“Yes, Rabbi, they have been bound with chains and fetters. There was one that I saw. He plucked the fetters from him as a child might break a chain of field flowers. Then he ran foaming into the wilderness, and no man dare pass by that way now....” “Have men tried only this way to tame him?” Jesus asked. “What other way is there, Rabbi?” asked the man. “There is God’s way,” said Jesus. “Come, let us try it.” As Jesus spoke, “His gaze went from man to man,” the writer continues, “and then his eyes fell upon me. It was as if a power passed from him to me, and immediately something inside me answered, ‘Lead, and I follow.’” The narrative proceeds to describe the encounter with the demoniac man whose name was “Legion.” “He ran toward us, shrieking and bounding in the air. He had two sharp stones in his hand, and as he leaped he cut his flesh with them and the blood ran down his naked limbs. The men behind us scattered and fled down the hillside; but Jesus stood still and waited.” The effect of the calm, undisturbed, unfrightened presence of Jesus was astonishing. It was as though a new force suddenly came into operation. The jagged stones were thrown from his hands, for he recognized at once in Jesus a friendly presence and a helper with an understanding heart. His fear and terror left the demoniac man and he became quiet, composed and like a normal person. Meantime some of the men who ran away in fear, when the madman appeared, frightened a herd of swine feeding near by, and in their uncontrolled terror they rushed wildly toward the headland of the lake and pitched over the top into the water where they were drowned. “Fear is a foul spirit,” said Jesus, and it seemed plain and obvious that the ungoverned fear which played such havoc with the man had taken possession also of the misguided swine. It was the same “demon,” fear. A little later in the day when the companions of Jesus found him they saw the man who had called himself “Legion” sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind—a quieted and restored person. We now know that this disease, called “possession,” which appears so often in the New Testament accounts, is a very common present-day trouble. The name and description given to it in the Bible make it often seem remote and unfamiliar to us, but it is, in fact, as prevalent in the world to-day as it was in the first century. It is an extreme form of hysteria, a disorganization of normal functions, often causing delusions, loss of memory, the performance of automatic actions, and sometimes resulting in double, or multiple, personality, a condition in which a foreign self seems to usurp the control of the body and make it do many strange and unwilled things. This disease is known in very many cases to be produced by frights, fear, or terror, sometimes fears long hidden away and more or less suppressed.