With a little exercise of the imagination, you can easily visualize the remarkable scene described thus vividly by St. Mark. But in order to understand how such a condition could be possible it becomes necessary to know something about Galilee in the time of Jesus. Historians agree in telling us that ever since the days of Alexander the Great, all the vice and the wickedness of both the East and the West had literally poured into Palestine. The land of the chosen people had become corrupt, as had the chosen people themselves. Their bodies had become afflicted and their minds diseased through habits of wrong living and wrong thinking. Beggars were as common as the turns in the roadway; and nearly every beggar was distorted by some {256} terrible and loathsome disease. The insane, and those possessed of evil spirits, were almost without number. Their condition, too, was pitiable. In all the land that was blessed by God to become the home of His own people, there was no one to help the unfortunates. Instead of a land flowing with milk and honey, it had become a land poisoned with vice and corruption. [Sidenote: A mission of love.] It was into such a land, and amongst such a people, that the physically and spiritually perfect Jesus came to minister. Devoted to a mission of love. Jesus turned the strength of His own perfection and the power of His divine authority to the healing of the sick and afflicted, to the assuaging of the sufferings of the poor, and to the saving of the ignorant. It was a manifestation of divine power and compassion, without thought of reward or honor, for He always charged those to whom He ministered, "See that thou tell no man." We have neither time nor space to consider the miracles of Jesus in detail. Let us read only three. The first exhibits the power of Jesus over physical illness; the second, His power over nature and the elements; the third. His power over death itself. [Sidenote: The centurion's servant.] "When Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion, beseeching Him, and saying. Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be {257} healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, He marvelled, and said to them that followed. Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.... And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour." [Sidenote: Stilling the tempest.]