last, with peculiar courtesy, said, "Sir, suffer me first to bury my father," thus using the very words of the Bible story, and revealing its true meaning. There was no immediate prospect of the death of the father; but the son said, I cannot leave my father, a most admirable thing, a beautiful thing, examined by all the canons of human conduct; a noble decision on the part of the young Arab, and right, if anybody else called other than the King. But here at once we see the claim of Jesus. He was perpetually setting up these superlative claims for Himself. He had none of the humility of the human teacher. His claim was always the claim of an absolute supremacy. He never admitted that any other tie of affection could be allowed for a moment to interfere with the soul's loyalty to Himself, and He crystallized this fact into one burning sentence when He said, "He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." That is the principle He applied when He said, ''Leave the dead to bury their own dead."

So far, then, the King having given the first evidences of His power, two men spoke of following Him. To the man who bared his heart, Christ revealed the deepest fact, the necessity for the cross. To the man who had a tie of affection that hindered him, Christ gave rebuke in most stern words. Having thus dealt with these men, He entered into the boat and left the multitude.

The King's power was now exercised on other planes. It operated first in the sphere of the elements, which is peculiarly retained for God; and it operated in the spirit-world, of which man is conscious, and by which he is influenced, but which he never yet has been able to master.

It is a great comfort that even to-day God has kept some things absolutely in His own hands. The winds and the waves are under His command. The King now revealed Himself to that little inner circle of His disciples as Master there also. It was a revelation of Himself made to His own. They saw that day, perhaps as they had never done before, the composure of the King. He could sleep when the storm was sweeping. They were fishermen used to the sea. He was a landsman. .They who were used to the sea were perturbed, but He was fast asleep through it all. They saw His sympathy the moment they roused Him. Then they saw His authority. Standing on the side of the vessel, He looked out on those heaving waters, and said very literally, "Be muzzled." And, like dogs, hounds held by the leash, the waves cowered back, and the sea was calm. They saw His supremacy also, not merely as manifested in His power over wind and water, but in the strange thing He said to them. Before He rebuked the sea, He rebuked them, in the words, "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" by which He meant that men never ought to be afraid if they are with Him. This again was a superlative claim. We dare not say such a thing to our children, except under certain very restricted circumstances.

When they saw His power they said, "What manner of Man is this that even the winds and the sea obey Him?"

There is also a revelation here of these men. They were loyal; they went with Him; they sought His aid; but they did not rightly know His power. "Carest Thou not that we perish?" That is what they said when they woke Him. I do not believe it was the cry of personal fear so much as the revelation of their conviction that if that boat went down, all the Kingdom would perish. Sometimes it is better not to wake Jesus when we are troubled. There is a higher faith; a faith that waits for deliverance out of a storm; a faith that says, If He is here, it is all right; let the waves roll, let the waters beat

There is here also a revelation of the Kingdom. The perfect King and the imperfect subjects; and the King perfecting the subjects by process. They cannot bear the storm, they are afraid. Then He will hush the storm, and He will answer the prayer of imperfection in order that He may build upon it. Some day they will brave the storm, and will be content to abide it, trusting Him for peace under all circumstances.

When He came out of the boat on the other side, they had a new manifestation of His power. This was a manifestation both to disciples and to the multitudes, in which we touch for the first time in the progress of our study, the fact of demon possession. It is an unfortunate thing that in the English revision the word which should be demons is translated devils. The American revisers have made the distinction. Demon possession and devil possession are not identical. This is the story of two possessed by demons. As to who these demons were, all kinds of theories have been advanced. Probably they were fallen angels under the control of the arch-enemy of the race, the personal devil, and no doubt there is still a good deal of demon possession in the world. This is a terrible illustration of the power of a demon over a man, first obsessed, and then possessed by the spirit. First there was the temptation to give way to the evil spirit, and the struggle that followed; and then the bringing of the man into subjection by the demon, who obtained entire possession of him. Here were men so fierce that none could tame them; so fierce that men were afraid to pass by their way. In the presence of that awful fact of which men were conscious, but with which they could not deal, the Lord came. His authority was acknowledged by the demons. "What have we to do with Thee, Thou Son of God?" That authority He immediately exercised; and when the demons asked that they might pass out into the herd of swine, He uttered one word, "Go." Thus the King exercised His power beneficently; for the individual, by freeing him of possession; and for the community, by freeing them of their swine, for all traffic in swine was forbidden within the area of the Hebrew economy.

We have a strange ending to the chapter. "And behold, all the city came out to see Jesus; and when they saw Him, they besought Him that He would depart from their borders."

This is our King. The human limitations have passed away. His essential powers are abiding powers. There is no sphere in which He is unable to act. We listen to His teaching; it is superlative teaching. He came down from the mountain top, and the question arose, What can He do? His works gave the answer. In the physical plane He was Master; among the elements He was Master; and in that strange spirit-world, which encompasses us, and of which we know so little, He was Master also.

There is no limit to His power. Yes, there is limitation. His power is limited in us. We may send Him away, as did the Gadarenes. We may limit Him as did the disciples; by the very deliverance they procured, preventing Him working out a more marvellous manifestation. We may love father or mother more, as the man seemed to do when he came to Christ.

Let us rather say to Him, with the scribe, "Teacher, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest." And let us say it though He has shown us the cross, though we know it may mean homelessness in the deepest sense of the word; though we know it must mean sacrificial living, if we are to live for the saving of men.