Mark 5:17 And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. In view of this narrative, which we have thus very briefly traced, I remark — 1. We are tempted to undervalue man just as much as these men were. The point of the narrative was that they were supposed to be civilized; that they believed themselves to be religious; that they beheld the miracle that Christ wrought upon this man; and that their ideas of the worth of a man were so low and so vulgar, that they were not in the slightest degree impressed with the man's restoration. There is no point where we need the application of the grace of God more continuously than in impressing us with a sense of the Divine value of men. We believe in the value of poets; of philosophers; of orators; of men that have something pleasing to our taste, dazzling to our intellect, and stimulating to our affections; of eminent men; of men of power, that produce impressions upon us. We believe in manhood that shows itself in attractive forms. But, for man, independent of circumstances, simply as a creature of God, as an heir of immortality, and as one that has all the future in him — a future illustrious as heaven or painful as hell — for man as man, how little feeling have we! We walk the streets with contempt for this one, and with loathing for that one. We despise the poor sinners — the children of vice and crime — that we see on every side of us. 2. There are thousands of men yet that are opposed to any reformation of morals that would conflict with the physical prosperity, or the supposed physical prosperity, of the community in which they dwell. Men are numerous, in every city or section of the country, who vote for their physical welfare against their spiritual. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. |
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