At Capernaum
207
overflowed with grateful tears. The people were dumb with amaze-
ment. As soon as they recovered speech they exclaimed, one to another,
“What is this? a new teaching! with authority He commandeth even
the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.”
Mark 1:27
, R. V.
The secret cause of the affliction that had made this man a fearful
spectacle to his friends and a burden to himself was in his own life. He
had been fascinated by the pleasures of sin, and had thought to make
life a grand carnival. He did not dream of becoming a terror to the
world and the reproach of his family. He thought his time could be
spent in innocent folly. But once in the downward path, his feet rapidly
descended. Intemperance and frivolity perverted the noble attributes
of his nature, and Satan took absolute control of him.
Remorse came too late. When he would have sacrificed wealth
and pleasure to regain his lost manhood, he had become helpless in the
grasp of the evil one. He had placed himself on the enemy’s ground,
and Satan had taken possession of all his faculties. The tempter had
allured him with many charming presentations; but when once the
wretched man was in his power, the fiend became relentless in his
cruelty, and terrible in his angry visitations. So it will be with all who
yield to evil; the fascinating pleasure of their early career ends in the
darkness of despair or the madness of a ruined soul.
The same evil spirit that tempted Christ in the wilderness, and that
possessed the maniac of Capernaum, controlled the unbelieving Jews.
But with them he assumed an air of piety, seeking to deceive them as
to their motives in rejecting the Saviour. Their condition was more
hopeless than that of the demoniac, for they felt no need of Christ and
were therefore held fast under the power of Satan.
[257]
The period of Christ’s personal ministry among men was the time
of greatest activity for the forces of the kingdom of darkness. For
ages Satan with his evil angels had been seeking to control the bodies
and the souls of men, to bring upon them sin and suffering; then he
had charged all this misery upon God. Jesus was revealing to men
the character of God. He was breaking Satan’s power, and setting his
captives free. New life and love and power from heaven were moving
upon the hearts of men, and the prince of evil was aroused to contend
for the supremacy of his kingdom. Satan summoned all his forces, and
at every step contested the work of Christ.