Mark 5:9

SATAN’S LEGIONS

‘And (Jesus) asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.’

Mark 5:9

I. Our spiritual dangers.—May we not say of our spiritual dangers, ‘Their name is Legion!’ Satan is constantly changing his form of attack. His servants and his tactics are ‘Legion’! What then? Are you going to give up the fight? Nay, surely not! Think of yourselves rather as soldiers in a weary desert warfare—such warfare as our British soldiers have been called upon to wage.

II. Never let us grow faint-hearted because our difficulties and our temptations are legion. The heart is attacked by hosts of evil. The fierce sun of temptation beats down upon it, it is in itself treacherous, and so you must watch it well. Our temptations are legion. Then we must not attempt to fight them all at once; that would be beating the air; but we must take them one by one. We must concentrate all our efforts upon one sin, our besetting one; and when in God’s great might we have conquered that, attack another. We must use all the help God gives us; especially must we seek fresh strength in our Communions. These must be regular, not fitful. We must kneel at the altar humbly, crying that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, and then rise up to go and fight again against a legion of foes, saying: ‘The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our Refuge.’

Rev. J. B. C. Murphy.

Illustration

‘It remains that the wise and the wary must set on their guard the simple and the innocent by the best possible device of keeping clear themselves from the snares of wickedness. That Holy Book we profess to take as our guide dwells at far greater length upon the necessity of avoiding sin than it does upon restoration after sin, yet the usual religious teaching is far more of repentance than of the defences in case of temptation. It is strange there are numbers enjoying safety in a state of salvation, who can see their servants, neighbours, relations, and others on the verge of eternal condemnation, and never say the right word at the right time to warn them. “If only I had known!” is the sad cry of the hopeless, while we might have changed it into, “But for you I should now have been—an unbeliever, a drunkard”—or what not.’