that part of these, at a former [period,] swerved from their allegiance to the "blessed and only potentate," on which account they lost their first estate; that of these, one of pre-eminent rank and dignity took the lead in the revolt; that under the name of Satan he continues to rule the rest, who are styled his angels; that having established an infernal empire, he has ever been engaged in a malignant and implacable opposition to the will of God; that, envious of the happiness of our first parents, under the disguise of a serpent he tempted the woman to violate the Divine prohibition, by eating the forbidden fruit, whence we derived a corrupt and mortal nature; that the same evil spirit who is styled "the god of this world," the "prince of the power of the air," perpetually exerts himself in seducing men to sin; that he succeeded in effacing the knowledge of God, and establishing idolatry throughout the world; that Jesus Christ was appointed by his divine Father to be the antagonist of Satan, and to "destroy his works ;" and that, before the close of time, his dominion will be established upon the ruin of that of Satan, and the world restored to happiness and to God. This, as it appears to me, is a fair outline of the doctrine of the New Testament on this mysterious subject. In a word, Christ and Satan are represented in the Scriptures as the heads of two opposite empires; the one the empire of light and holiness, the other of darkness and sin; the one embracing all the elements of moral good, the other all those of moral evil; while the whole human race are divided by their sway.

To a philosophical mind, not imbued with the light of revelation, such a view of the moral state of the world will, probably, appear strange and portentous: nothing is easier than to suggest plausible objections against it. It may be admitted that it is not such a representation as reason, left to itself, would have prompted us to anticipate. This is a circumstance, however, which, in judging of [such matters,] is entitled to little attention; whatever their previous improbability, they must be received or rejected according to the amount of evidence adduced for their support. Even in the affairs of ordinary life, our previous conceptions of improbability are found to afford no criterion of truth, much less can any reliance be placed on them in judging of the laws of a superior and supernatural economy.

In asserting the personality and agency of Satan, we are not, it should be remembered, proposing to our reader a speculation in philosophy; we are asserting a fact beyond the limits of its jurisdiction; a fact for which we profess to produce no other evidence besides the declarations of Scripture. If its testimony is not sufficient to decide the question, we are out at sea, nor is it possible to specify what doctrines we are warranted to receive on its authority; especially when we consider that to enlarge our knowledge of the invisible world would appear to be the proper business of a revelation, whose exclusive glory it is to bring "life and immortality to light." We have no controversy, at present, with those whose lax notions of inspiration imbolden them to reject the express testimony of an apostle. We assume, as granted, the truths of inspiration, so far, at least, that they

may be safely trusted in the annunciation of Christian doctrine; and all we shall attempt is, to establish that literal interpretation of their language on the subject under our present consideration, wherein we infer the personal existence and agency of Satan.

There is no necessary alliance between moral rectitude and intellectual elevation; nor need we go far in search of high intellectual vigour combined in the same individual with a portentous degree of pravity. In free and voluntary agents, we learn, from constant observation, that the greatest range and comprehension of intellect is no security against obliquity of will; nor is it at all certain that a pre-eminent degree of mental superiority may not, under certain circumstances, become itself a source of temptation. Be this as it may, the only order of rational creatures with which our experience has brought us acquainted have, we are certain, fallen from rectitude; and therefore, whatever other conclusion we may draw from that fact, it ought, on the principles of analogy, to facilitate our belief, on proper evidence, that a similar catastrophe has involved a distinct and superior order. Whatever difficulties may accompany [the question of] the origin of evil, and however incompetent we may be to conceive how the transition is effected from innocence to guilt, or how to reconcile its foresight and permission with divine rectitude and human freedom, as this is not the place where they [these difficulties] first occur, they are not entitled to be considered as objections against the doctrine which we are endeavouring to support. They exist exactly to the same extent in relation to the fall of man, of which we have experimental evidence. The doctrine which affirms the existence of evil spirits of a superior order, who have sunk themselves into perdition by disobeying their Maker, is perfectly analogous to the history of the only species of rational creatures with which we are acquainted; we find its counterpart in ourselves.

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There is one objection which has been frequently urged against the popular view of this subject, which it will be proper to notice before we proceed further in the discussion, lest the prejudice it may [excite] should impair the conviction which the evidence might otherwise produce. It has been said, that to ascribe to Satan such an interference in the moral concerns of the world as is implied in his incessantly tempting men to sin, is to suppose him omnipresent, a supposition repugnant to the nature of a finite being. It must be confessed, the Scriptures of the New Testament teach us to conceive of satanic agency as concurring in almost every act of deliberate sin: he is said to have filled the heart of Ananias; to have entered into Judas, "after he had taken the sop ;" and to be "the god of this world, who worketh mightily with the children of disobedience." To infer from thence, however, that any proper omnipresence is attributed to this apostate spirit betrays inattention to the obvious meaning of the inspired writers.

We are taught to conceive of Satan as the head of a spiritual empire of great extent, and comprehending within itself innumerable subordinate agents. The term Satan, in application to this subject, is invariably found in the singular number, implying that there is one designated by that appellation. His associates in the primeval rebellion are spoken of in the plural number, and are denominated his angels. Thus, the punishment reserved for them at the close of time is said to be "prepared for the devil and his angels." What their number may be it is in vain to conjecture; but when we reflect on the magnitude of the universe, and the extensive and complicated agency in which they are affirmed to be engaged, we shall probably be inclined to conjecture that it far exceeds that of the human race.

In describing the affairs of an empire it is the uniform custom of the historian to ascribe its achievements to one person, to the ruling mind under whose auspices they are performed, and by whose authority they are effected: as it is the will of the chief which, in absolute monarchies, gives unity to its operations and validity to its laws, and to whose glory or dishonour its good or ill fortune redound; as victories and defeats are ascribed to him who sustains the supreme power, without meaning for a moment to insinuate that they were the result of his individual agency. Thus, in relating the events of the last war, the ruler of France would be represented as conducting at once the most multifarious movements in the most remote parts of Europe, where nothing more was intended than that they were executed, directly or indirectly, by his order. He thus becomes identified with his empire, and spoken of as though he pervaded all its parts. Thus the sovereign of Great Britain, by fiction of speech perfectly understood, is represented as the direct object of every offence, and as present in every court of law, conscience,

Conceiving Satan, agreeable to the intimations of the word of God, to be the chief or head of a spiritual dominion, we easily account for the extent of the agency he is affirmed to exert, in tempting and seducing the human race; not by supposing him to be personally present wherever such an operation is carrying on, but by referring it to his auspices, and considering it as belonging to the history of his empire. As innumerable angels of light fight under the banners of the Redeemer, so, there is every reason to conclude, the devil also is assisted by an equally numerous host of his angels, composing those principalities and powers over which Jesus Christ triumphed, in the making "a show of them openly." On this principle, the objection we are considering falls entirely to the ground, and no more ubiquity or omnipresence is attributed to Satan by our system than to Alexander, Cæsar, or Tamerlane, whose power was felt, and their authority acknowledged, far beyond the limits of their personal presence.

The attentive reader of Scripture will not fail to remark, that the statement of the existence, the moral propensities, and the agency of Satan is extended nearly through the whole of the sacred volume,

from Genesis to the Revelations; that its writers, in their portraiture of our great adversary, employ the same images, and adhere to the same appellations throughout; that a complete identity of character is exhibited, marked with the same features of force, cruelty, malignity, and fraud. He is everywhere depicted as alike the enemy of God and man; who, having appeared as a serpent in the history of the fall, is recognised by St. Paul under the same character, in express allusion to that event, and afterward by St. John, in the Apocalypse, as "that old serpent the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."+

We have, therefore, just the same evidence of the real personality of Satan, as of the Holy Spirit, and exactly of the same kind; both are described by inspired persons; to both, volitions, purposes, and personal [characteristics] are ascribed. A uniformity of representation, an identity of character, distinguished respectively by the most opposite moral qualities, equally pervade the statements of Scripture as to each, to such a degree, that supposing the sacred writers to have designed to teach us the proper personality of Satan, it is not easy to conceive what other language they could have adopted. Notwithstanding, however, this accumulation of evidence, there are those who contend that all that is said on this subject is figurative, and that the devil, or Satan, is a mere prosopopœia, or personification; but what it is designed to personify they are not agreed; some affirming one thing and some another, according to the caprices of their fancy, or the exigences of their system. The solution most generally adopted by our modern refiners in revelation is, that Satan is a figure or personification of the principle of evil. For the benefit of the illiterate part of my audience it may be proper to remark, that a personification is a figure of rhetoric or of poetry, by which we ascribe sentiment, language, and action to things which, properly speaking, are utterly incapable of these: for example, Job, in a lofty strain of poetry, inquiring where is the place of wisdom,-" Man," saith he, "knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me, and the sea saith, It is not with me. Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears." this bold personification of the Depth, the Sea, Destruction, and Death, there is grandeur and imagination, but no obscurity; every one perceives, that in bestowing sentiment and language on these natural objects, the writer merely obeys the impulse of poetic enthusiasm. St. Paul, on several occasions, makes use of the same figure, and personifies the Law, the Flesh, and other things of an abstract nature, and no one mistakes his meaning. The legitimate use of this figure is, to give vivacity and animation to the exhibition of sentiment; every sober writer employs it sparingly and occasionally, and will rarely, if ever, have recourse to it, until he has elevated the imagination of his reader to a pitch which prepares him to sympathize with the enthusiasm it betrays. A personification never dropped, nor ever explained

In

2 Cor. xi. 3.

↑ Rev. xii. 9.

Job xxviii. 12-14, 22,

by the admixture of literal forms of expression in the same connexion, is an anomaly, or rather absurdity, of which there is no example in the writings of men of sense. Of all the figures of speech by which language is varied and enriched, the personification is perhaps the most perspicuous; nor is there an instance to be found in the whole range of composition, sacred or profane, in which it was so employed as to make it doubtful whether the writer intended to be understood in a literal or figurative sense. Let those who deny the existence of Satan adduce, if they are able, another example from any author whatever, ancient or modern, sacred or profane, in which this figure is employed in a manner so enigmatical and obscure, as to have been interpreted for ages in a literal sense. There is a personification spreading itself through the whole Bible, if we believe these men, [now] discovered for the first time, in writings which have been studied by thousands, possessed of the most acute and accomplished intellect, for eighteen hundred years, without one of them, during all these ages, suspecting that it existed. It is scarcely necessary to say, that a more untenable position was never advanced; nor one which, if they really believe that the sacred writers meant to be understood figuratively, evinces a more unpardonable inattention to the operations of thought, and the laws of composition. On any other subject but religion, such a style of criticism could not fail to expose its authors to merited derision.

But let us, for a moment, waive the other objections to this solution, and, admitting it to be possible, examine how far it will answer its purpose, by applying it to some of the principal passages which treat of the agency of Satan. It is necessary to forewarn my hearers, that the devil, or Satan, according to the notion of our opponents, is by no means a personification, universally, of one and the same thing. It is a Proteus that assumes so many shapes as almost to elude detection. Most commonly, it denotes the principle of moral evil; sometimes, however, it stands for the heathen magistrates, sometimes for the Jewish priests and scribes, and at others for the personal opponent of St. Paul at Corinth.

Let us first apply this solution to our Lord's temptation in the wilderness. "Then," says Matthew, "was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil."* This, our opponents tell us with great confidence, was a visionary scene, and their reason for it is curious enough. It is the form of the expression, "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness." Mark has it, "sendeth him into the wilderness." On this principle of interpretation, whatever is represented as performed by Christ under the agency of the Spirit must be understood as visionary; and when it is said "he entered in the power of the Spirit into Galilee," it must be understood as intending, not a real, but a fictitious or visionary removal. It is true that Ezekiel speaks of himself as brought to Jerusalem, in order to witness the abominations practised there, while it is evident his actual abode was