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evil spirit. Who has not heard of the good demon of Socrates, and of the evil genius of Brutus? While among the Jews and Christians so commonly are found the akatharta pneumata, or the ponera pneumata the unclean and malign spirits, that our translators have almost uniformly translated them devils.

ism, and Christianity were the ghosts of dead men.

But some of you may say, You have proposed to dismiss this work of definition too soon: for here is the horrible word ghost! Of what is that term the sign in your style? Well, we must explain ourselves.

Our Saxon forefathers, of whom we have no good reason to be asham

men, especially when separated from their bodies, ghosts. This, however, they did, not with the terrible associations which arise on our minds in every pronunciation of that startling term. Guest and ghost, with them, if not synonymes, were, at least, cousins-german. They regarded the body as the house, and therefore called the spirit the guest; for guest and ghost are two branches from the same root. William Tyndale, the martyr, of excellent memory, in his version of the New Testament, the prototype of that of king James, very judiciously makes the Holy Spirit of the Old Testament the Holy Ghost of the New; because, in his judgment, it was the promised guest of the Christian temple.

In the Christian scriptures we meet the term demon, in one form or ano-ed, were wont to call the spirits of other, seventy-five times, and in such circumstances as, with but one or two exceptions, constrain us to regard it as the representative of a wicked and unclean spirit. So general is this fact, that Beelzebub is dignified "The Prince of Demons"-unfortunately rendered devils. This frequency of immoral and wicked associations with the word daimoon may have induced our translators to give us so many devils in their authorized version. But this misapprehension is now universally admitted and regretted; for while the Bible teaches many demons, it nowhere intimates a plurality of Devils or Satans. There is but one Devil or Satan in the universe, whose legions of angels and demons give him a sort of omnipresence, by acting out his will in all their intercourse with mortals. This evil spirit, whose official titles are the Serpent, the Devil, and Satan, is always found in the singular number in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures; while demon is found in both numbers, indicating sometimes one, and sometimes a legion.

But that we may not be farther tedious in this dry work of definition, and that we may enter at once upon the subject with a zeal and spirit worthy of a topic which lays the axe at the root of the tree of modern Sadduceeism, Materialism, and Scepticism, we shall proceed at once to sum up the evidence in proof of the proposition which we shall state as the peculiar theme of this great literary adventure.-That proposition is—The demons of Paganism, Juda

Still it is difficult, I own, to hear the word ghost, or demon, without the recollection of the nursery tales and fictions of our irrational systems of early education. We suffer little children to hear so much of

Apparitions tall and ghastly,
That take their stand o'er some new-opened grave,
And, strange to tell, evanish at the crowing of the
cock,"

till they become not only in youth,
but often in riper years, the prey and
sport of idle fears and terrors, “which
scarce the firm philosopher can scorn."
Not only the grave-yard,

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Or thinks he hears, the sound of something purring

at his heels.

Full fast he flees, nor does he look behind him,
Till out of breath he o'ertake his fellows,
Who gather round and wonder at the tale!"

Parents are greatly at fault for
permitting such tales to disturb the
fancies of their infant offspring. The
love of the marvellous and of the
supernatural is so deeply planted in
human nature, that it needs but little
cultivation to make it fruitful in all
manner of fairy tales, of ghosts, and
spectres. But there is an opposite
extreme-the denial of spirits, angels,
demons, whether good or bad. Here,
too, media ibis tutissima―the middle
path the safer is. But to our pro-
position. We have, from a careful
survey of the term demon, concluded
that the demons of Paganism, Judaism,
and Christianity, were the ghosts of
dead men.
But we build not only
upon the definition of the term, nor
on its philological history; but upon
the following seven pillars:-

1. All the Pagan authors of note, whose works have survived the wreck of ages, affirm the opinion that demons were the spirits or ghosts of dead men. From Hesiod down to the more polished Celsus, their historians, poets, and philosophers occasionally express this opinion.

2. The Jewish historians, Josephus and Philo, also avow this conviction. Josephus says, "Demons are the spirits of wicked men, who enter into living men and destroy them, unless they are so happy as to meet with speedy relief." (De Bello Jud. cap. viii. 25; cap. vi. sec. 3.) Philo says, "The souls of dead men are called demons."

3. The Christian fathers, Justin Martyr, Ireneus, Origen, &c. depose to the same effect. Justin, when arguing for a future state, alleges, "Those who are seized and tormented by the souls of the dead, whom all call demons and madmen." (Jus. Apology, b. i. p. 65, par. 12, p. 54.) Lardner, after examining with the most laborious care the works of

these, and all the Fathers of the first two centuries, says, "The notion of demons, or the souls of dead men, having power over living men, was universally prevalent among the heathen of these times, and believed by many Christians." (Vol. viii. p. 368.)

4. The Evangelists and Apostles of Jesus Christ so understood the matter. As this is a very important, and of itself a sufficient pillar on which to rest our edifice, we shall be at more pains to illustrate and enforce it. We shall first state the philological law or canon of criticism, on the generality and truth of which all our dictionaries, grammars, and translations are formed. Every word not specially explained or defined in a particular sense, by any standard writer of any particular age and country, is to be taken and applied in the current or commonly received signification of that country and age in which the writer lived and wrote. If this canon of translation and of criticism be denied, then we affirm there is no value in dictionaries, nor in the acquisition of ancient languages in which any book may be written; sacred or profane: for they are all made upon the assumption of the truth of this law.

We have then only to ask first for the current signification of this term demon in Judea at the Christian era; and, in the second place, Did the inspired writers ever give any special definition of it? We have already found an answer to the first in the Greeks and Jews of the apostolic age -also in the preceding and subsequent ages.

We have heard Josephus, Philo, Lucian, Justin, and Lardner, from whose writings and affirmations we are expressly told what the universal acceptation of the term was in Judea and in those times; and in the second place, the Apostles and our Lord, as already said, use this word in various forms 75 times, and on no occasion gave any hint of a special,

private, or peculiar interpretation of it; which was not their method when they used a term either not generally understood, or understood in a special sense. Does any one ask the meaning of the word Messiah, prophet, priest, elder, deacon, presbytery, altar, sacrifice, sabbath, circumcision, &c.? We refer him to the current signification of these words among the Jews and Greeks of that age. Why, then, should any one except the term demon from the universal law? Are we not, therefore, sustained by the highest and most authoritative decision of that literary tribunal by whose rules and decrees all works sacred and profane are translated from a dead to a living tongue? We are, then, fully authorised to say the demons of the New Testament were spirits of dead men.

5. But as a distinct evidence of the historic kind, and rather as confirmatory of our views than of the authority of inspired authors, I adduce as a separate and independent witness a very explicit and decisive passage from the epistle to the Smyrneans, written by the celebrated Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostle John. He quotes the words of the Lord to Peter when Peter supposed he saw a spirit or a ghost. But he quotes him thus "Handle me and see me, for I am not a doimoon asomaton—a disembodied demon ;"-a spirit without a body. This places the matter above all doubt that with them of that day a demon and a ghost were equivalent terms.

6. But we also deduce an argument from the word angel. This word is of Bible origin, and confined to those countries in which that volume is found. It is not found in all the Greek poets, orators, or historians, so far as known to me. Of that rank of beings to whom Jews and Christians have applied this official title, the Pagan nations seem never to have had the first conception. It is, therefore, certain that they could not use the term demon as a substitute

interchangeable with the word angel -as indicative of an intermediate order of intelligent beings above men, and between them and the Divinity. They had neither the name nor the idea of an angel in their mythology. Philo, the Jew, has, indeed, said that amongst the Jews the word demon and the word angel were sometimes used interchangeably; and some have thence inferred lapsed angels were called demons. But this is not a

logical inference; for the Jews called the winds, the pestilence, the lightnings of heaven, &c. angels, as indicative of their agency in accomplishing the will of God. But in this sense demon is to angel as the species to the genus: we can call a demon an angel, but we cannot call an angel a demon-just as we can call every man an animal, but we cannot call every animal a man.

Others, indeed, have just as fancifully imagined that the old giants and heroes, said to have been the fruit of the intermarriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men before the flood, were the demons of all the world-Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Their most plausible argument is, that the word hero and the word love are the same; and that the love of the angels for the daughters of men was the reason that their gigantic offspring were called heroes. Whence the term was afterwards appropriated to persons of great courage as well as of great stature. This is sublimely ridiculous.

But to return to the word angel. It is a Bible term, and not being found in all classic, in all mythologic antiquity, could not enter into the Pagan ideas of a demon. Now that it is not so used in the Christian scriptures is evident, for the following reasons:

1st. Angels were never said to enter into any one.

2nd. Angels have no affection for bodies of any sort, either as habitations or vehicles of action.

1st. Demons have entered into human bodies and into the bodies of inferior creatures.

2nd. Demons evince a peculiar affection for human bodies, and seem to desire them both as vehicles of action and as places of habitation.

3rd. Angels have no predilection | cur that the spirits of wicked men are for tombs and monuments of the dead. here intended; and need I add that In these three particulars angels oft-repeated affirmation of the demoand demons stand in full contrast, and niacs, "We know thee, Jesus of Nazaare contradistinguished by essentially reth; art thou come to torment us different characteristics; for- before the time?" Thus all the scriptural allusions to this subject authorize the conclusions that demons are ghosts, and especially wicked and unclean spirits of dead men. A single saying in the Apocalypse makes this most obvious. When Babylon is razed to its foundation, it is said to be made the habitation of demonsof the ghosts of its sepulchred inhabitants. From these seven sources of evidence, viz.-the Pagan authors, the Jewish historians, the Christian fathers, the four Evangelists, the epistle of Ignatius, the acceptation of the term angel in its contrast with demon, and the internal evidences of the whole New Testament, we conclude that the demons of the New Testament were the ghosts of wicked men. May we not henceforth reason from this point with all assurance as a fixed and fundamental principle?

3rd. Demons also evince a peculiar fondness for their old mortal tenements; hence we so often read of them carrying the possessed into the grave-yards, the tombs, and sepulchres, where, perchance, their old mortalities lay in ruins.

From which fact we argue, as well as from the fact that the Pagans had neither Devil, nor Angel, nor Satan, in their heads before the Christian times, that when they, or the Christians, or the Jews spoke of demons, they could not mean any intermediate rank of spirits, other than the spirits of dead men. Hence in no instance in holy writ can we find demon and angel used as convertible terms. Is it not certain, then, that they are the ghosts of dead men? But there yet remains another pillar.

7. Among the evidences of the papal defection intimated by Paul, he associates the doctrine concerning demons with celibacy and abstinences from certain meats, as chief among signs of that fearful apostacy. He warrants the conclusion that the purgatorial prisons for ghosts and ghostly mediators of departed saints, which, equally commanding to abstain from lawful meats, and forbidding to marry, characterize the times of which he spoke, are attributes of the same system, and indicative of the fact that demons and ghosts are two names for the same beings. To this we add the testimony of James, who says the demons believe and tremble for their doom. Now all eminent critics con

It ought, however, to be candidly stated that there have been in latter times a few intellectual dyspeptics, on whose nervous system the idea of being really possessed by an evil spirit produces a phrenzied excitement. Terrified at the thought of an incarnate demon, they have resolutely undertaken to prove that every single demon named in holy writ is but a bold eastern metaphor, placing in high relief dumbness, deafness, madness, palsy, epilepsy, &c.; and hence demoniacs then and now are a class of unfortunates laboring under certain physical maladies called unclean spirits. Credat Judæus Appella, non Ego.

On the principle that every demon is an eastern metaphor, how incomparably more eloquent than Demosthenes or Cicero was he that had at one time a legion of metaphors within him struggling for utterance! No wonder, then, that the swineherds of

Gadara were overwhelmed by the moving eloquence of their herds as they rushed with such pathos into the deep waters of the dark Galilee !

Great men are not always wise. The seer of Mesopotamia was not only admonished, but reformed by the eloquence of an ass; and I am sure that the Gadarene speculators were cured of their belief in eastern metaphors when they saw their hopes of gain for ever buried in the lake of Gennesareth. It requires a degree of gravity, bordering on the superlative, to speculate on an hypothesis so singularly fanciful and baseless as that which converts both reason and eloquence, deafness and dumbness, into one and the same metaphor.

Without impairing in the least the strength of the arguments in favor of actual possession by the spirits of dead men, it may be conceded, that, because of the similarity of some of the effects of demoniacal possession with those maladies of the paralytic and epileptic character, it may have happened on some occasions that persons simply afflicted with these diseases, because of the difficulties of always discriminating the remote causes of these maladies, were, by the common people, regarded as demoniacs, and so reported in the New Testament. Still the fact that the Great Teacher himself distinguishes between demons and all human maladies, in commanding the Apostles not only to "heal all manner of diseases to cleanse the lepers, and raise the dead," but also to "cast out demons ;" and the fact still more palpable, that in number and power these demons are represented as transcending all physical maladies, precludes the possibility of contemplating them as corporeal diseases.

"When I read of the number of demons in particular persons," says a very distinguished Biblical critic, "and see their actions expressly distinguished from those of the man possessed; conversations held by the '

demons about their disposal after their expulsion, and accounts given how they were actually disposed of; when I find desires and passions ascribed peculiarly to them, and similitudes taken from their manners and customs, it is impossible for me to deny their existence, without admitting that the sacred historians were themselves deceived in regard to them, or intended to deceive their readers."

Were it not in appearance like killing those that are dead, I should quote at length sundry passages which speak of "unclean spirits crying with loud voices" as they came out of many that were possessed, which represent unclean spirits falling down before Jesus, and crying, "Thou art the Son of God," and of Jesus "charging them not to make him known;" but I will only cite a single parable framed upon the case of a demoniac. It is reported by Matthew and Luke, and almost in the same words. "When the unclean spirit," says Jesus, "is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goeth and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

Even so shall it be also to this wicked generation." On which observe, that "unclean spirits" is another name for demons—that is, a metaphor of a metaphor; for if demons are metaphors for diseases, the unclean spirits are metaphors of metaphors, or shadows of shades. Again, the Great Teacher is found not only for once departing from himself, but also from all human teachers of renown, in basing a parable upon a parable, or a shadow upon a shade, in drawing a similitude from a simile. His object was to illustrate the last

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