Inconsistency, unkindly words and acts, disobedience to our known duty will prevent our light from shining. If Christ has illumined your wick, see that you trust him to find for you your stand, from which you may emit the clearest rays. You are lighted to shine!

The closest relationship to Jesus is not that of nature but of grace. To listen in your heart to God’s voice, to hear it in his Word and in Providence and then to do as it decrees, will bring you into the closest relationship with your Lord.

Be prepared for storms if you link your lives with

Christ. But they cannot hurt you. Men and demons will rage against you; but there is a limit to their power. Jesus rules the waves. “The sea is his and he made it.” If only you can include yourself and Christ in that pronoun we of v. 24 you ean never perish although there be as many demons against you as tiles on the house roofs. So Luther found it. See Iso. 54:17.

28. “Great Things” for One in Great Need.

Luke 8: 26-39. The victim. In referring to but one demoniac the evangelist would probably concentrate attention on the more prominent of the two mentioned by Matthew. There must have been some collusion between the elements of the storm and the cemons in this man. Everything seemed to oppose the Lord’s assertion of his right to be obeyed. If demons could possess a man with such power, what might not Christ do if we yielded ourselves absolutely to him! There must have been some secret yielding on this man’s part, or his heart had never become a garrison of demons. He mistook Christ’s identity, confusing it with that of the demons. Naked; vile; mighty to destroy! What a terrible combination !

His masters. The evil one dreads to be unclothed and would prefer to be in a pig than in the abyss—that word means “without bottom.” Once begin to fall, where will it end? The Jews had no right to keep swine, whatever price the Romans were prepared to pay, Lev. 11: 7. Christ left Gadara, but left a preacher there. We are not taken out of the world, but sent to witness to it and against it.