Mark 5:9

And he asked him, "What is your name?" And he said to him, "Legion is my name, for we are many." He inquires not as one ignorant of the name, but so that, once the plague that tormented the man had been publicly confessed, the …

(ubi sup.) Who dwelt in the tombs, because they delighted in dead works, that is, in sins; who were ever raging night and day, because whether in prosperity or in adversity, they were never free from the service of malignant spirits: again, by the foulness of their works, they lay as it were in the tombs, in their lofty pride, they wandered over the mountains, by words of most hardened infidelity, they as it were cut themselves with stones. But he said, My name is Legion, because the Gentile people were enslaved to divers idolatrous forms of worship. Again, that the unclean spirits going out from man enter into swine, which they cast headlong into the sea, implies that now that the people of the Gentiles are freed from the empire of demons, they who have not chosen to believe in Christ, work sacrilegious rites in hidden places.

(ubi sup.) But by the public declaration of the scourge which the madman suffered, the virtue of the Healer appears more gracious. And even the priests of our time, who know how to cast out devils by the grace of exorcism, are wont to say that the sufferers cannot be cured at all, unless they in confession openly declare, as far as they are able to know, what they have suffered from the unclean spirits in sight, in hearing, in taste, in touch, or any other sense of body or soul, whether awake or asleep. It goes on, And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.

Here again the demoniac is the people of the Gentiles, in a most hopeless case, bound neither by the law of nature, nor of God, nor by human fear. Or they are choked in hell without any touch of mercy by the rushing on of an early death; which evils many persons thus avoid, for by the scourging of the fool, the wise is made more prudent.

The Lord asks the demoniac not in order to know Himself, but so that others might know about the multitude of demons that had entered him. Since before their eyes stood one man, Christ shows how many enemies this wretched man was fighting against.

Military powers; a legion is a number of soldiers in arms. The devils war against God and his glory, Christ and his gospel, men and their holiness and happiness. They are such as we are to resist and wrestle against, Eph. vi.

And he asked him, what is thy name?....

I THINK the text suggests to us something about Satan, something about self and also something about sin and the Savior I. Without any preface, let us at once seek to find in the text SOMETHING ABOUT SATAN. Although an unclean spirit, Legion, like his master, Satan, is very apt to lie. There is no doubt that here, in the Presence of Christ, he spoke the truth when he said, "My name is Legion: for we are many."

And he asked him, What is thy name?--The object of this question was to extort an acknowledgment of the virulence of demoniacal power by which this victim was enthralled.

These verses describe one of those mysterious miracles which the Gospels frequently record — the casting out of a devil. Of all the cases of this kind in the New Testament, none is so fully described as this one. Of all the three evangelists who relate the history, none gives it so fully and minutely as Mark. We see, in the first place, in these verses, that the possession of a man's body by the devil, was a real and true thing in the time of our Lord's earthly ministry . It is a painful fact, that there are never lacking professing Christians who try to explain away our Lord's miracles. They endeavor to account for them by natural causes, and to show that they were not worked by any extraordinary power. Of all miracles, there are none which they assault so strenuously as the casting out of devils. They do not scruple to deny Satanic possession entirely. They tell us that it was nothing more than lunacy, or frenzy, or epilepsy, and that the idea of the devil inhabiting a man's body is absurd. The best and simplest answer to such skeptical objections, is a reference to the plain narratives of the Gospels, and especially to the one before us at this moment. The facts here detailed are utterly inexplicable, if we do not believe Satanic possession. It is notorious that lunacy, and frenzy, and epilepsy are not infectious complaints, and at any rate cannot be communicated to a herd of swine! And yet men ask us to believe, that as soon as this man was healed, two thousand swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, from a sudden impulse, without any apparent cause to account for their so doing! Such reasoning is the height of credulity. When men can satisfy themselves with such explanations, they are in a pitiable state of mind. Let us beware of a skeptical and incredulous spirit in all matters relating to the devil.

These verses describe one of those mysterious miracles which the Gospels frequently record — the casting out of a devil. Of all the cases of this kind in the New Testament, none is so fully described as this one. Of all the three evangelists who relate the history, none gives it so fully and minutely as Mark. We see, in the first place, in these verses, that the possession of a man's body by the devil, was a real and true thing in the time of our Lord's earthly ministry .

I THINK the text suggests to us something about Satan, something about self and also something about sin and the Savior I. Without any preface, let us at once seek to find in the text SOMETHING ABOUT SATAN. Although an unclean spirit, Legion, like his master, Satan, is very apt to lie. There is no doubt that here, in the Presence of Christ, he spoke the truth when he said, "My name is Legion: for we are many." So the first thought suggested by the name, "Legion," is that there are many demons against whom we have to be on the watch in this world. There is one great master power of evil who is called, "your adversary the devil," but there are also multitudes of demons under his control who are all, like himself, full of hatred to God and to goodness and bent upon doing as much harm as they can to the Kingdom of Christ among men. We do not know how numerous these evil spirits are, but there is reason to believe that there are very many of them, so that it will be no easy task to overcome them—and it is no wonder that there is so much evil in the world when there are so many evil spirits constantly seeking to lead men astray. The next idea connected with the name, "Legion," is that of organization, for a Roman legion was not merely a large band of soldiers, but it was a thoroughly organized band of several thousands of men who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Roman emperor and who yielded implicit obedience to the centurions and other officers who were placed in authority over them. In like manner we have reason to believe that the vast multitudes of evil spirits are not an undisciplined mob, but that they are organized and controlled even as they were when the devil and his angels fought against Michael and his angels. No doubt they are able to consult and conspire together, and to work unitedly for the attainment of some common end.