All this is a true symbol of our individual lives, as well as of the history of the Church.  Storms will come, and He may seem to be heedless.  He is ever awakened by our cry, which needs not to be pure faith in order to bring the answer, but may be strangely intertwined of faith and fear.  ‘The Lord will help ... and that right early,’ and the peace that He brings is peace indeed.  So it may be with us amid the struggles of life.  So may it be with us when the voyage on this storm-tossed sea of time is done!  ’They cry unto the Lord in their trouble.  He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.  Then are they glad because they be quiet; so He bringeth them unto their desired haven.’

THE PEACE-BRINGER IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD

’And when He was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. 29.  And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art Thou come hither to torment us before the time? 30.  And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. 31.  So the devils besought Him, saying, If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. 32.  And He said unto them, Go.  And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine:  and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters. 33.  And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils. 34.  And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus:  and when they saw Him, they besought Him that He would depart out of their coasts.’—­MATT. viii. 28-34.

Matthew keeps to chronological order in the first and second miracles of the second triplet, but probably His reason for bringing them together was rather similarity in their contents than proximity in their time.  For one cannot but feel that the stilling of the storm, which manifested Jesus as the Peace-bringer in the realm of the Natural, is fitly followed by the casting out of demons, which showed Him as the Lord of still wider and darker realms, and the Peace-bringer to spirits tortured and torn by a mysterious tyranny.  His meek power sways all creatures; His ‘word runneth very swiftly.’  Winds and seas and demons hearken and obey.  Cheap ridicule has been plentifully flung at this miracle, and some defenders of the Gospels have tried to explain it away, and have almost apologised for it, but, while it raises difficult problems in its details, the total effect of it is to present a sublime conception of Jesus and of His absolute, universal authority.  The conception is heightened in sublimity when the two adjacent miracles are contemplated in connection.