The Curative Wisdom of Jesus

“Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him.” — Luke viii. 30.

I HAVE often thought this was a strange mode of treatment from the Great Physician. He asks the man, “What is thy name?” — what is the nature of your complaint? He knew perfectly well what it was — much better than the patient. Yet He asks the patient to fix his mind on his own symptoms! Was this well? Is it not reckoned good to divert the mind from its own calamities? Not always. There are times in which the contrary is desirable; and this was one of them. This man had been hardened by his calamity. He had received it in a bad spirit — an arrogant, rebellious, stony spirit. He had become so sullen that he had grown dead to feeling; he had lived among the tombs. What was the first thing to be done with such a man? To rouse him, to make him feel. Before all things the atmosphere of the tombs, the sense of deadness, must be cleared away. The nearest parallel to this narrative which I know in modern days will be found in these touching lines of Tennyson: —

Home they brought her warrior dead,
She nor swooned nor uttered sigh;

All her maidens round her said,
“She must weep or she must die.”

The resemblance lies in the deadening experience, the tomb-like experience, of each sufferer. Both have to be awakened to a sense of their own sorrow. Both have to be roused into the experience of their pain. Both require to get their sleep interrupted — to be pointed to the storm which is raging o’er the deck. When the heart is becoming petrified it is good for it to realise that the name of its woes is “Legion.”

Hast thou considered this wisdom of Jesus! There are moments when thy grief can only be cured by tears. When thy joy is brought home dead, often canst thou neither swoon nor sigh, neither sob nor moan. The clock of life stands still; it cannot point to the name of its own sorrow. Thou art among the tombs. Thou art dumb, deaf, blind to thy surroundings. Hast thou considered the wisdom of Jesus! Say not it was one of the poets made the discovery that such a one must weep or die! It was seen earlier than by any of thy poets; it was seen by the eye of Jesus. ‘’ What is the name of thy grief? “He cries to the benumbed heart; ‘’ what is the name of the dread power that wrestles with thee?” He wants thee to feel the might of the opposing legion. He wants to wake thy tears. He wants to break the reign of death in thy heart. He wants by a gush of waters to melt the ice upon the river. ‘’ What is the name of thy sorrow? Tell me the tale of thy grief! Speak it out; do not keep it in! If it be kept in, thou wilt be cramped and frozen. Tell it to somebody, nay, tell it to me! I know it already; but to speak will help thy heart. Pour forth the pent-up torrent into my bosom, and the flood will bring thee to Mount Ararat; thy tears will give thee rest! Thy grief has passed the sepulchre when it can say, ‘My name is Legion.’”