dently referring to the same thing, Mark speaks of a young man at the sepulchre clothed in a long white robe, and Luke, of two men in shining garments. At the ascension, while the disciples were looking steadfastly towards heaven, two men stood near them, in white raiment (Acts i. 10), and as beings from another world spoke to

them.

In accordance with these accounts were the teachings of Jesus. “We learn from our Lord's discourses," says Archbishop Newcome, in his Observations on our Lord, Chap. I. Sec. 6, "that the heavenly angels are a numerous host (Matthew xxvi. 53), that they are raised above the imperfect condition of humanity (Matthew xxii. 30), and are holy (Matthew xxv. 31; Mark viii. 38), glorious (Luke ix. 26), and immortal (Luke xx. 36) beings; that they are acquainted (Matthew xxiv. 36; Mark xiii. 32) with many of God's counsels, though not with all, that they are occasionally ministering spirits to mankind, both in this life (Matthew xviii. 10) and the next (Luke xvi. 22); that at the last day our Lord will come to judgment, and all the holy angels with him (Matthew xxv. 31), and that in their presence he will confess those (Luke xii. 8, 9) who boldly confess him before men, and deny those who timidly deny him.”

It is impossible to explain these expressions away as figurative on any just grounds of interpretation. The language both of Jesus and of the Evangelists is often specific and minute; it is used, not merely in passages of an imaginative and poetical character, but in the plainest historical details, and is applied under circumstances which admit of no other construction. Where there is no specific and formal reference to them, their existence is sometimes implied by undesigned and spontaneous allusions which show how the thought of them entered into the religious conceptions, and made a part of what is called the religious consciousness of Jesus and the Evangelists.

28-34.

EVIL AND DISORDERLY SPIRITS.

But what shall we say of the existence and agency of other spirits than those of an angelic character? The subject has already been opened in the chapter on the Temptation in the Wilderness. To deny the existence of evil spirits is not to destroy the kingdom of evil. So long as sin actually exists in the world, and evil spirits are allowed to dwell as wicked men in human bodies, and under the limitations and restraints of our nature, the moral objection to the existence of evil or disorderly spirits under other forms is wholly without force. The objection lies against sin itself and its fatal influences. But as sin does exist and prevail, why may it not show itself in other modes of being as well as in that with which we are familiar? By denying the existence of the devil, we, as Goethe says, “get rid of the wicked one, but the wicked ones remain.” Besides, what becomes of all the wicked men who are constantly going from this present mode of life to another? We cannot suppose the bare act of dying, or changing the form of life, to work an essential change of character, and transform them from sin to holiness. If they exist at all, they exist, at least for a time, as evil spirits. Are they then permitted to go at large for a season? As in this world good and bad grow up together, and are open to influences whether of good or of evil from one another, as a bad man often is permitted to have access to innocent minds and to corrupt their virtue, may it not also be, as Swedenborg has supposed, in those modes of being which lie next beyond us, that the good and the bad are for a season allowed to live, to be employed in their different spheres, and, within the rules and limits established by the all-wise Creator and Ruler of all, to labor for the establishment of their kingdom, and to hold out its influences to those who are still upon the earth, that they may receive or reject them? May there not be a

kingdom of evil as well as a kingdom of righteousness having its seat beyond us, but, within the conditions and limitations assigned by God, reaching down its poisonous influences into the sphere of our human interests and relations?

the devil and his angels,

The great and terrible fact that sin with its baleful influences does exist cannot be denied. Its enticements and seductions, its pestilence that walketh in darkness, and its destruction that wasteth at noonday, meet us at every turn. The world groans under a sense of the degradation and misery and sorrows which it inflicts. Where is its source? In the soul of man or in the world beyond? Is there a kingdom of darkness, as there is a kingdom of light, the Son of Man and the holy angels with him? When Christ came to save the world from sin, did he have to contend only with wicked men, their passions and crimes, and to infuse into men's minds the elements of a diviner life? Or did he have to contend with and overthrow a kingdom of darkness, lying beyond this world, and yet intimately associated with. it, sending out its emissaries of wrong with every form of temptation to take advantage of the weaknesses of our nature and lead us into sin? Did the Prince of Darkness with his agents, recognizing Jesus as one who had come to destroy their kingdom, meet him in the wilderness, follow him through his ministry, incite Judas to betray him, and throw every obstruction that they could in his path? By the reference which Jesus so often makes to Satan, his kingdom, and his messengers; in the terrible depth of his anguish at Gethsemane and his cry of desolation upon the cross; are we to recognize merely the existence of sin in its impersonal influence and authority, seated deeply in the heart of the race, and incorporated into all its institutions and habits; or are we also to recognize a Prince of Darkness with his attendant and obedient subjects constituting a kingdom of iniquity, and per

mitted for a season, in the wise providence of God, to range at large through the world?

In this supposition we are always to remember that wicked ones are not omnipotent because they are spiritual, and that, as wicked men here, so wicked spirits there, must be limited by the laws of God, and by the very conditions of their being, in the sphere and mode of their operations. The moral freedom of man, which God himself respects in all his dealings with him for his salvation, he will unquestionably constrain wicked spirits torespect and leave untouched in all their efforts to injure and destroy him. Whatever Jesus may have taught in regard to the agency of evil spirits, the whole force of his instructions goes to show, that, if we only are on our guard, they can have no influence over us for evil.

The question of the existence and agency of evil spirits, like that of good spirits, is not one embarrassed by any physical impossibility or moral improbability. It is simply a question of fact, which lies open to evidence, and is to be treated by commentators on the New Testament as a question of interpretation. What then is taught by Jesus on this subject? In the account of the Temptation, which must have been derived from him, he speaks of Satan as a personal being. The wicked one (Matthew xiii. 19), Satan (Mark iv. 15), and the devil (Luke viii. 12), are used as equivalent terms. Jesus (John viii. 44) tells the Jews that they are of their father the devil, and (Matthew xii. 26) he speaks of Satan as establishing a kingdom in opposition to the kingdom of God. He speaks (John xiv. 30) of the prince of this world, who hath nothing in him, who (John xvi. 11) is judged, and (John xii. 31) shall be cast out. He says (Luke x. 17, 18), "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven," and (Matthew xxv. 41) he speaks of the "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

It is possible that this may be figurative language, used

to express in vivid terms the power of evil. But in reading the Gospels, and the whole of the New Testament with care, seeking, without any prepossessions on our part, to enter into the conception of Christ and his disciples on this subject, we should hardly fail to infer that, to their minds, Satan and his angels were personal beings, acting in opposition to them, and exercising a dominion which it was Christ's office to overthrow. The language of the New Testament, its direct expressions and indirect allusions, harmonize more readily with this than with any other hypothesis. For further considerations, see chapter xiii. 39.

There is still another class of beings referred to in language which is to be taken either literally or figuratively. As there are the Son of Man and the holy angels with him, and the devil and his angels, so there are demons, daiμóvia or daípoves, and demoniacs, or persons supposed to be possessed by demons. The word Devil, see Whately on "Good and Evil Spirits," pp. 57, 80, is a proper name, always in the singular number. Wherever the word devils occurs in the New Testament it should read demons, that being the word in the original. It is unfortunate that in our version these beings are called devils. They were considered by the Jews to be disorderly, mischievous, and, as they are sometimes called. (Matthew x. 1, xii. 43, Mark iii. 11, 30, &c.), unclean spirits. The idea seems to have been, that they were wandering about the earth, seeking, as the language of Jesus (Matthew xii. 43-45) suggests, a dwelling-place in some human being, whose will they might control, and whose mental and physical organs they might succeed in subordinating to their own uses.

Two different views of this subject have been taken. On the one side, it has been maintained, that demoniacs were persons affected by nervous diseases of different kinds, especially when those diseases were so severe as