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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 2
The man whose reason was thus suddenly restored praised God
for his deliverance. The eye that had so lately glared with the fire of
insanity, now beamed with intelligence and overflowed with grateful
tears. The people were dumb with amazement. As soon as they
recovered speech they marveled one with another, saying, “What a
word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean
spirits, and they come out!”
It was not according to the will of God that this man should be
visited with so terrible an affliction as to be delivered wholly into the
hands of Satan. The secret source of his calamity, which had made
him a fearful spectacle to his friends and a burden to himself, was
in his own life. The pleasures of sin had fascinated him, the path of
dissipation had looked bright and tempting, he had thought to make life
a grand carnival. He did not dream of becoming a disgust and terror to
the world and the reproach of his family. He thought his time could
be spent in innocent folly; but once on the downward path, his feet
rapidly descended till he had broken the laws of health and morality.
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Intemperance and frivolity chained his senses, the fine qualities of his
mind were perverted, and Satan stepped in and took absolute control
of him.
Remorse came too late, and though he would then have sacrificed
wealth and pleasure to regain his lost manhood, he had become helpless
in the hands of the evil one. Satan had allured that young man with
many charming presentations; he had cloaked vice with a flowery
mantle that the victim might clasp it to his breast; but when his object
was once accomplished and the wretched man was in his power, the
fiend had become relentless in his cruelty, and terrible in his fierce
and angry visitations. So it is ever with those who succumb to evil;
the fascinating pleasure of their early career ends in the darkness of
despair, or the madness of a lost and ruined soul.
But he who conquered the arch-enemy in the wilderness, wrested
this writhing captive from the grasp of Satan. Jesus well knew that
although assuming another form, this demon was the same evil spirit
that had tempted him in the wilderness. Satan seeks by various devices
to gain his object. The same spirit that saw and recognized the Saviour,
and cried out to him, “Let us alone! What have we to do with thee?”
possessed the wicked Jews who rejected Christ and scorned his teach-