Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/142

134. Howbeit, living in Gadara, which is a Greek city, he had suffered himself to become defiled, and had rejected the Law and the Worship, and had eaten swine's flesh. But it came to pass that on a certain day, even at the hour of prayer, when he thought on these things, a darkness fell upon his soul, and he saw sights of demons; and sometimes also he saw the sun as though it were red as blood; and he loathed his food as it had been poison. And this continued for the space of six months. But at the end of the six months, on a certain Sabbath, as he stood in the streets of Gadara, so it was that there came a cohort, which is the tenth part of a Roman legion, marching through the town. And he turned and cursed them in the name of the Lord; and lo, as the curse went forth from his mouth, the devils entered into him in the shape of a legion of swine; and they possessed him even to the day when Jesus healed him. All this I heard from the demoniac himself.

When Jesus had worked this miracle, we all rejoiced greatly; for we thought that whoso could do so mighty a work, to him all things were possible; and we desired Jesus to go back to the other side of the lake, and there to work miracles that he might convince the Pharisees. But we marvelled that Jesus set so little store on his mighty works, insomuch that he even seemed oftentimes unwilling to work them. Many also he wrought in private; and many he would fain have kept secret, but he could not. Now when I asked Nathaniel (for he was as it were an interpreter unto me to explain such sayings of Jesus as were hard to understand) for what cause Jesus lightly esteemed his own miracles, he asked me whether I had not noted how the common folk resorted to Jesus as a mere worker of wonders, so that sometimes they even interrupted his discourse, being desirous that Jesus should cease to teach