Jesus and the Possessed.
I. Jesus was met with two possessed with devils. There is an evil and a good which we know to be not of ourselves. There is a devil and there is an angel to every man's life, a tempter and a saviour, and he is now as he has yielded to the one or welcomed the other. Man must be passive before he can become positive, must take before he can give, and must have his becoming before he can have his being either for good or for bad. He is tempted before he sins, and is saved before he becomes virtuous. To be possessed of an unclean spirit is, in a very true sense, not to think aright. Evil spirits are not the idiosyncrasies of any one age, but have been common to all, not excepting our own. But evil is never seen save in the presence of the good, as darkness is not known except by its contrast with the light.
II. The two men were coming out of the tombs. These words suggest about as melancholy a picture as could be conceived. To be wrong in thought and feeling must at length lead to sorrow, and the sorrow may not be the transitory sorrow of the birth into the nobler life. The tombs were the homes of corruption, and the men lived among the tombs. The evil within man will ever seek that which is evil without him evil companions, evil excitements, and evil ways.
III. They were exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. They seem to have been possessed of extraordinary physical powers. To have some powers developed at the expense of the others ought never to be a thing to be longed for. Let an evil thought usurp the mind and exercise its power there for long, and the moral nature will be dwarfed, the intellectual will be robbed of its strength and of its graces, and the man will become the victim of the ungovernable force which he has fostered, and the slave of the debasing passions over which he once thought himself the master. Nature in him will be divided against itself, and Satan will cast out Satan. And this will be a sufficient reason for driving him to the tombs. These were not strong men, but monsters; their energy was wild and unreasonable.
J. O. Davies, Sunrise on the Soul,p. 71.
References: Matthew 8:28; Matthew 8:29. E. J. Hardy, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxi., p. 283; C. Girdlestone, A Course of Sermons,vol. i., p. 157.