"It pays!!!" : This is the national apology for legalizing great sins / by Frank T. Bayley.

  • Bayley, Frank T.
Date:
[between 1800 and 1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: "It pays!!!" : This is the national apology for legalizing great sins / by Frank T. Bayley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and cutting himself with stones.” And no wonder. Wretched, hopeless, consciously lost; compelled to serve, aye to resemble more and more, a master whom he loathes and hates; catching glimpses from afar of a life of purity, of usefulness, of peace ; knowing that life was meant to be a blessing and a joy, yet con¬ sciously separated from such a life by an abyss im¬ passable — what wonder that he smote himself in un- restrainable rage ? Demoniacal possession is an awful mystery, indeed. But the moral meaning is plain enough. This picture is a photographic suggestion of what every man is in danger of becoming who gives place in his heart to sin. This wretch, enslaved, unclean, outcast, despairing, may well be a warning to every one of us. We turn with eager gladness to a second scene. He who had rebuked the winds and stilled the sea, who healed the sick and raised the dead, was master, also, of demons. With a brevity and simplicity char¬ acteristic of the Gospels, Mark says, ‘ Jesus said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.” And immediately the man was saved from all his unutter- able woe. He who was naked is clothed. He who wandered in restlessness sits at the feet of Jesus. He who was amenable to no human power, is in his right mind. He who was driven of the devil, asks now, in free and blessed choice, to follow Jesus. And now comes our text. The third scene in the story shows the gathering of the people ; and we hear them praying the great Deliverer that He would de¬ part out of their coasts. The intervening narrative explains the strange request. It had been a costly deliverance, after all. It had involved the destruction of a herd of swine; and the