2 And when he was come out of [had landed from] the ship, immediately there met [encountered] him out of [from] the tombs a man with an unclean spirit [in a vicious spirit],

Dwelling Among the Tombs

The sanctity of the tomb, and the facility for concealment afforded by its construction, rendered cave-sepulchres favourite places of refuge. The catacombs at Rome are instances of this. The caves did not always serve exclusively for tombs, but were frequently altered and enlarged so as to adapt them to the purposes of residences for the living.

The habits of the Horite or cave-dwelling aborigines of the country, have not yet died out, and numerous instances are to be found in which caves, with a little rude addition of masonry in front, are still used as houses.

The village of Silwan, or Siloam, in the Kedron valley, is entirely composed of such structures. The gloomy recesses of a cave tomb also offer peculiar attractions for a gloomy and diseased mind, and we accordingly find that the demoniac (Mark 5:2)

"had his dwelling among the tombs."

The Christadelphian, June 1874

30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

He had been touched in a way that was not mechanical. He was conscious of healing virtue having passed out of him in response to a touch that was a touch of faith. He knew who had done it. It was not for information that he asked the question, but to call attention to one of the many "works" by which God was manifested and glorified in him.

He looked round on the crowd, and fixed his eyes on a woman. She cowered beneath his calm searching gaze. She knew what had happened, and she now felt that he knew, and that it was no use concealing the matter.

...In this we have an insight into what might be called the physical aspect of Christ's miracles, and of all miracles. Though above nature, they are operations of real power acting upon and in nature. They are not magical. There was material "virtue" in the person of Christ, with which his very clothes became charged, so that in the performance of works of healing,

"there went virtue out of him and healed them all" (Lu. vi. 19).

The same thing is observable in the case of Paul afterwards, who was filled with the same spirit:

"God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them" (Acts ix. 11, 12).

In the case of Peter also, we read that

"they brought forth the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might over-shadow some of them ... and they were healed every one" (Acts v. 15, 16).

This was the fulfilment of Christ's promise:

"The works that I do, ye (the apostles) shall do also, and greater works than these shall ye do because I go unto my Father" The works in both cases were done by the same power. "The power of the Lord was present to heal" (Lu. v. 17).

The power of the Lord is real power. It is the power out of which all things have been made... the working of the energy that produced nature, and can therefore control nature so absolutely that

"nothing is impossible with God." 

Nazareth Revisited Ch 20

33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.

She now felt in herself that she was cured, but she was in that state of mind that leads a person to feel they must most humbly apologise for having taken a great and unwarrantable liberty. Christ's object was realised in the eliciting from the woman this statement of the facts. He soon calmed her fears.

Nazareth Revisited Ch 20