The same day on which the above transactions took place, Jesus left the city of Capernaum, and repaired to a secluded spot upon the shores of the lake. As usual, an immense concourse followed him. Here, addressing listening thousands, he resumed his preaching, standing upon a boat, while the multitude thronged the shore. It was on this occasion that he introduced the beautiful parable of the sower. At the close, his disciples inquired why he addressed the people in parables. His reply was, that he did so, because that, by so speaking, honest inquirers for the truth could easily receive it, and be benefited by it; while cavillers, who hated the truth, and were seeking only for opportunities to revile, had also an opportunity presented to them to develop their own wicked natures. He then introduced the parables of the wheat and the tares, of the grain of mustard-seed, of the leaven. Returning to the city, he entered a house with his twelve apostles, and there privately explained more fully to them the significance of the parables, and added three more,――the parable of the hidden treasure, of the one pearl, of the net. As the evening of this busy day approached, Jesus again sought solitude, and requested his disciples to take him in a boat across the lake to the eastern shore. The lake here was about six miles broad. Slowly moving over the calm waters, it was midnight ere they reached the middle of the lake. Suddenly a terrible tempest came sweeping down upon them from the snowy cliffs of Mount Hermon on the north. Jesus slept serenely amidst the surging waves, though the apparent danger was very great. His terrified companions awoke him, saying, rather petulantly, “Lord, save us! Carest thou not that we perish?” Jesus, as he looked around upon the darkness and the raging waves, rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was immediately a perfect calm. Then, turning to his disciples, he gently chided them for their unbelief. “Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?” Notwithstanding all they had witnessed before, the disciples were greatly impressed by this signal display of power, and said one to another, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” The eastern shore of the lake was a wild, rocky, cavernous district, which, in olden time, had been much used as catacombs for the dead. They had scarcely landed amidst the solitude of this inhospitable region when two demoniacs came rushing out of the tombs to meet him. Of one it is said, he was exceeding fierce, so that “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.”