state of the Jews. This he attempts of dead men; and, as such, have by the adventures of a demon-first taken possession of men's living being dispossessed, finding no rest bodies, and have moved, influenced, and returning with others more wicked and impelled them to certain courses than himself to the man from whom of action. he was driven. Now if this was all a figure to illustrate a figure, the Saviour has done that which he never before attempted, inasmuch as his parables are all founded not upon fictions, but upon facts-upon the actual manners and customs, the incidents and usages of society. Permit me, gentlemen, to demonstrate that this is no abstract and idle speculation, by stating a few of the practical aspects and bearings of this doctrine of demonology :— 1st. It relieves the Bible from the imputation of promulging laws against non-entities in all its legislation against necromancers, diviners, soothsayers, wizards, fortune-tellers, &c. When Jehovah gave this law to Israel, he legislated not against mere pretence, saying, "You shall not permit to live among you any one that useth divination, an enchanter, a witch, a consulter of familiar spirits, a wizard, or a necromancer; for all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord: and because of That must be a desperate position to sustain which degrades the Saviour as a teacher below the rank of the most ordinary instructors of any age. The last state of the Jews compared to a metaphor!-compared to a nonentity-compared to a fiction! This is even worse than representing a trope coming out of a man's mouth, "crying with a loud voice," wandering through dry places"-unfigurative language, I presume-seeking these abominations the Lord thy God 66 At a period, and finding a comma. length, tired and fatigued, returning with seven fiercer metaphors more wickedly eloquent than himself, repossessing the orator, and making him internally more eloquent than before. It will not help the matter to say that when a disease leaves a man it wanders through dry or wet places-through marshes and fensthrough deserts and prairies-and finding no rest for its foot, takes with him seven other more violent diseases, and seeks for the unfortunate man from whom the doctors expelled it, and, re-entering his improved constitution, makes that its eternal abode. In one sentence, then, we conclude that there is neither reason nor fact there is no canon of criticism, no law of interpretation-there is nothing in human experience or observation -there is nothing in all antiquity, sacred or profane, that, in our judgment, weighs against the evidence already adduced in support of the position, that the demons of Pagans, Jews, and Christians were the ghosts doth drive these nations out before thee." A divine law demanding capital punishment because of a mere pretence! The most incredible thing in the world! The existence of such a statute, as before intimated, implies not merely the antiquity of the fact of demoniacal influence, but supposes it so palpable that it could be proved by at least two witnesses, and so satisfactorily as to authorize the taking away of human life without the risk of shedding innocent blood. That there have been pretenders to such mysterious arts, impostors and hypocrites in necromancy, witchcraft, and divination, as well as in every thing else, I doubt not; but if the pretence to work a miracle, or utter a prediction, be a proof that there were true miracles and true prophets, the pretence of necromancy, witchcraft, and divination, is also a proof that there were once true necromancers, wizards, and diviners. fame of the Egyptian Jannes and Jambres who withstood Moses in the The presence of Pharaoh-the fame of the woman of Endor, who evoked Samuel, or some one that personated him-and of the Pythonic damsel that followed Paul and Barnabas, who enriched her master by her divination, stand on the pages of eternal truth, imperishable monuments not merely of the antiquity of the pretence, but of the reality of demoniacal power and possession. May I be permitted farther to observe, on this mysterious subject, that necromancy was the principal parent of all the arts of divination ever practised in the world, and was directly and avowedly founded on the fact, not only of demoniacal influence, but that demons are the spirits of dead men, with whom living men could, and did form intimacies. This the very word necromancy intimates. The necromancer predicted the future by means of demoniacal inspiration. He was a prophet inspired by the dead. His art lay in making or finding a familiar spirit, in evoking a demon from whom he obtained superhuman knowledge. So the Greek term imports and all antiquity confirms. There are two subjects on which God is silent, and man most solicitous to know the world of spirits and his own future destiny. On these two subjects ghosts who have visited the unseen world, and whose horizon is so much enlarged, are supposed to be peculiarly intelligent, and on this account originally called demons, or knowing ones. But this knowledge being forbidden, kindly forbidden to man, to seek it at all, and especially by unlawful means, has always been obnoxious to the anathema of Heaven. Hence the popularity of the profession of evoking familiar spirits, and hence also the indignation of Heaven against those who consulted them. Still we may be asked, Has any spirit of man, dead or alive, power to foresee and foretell the future? Does any one know the future but God? To which we cheerfully respond, the living and inspired prophets only knew a part of the future. God alone knows all the future. But angels or demons may know much more of it than man. How this may be, analogy itself may suggest. Suppose, for example, that one man possessing the discriminating powers of a Bacon, a Newton, or a Locke, only of a more capacious and retentive memory, had been coeval with Cain, Noah, or Abraham, and with a deathless vigor of constitution had lived with all the generations of men since their day till now, an inductive philosopher, of course, what would be his comparative power of calculating chances and contingencies-the laws of cause and effect-and of thence anticipating the future? Still, compared with one who had passed that mysterious bourne of time, he would be but the infant of a day, knowing comparatively nothing of human destiny. But, indeed, the powers of knowing peculiar to disembodied spirits, are to us as inscrutable as the very elements of their spiritual forms and existence. But that they do know more of a spiritual system and more of human destiny than we, all antiquity, sacred and profane, fully reveals and confirms. 2. But a second practical aspect of this theory of demons demands our attention. It is a palpable and irrefragable proof of a spiritual system. The gross materialists of the French school, when Atheism triumphed over reason and faith, proclaimed from their own metropolis, and had it cut deep in marble too, that death was an eternal sleep of body, soul, and spirit, in one common unconsciousness of being. Since that time we have had the subject somewhat refined and sublimated into an intermediate sleep of only some six or seven thousand years, between our earthly exit and the resurrection morn. These more speculative materialists convert demons into metaphors, lapsed angels, or devils-into any thing rather than the living spirits of dead men. They see that our premises being admitted, there must be a renunciation not only of the grosser, but of the more ethereal forms of materialism of those who lull the spirit to repose in the same sepulchre with its kindred mortality, in their opposition to the inhabitation of the human body by any other spirit than its own. They make but little argumentative gain who assume that demons are lapsed angels rather than human ghosts; for who will not admit that it may be more easy for a demon than an angel, who has a spiritual body of his own, to work by the machinery of a human body, and to excite the human passions to any favorite course of action! Were not this the fact, they must have tenanted the human house to little purpose, if a perfect stranger to all its rooms and doors could, on its first introduction, move through them as readily as they. To me, in this branch of the argument, it is perfectly indifferent whether it was a pretence or a reality: for, mark it well, had there not been a senior and more venerated belief in the existence of a spiritual system— a general persuasion that the spirits of the dead lived in another world while their bodies lay in this, and that disembodied spirits were demons or knowing ones on those particular points so interesting and so unapproachable to man; who ever could have thought of consulting them, of evoking them by any art, or of pretending in the face of the world to any familiarity with them! I gain strength by the denial or the admission of the thing, so long as its high antiquity must be conceded. I do indeed contend, and will contend, that a belief in demons, in a separate existence of the spirits of the dead, is more ancient than necromancy, and that it is a belief and a tradition older than the Pagan, the Jewish, or the Christian systems—older than Moses and his law-older than any "If weak thy faith, why choose the harder side?" Not a few of our modern sages ascribe to a Pagan origin that which antedates Paganism itself. They must have a Grecian, Roman, or Egyptian origin for ideas, usages, and institutions existent ages before the founders of these states or the inventors of their superstitions were born. No earthly record, the Bible alone excepted, reaches within hundreds of years of the origin of the idea of demons, necromancy, and of infernal as well as of supernal agency. Others there are who have more faith in what is modern than in what is ancient. They would rather believe their children than their fathers. The moderns, indeed, in most of the physical sciences, and in some of the physical arts, greatly excel the ancients. I say, in some of the useful and fine arts we may, perhaps, excel them as much as they excelled us in geometry, architecture, sculpture, our natural impressions and views are found in material nature; and therefore man could as easily create a world as a ghost, either by imagination, volition, or reason. Supernatural ideas must, therefore, have a supernatural origin. So speaks the Baconian system, and therefore its author believed in demons, spirits, and necromancy, as much as your humble servant, or any other living Baconian. painting, poetry, &c. &c. But though we excel them so much in many new discoveries and arts-in correct, traditionary, and spiritual knowledge, they greatly excelled us, except always that portion of the moderns fully initiated into the mysteries of the Bible. Some seem to reason as if they thought that the farther from the fountain the waters are more pure the longer the channel the freer from pollution. With me, the reverse is the fact. Man was When any man proves he can have more intelligent at his creation and faith without hearing and testimony his fall in his own being and destiny-the idea of color without sight-or than he has ever been since, except so far as he has been the subject of a new revelation. Would it not appear waste of time to attempt to prove that our national government is purer now than it was while its founders were all living amongst us? Equally prodigal of time the man who attempts to prove that the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian institutions were purer five hundred or a thousand years after, than at, their commencement. With Tertullian I will say, that in faith, religion, and morality, whatever is most ancient is most true. Therefore, the Patriarchs knew more of man living and dead, of the ancient order of things in nature, society, and art, than we, their remote posterity. The age of philosophy was the era of hypothesis and doubts. Man never began to form hypothesis till he lost his way. Now, having traced the belief in demons and necromancy beyond the age of conjecture and speculative reasoning, and located it amongst the oldest traditions in the world, we are compelled, by the dicta of our own inductive and sounder philosophy, to admit its claims to an experience, observation, and testimony, properly authenticated and documented amongst the earliest fathers of mankind. One of the oracles of true science is, that all our ideas are the result of sensation and reflection, or of experience and observation; that the archetypes of all of hardness and softness, of heat and cold, without feeling, and understand all the properties of material nature, without any of his five senses, then, but not till then, he may explain how, without a supernatural influence of any sort, he may form either the idea or the name of a spirit, a ghost, or a demon-of a spiritual, invisible, and eternal system of intelligences of a supernatural mould and temper. He that can create out of himself the idea of an abstract spirit, or of a spiritual system of any sort, may create matter by volition, and a universe out of nothing. Dispose of the matter as she may, we affirm it is our conviction that Philosophy herself is compelled to admit the existence of demons, familiar spirits, and the arts of necromancy and divination, which all ancient tradition-all Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian records assert. In this instance, as in many others, faith is easier than unbelief; and Reason voluntarily places herself by the side of Faith as her handmaid and coadjutor in sustaining a spiritual system, of which demons, in their proper nature and character, are an irrefragable proof. 3. A third practical tendency of this view of demoniacal influence is to exalt in our esteem the character of the Supreme Philanthropist. We will be asked, Whence have all the demons fled? What region do they now inhabit? Have they not power to possess mankind as formerly? Is necromancy, divination, and witchcraft for ever exiled from the abodes of men? Many such questions there may be propounded, which neither philosophy, nor experience, nor religion do infallibly determine. But we may say in general and truthful terms, that the heralds of salvation, from the day of their first mission, to the end of their evangelical labors, were casting out demons, restraining Satanic influence, and making inroads upon the power and empire of Beelzebub, the Prince of the Demons. The mighty chieftain of this holy war had a personal encounter with the malignant chief of all unclean spirits, angelic and human, and so defeated his counsels and repelled his assaults as to divest him of much of his sway, as a presage and earnest of his ultimate triumph over all the powers of darkness. His success and that of his ambassadors on two occasions called from his lips two oracles of much consolation to all his friends: "I saw," said he, "Satan fall like lightning from heaven." This he spake when they told him "The demons are subject to us through thy word." 66 Behold," he adds, "I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and on all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you." The partial dethronement of Satan, Prince of the Demons, is here fully indicated. The Roman orator uses this style when speaking of Pompey's overthrow. His words are, He has fallen from the stars." And again, of the fall of the colleague Antonius-" Thou hast pulled him down from heaven." So spake the Messiah : "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." His empire over men from that day began to fall. And on another occasion he says, "Now is the Prince of this world cast out." These, together with other similar indications, allow 66 the conclusion that the power of demons is wholly destroyed as far as Christians are concerned; and if not wholly, greatly restrained in all lands where the gospel has found its way. With an old prophet or diviner who tried his hand against God's people once, we may say, "There is no enchantment against Jacob-there is no divination against Israel." Some arrogate to human science what has been the prerogative of the gospel alone. They say the light of science has driven ghosts and witches from the minds of men; whereas they ought to have said, the gospel and power of its Author have driven demons out of the hearts, and dispossessed them of their power over the bodies of men. The error of these admirers of human science is not much different from that of some European theologists concerning Mary Magdalene. They suppose her to have been an infamous, rather than an unfortunate woman, out of whom were driven seven devils. They have disgraced her memory by erecting "Magdalene Hospitals" for infamous, rather than for unfortunate females, not knowing that it was the misfortune, rather than the crime of Mary of Magdala, that seven demons had been permitted to assault her person for the glory of the Messiah and her own eternal fame. As to the abodes of demons, we are taught in the Bible what the most ancient dogmatists have said concerning their residence in the air. I say we are taught that they dwell pro tempore in the ethereal regions. Satan, their Prince, is called "the Prince of the power of the air." The great Apostle to the Gentiles taught them to wrestle against "wicked spirits that reside in the air;" for, says he, "you fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places;" |