Charles Spurgeon Commentary Mark 5:17

"And they began to beseech him to depart from their borders." — Mark 5:17 (ASV)

And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.

O dear friends, let none of us ever get into such a state of mind and heart as to pray Christ to go away from us! Yet we have known people act in that dreadful way; a person troubled in conscience has said, "I will never go and hear that preacher again; I cannot sleep at night after listening to him. I will never read such and such a book again, it disturbs me so that I cannot enjoy myself."

This is, in effect, to pray Christ to depart out of your coasts. What!

Is salvation worth so little that you have no care to possess it? Is Christ himself so small a blessing that you even tremble for fear that he should change your nature, and save you? I think there were more lunatics than one on that Gadarene shore; the people were all as mad at heart as that one poor man was mad in brain.