man, tortured by such awful presences, praying to the healer not to torment him! The prayer was compelled into this shape by the indwelling demons. They would have him pray for indulgence for them. But the Lord heard the deeper prayer, that is, the need and misery of the man, the horror that made him cry and cut himself with stones--and commanded the unclean spirit to come out of him. Thereupon, St Mark says, "he besought him much that he would not send them out of the country." Probably the country was one the condition of whose inhabitants afforded the demons unusual opportunities for their coveted pseudo-embodiment. St Luke says, "They besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep"--to such beings awful, chiefly because there they must be alone, afar from matter and all its forms. In such loneliness the good man would be filled with the eternal presence of the living God; but they would be aware only of their greedy, hungry selves--desires without objects. No. Here were swine. "Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them." Deprived of the abode they preferred, debarred from men, swine would serve their turn. But even the swine--animals created to look unclean, for a type to humanity of the very form and fashion of its greed--could not endure their presence. The man had cut himself with stones in his misery; the swine in theirs rushed into the waters of the lake and were drowned. The evil spirits, I presume, having no further leave, had to go to their deep after all. The destruction of the swine must not be regarded as miraculous. But there must have been a special reason in the character and condition of the people of Gadara for his allowing this destruction of their property. I suppose that although it worked vexation and dismay at first, it prepared the way for some after-reception of the gospel. Now, seeing him who had been a raving maniac, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and hearing what had come to the swine, they were filled with fear, and prayed the healer to depart from them.