Hold thy peace, and come out of him

Wednes­day. [II Cor. 6:11-16; Mark 1:23-28] The de­mon prais­ed the Sav­iour, but the Sav­iour said to him: Hold thy peace, and come out of him. De­mons nev­er say any­thing or do any­thing with a good pur­pose — they al­ways have some­thing evil in mind. So it was here. The Lord, not ex­pos­ing their crafty de­signs, de­cid­ed it with a word: hold thy peace and come out. He did not want to con­verse long with an evil spir­it. Here is a les­son for us. A per­son man­ages to do very lit­tle of some­thing good be­fore a de­mon sits near­by and be­gins to trum­pet in his ears: “You are this and that.” Do not lis­ten and do not en­ter in­to con­ver­sa­tion with this flat­terer, but im­me­di­ate­ly say point blank: “Hold thy peace and come out,” and erase his tracks with sighs and self-re­proach, then in­cense that place where he was with con­trite prayer. He wants to give rise to self-opin­ion and self es­teem, and to fan self-praise and vain­glo­ry from them — all of those thoughts and feel­ings are the spir­i­tu­al life the same as thieves in ev­ery­day life. Like thieves that en­ter a house to rob its goods, so these de­mons, tak­ing root in a soul, de­stroy all that is good in that soul and cast it a­way, so that noth­ing re­mains for the Lord to praise lat­er.