B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
B. The employments of evil angels.(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.[pg 456]Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word“Satan”means“adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term“devil”signifies“slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the“man of sin”as“he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”
Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.
Job 1:6—Satan appears among“the sons of God”;Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”;Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”;1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.”Satan slanders God to men, inGen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, inJob 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”;Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”
Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God:John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”;Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”Hence Balaam can say:Num. 23:21,“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua:“Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee”(Zech. 3:2).“Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them”(C. H. M.). For the description of the“man of sin,”see2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”;cf.verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”
On the“man of sin,”see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As inDaniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who“shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in2 Thess. 2:3, 4was“the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.
Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up[pg 455]the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.
(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.
Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.
Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits inJob 1:12, 16, 19and2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes;Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”;Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”;2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”;1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”;Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits inGen. 3:1sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”;cf.Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”;Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”;John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”;Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?”Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”;1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”;1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.”If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that“Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.”In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles:“You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.”Mephistopheles describes himself as“Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God.“The devil says his prayers backwards.”“He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.”Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.
Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.
Satan's negative agency is shown inMark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency inMat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.”One devil, but many angels: seeMat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”;Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”;Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”;6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.”The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God”(Gen. 3:5).
C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil:“If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.”If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.
Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.
Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”
Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the“maid having a spirit of divination”(Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: seeMat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”;Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”;3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”;Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”;10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”
These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical.“In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ wasaboveits delusions; the brutes werebelowthem.”Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”
T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer onMat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”
OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.
OnMark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?”Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable[pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.”Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.”See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.
(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.
Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”
Punishing the ungodly:Ps. 78:49—“He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil”;1 K. 22:23—“Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee.”InLuke 22:31, Satan's sifting accomplishes the opposite of the sifter's intention, and the same as the Master's winnowing (Maclaren).
Chastening the good: seeJob, chapters 1and2;1 Cor. 5:5—“deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”;cf.1 Tim. 1:20—“Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I delivered onto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme.”This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser. Gould, in Am. Com. on1 Cor. 5:5, regards“delivering to Satan”as merely putting a man out of the church by excommunication. This of itself was equivalent to banishing him into“the world,”of which Satan was the ruler.
Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: seeMat 8:29—“art thou come hither to torment us before the time?”25:41—“eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”;2 Thess. 2:8—“then shall be revealed the lawless one”;James 2:19—“the demons also believe, and shudder”;Rev. 12:9, 12—“the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time”;20:10—“cast into the lake of fire ... tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
It is an interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connection of evil spirits with the systems of idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world.1 Cor. 10:20—“the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God”;2 Thess. 2:9—“the working of Satan with all power and signs of lying wonders”—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But1 Cor. 8:4—“concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world”—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that“the beings whom the idols are designed torepresenthave no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10:20) that there areotherbeings connected with false worship”(Ann. Par. Bible,in loco).“Heathenism is the reign of the devil”(Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really“sacrificing to demons,”and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief, is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as in heathen religions, there are facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.
Nevius, Demon-Possession, 294—“Paul teaches that the gods mentioned under different names are imaginary and non-existent; but that, behind and in connection with these gods, there are demons who make use of idolatry to draw men away from God; and it is to these that the heathen are unconsciously rendering obedience and service.... It is most reasonable to believe that the sufferings of people bewitched were caused by the devil, not by the so-called witches. Let us substitute‘devilcraft’for‘witchcraft.’... Had the courts in Salem proceeded on the Scriptural presumption that the testimony of those under the control of evil spirits would, in the nature of the case, be false, such a thing as the Salem tragedy would never have been known.”
A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:
First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original[pg 458]consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.
Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”
Luke 22:31, 40—“Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.... Pray that ye enter not into temptation”;Eph. 6:11—“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil”;16—“the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one”;James 4:7—“resist the devil, and he will flee from you”;1 Pet. 5:9—“whom withstand stedfast in your faith.”The coals are already in the human heart, in the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame. The double source of sin is illustrated inActs 5:3, 4—“Why hath Satan filled thy heart?... How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thine heart?”The Satanic impulse could have been resisted, and“after it was”suggested, it was still“in his own power,”as was the land that he had sold (Maclaren).
The soul is a castle into which even the king of evil spirits cannot enter without receiving permission from within. Bp. Wordsworth:“The devil maytemptus to fall, but he cannotmakeus fall; he may persuade us to castourselvesdown, but he cannotcastus down.”E. G. Robinson:“It is left to us whether the devil shall get control of us. We pack off on the devil's shoulders much of our own wrong doing, just as Adam had the impertinence to tell God that the woman did the mischief.”Both God and Satan stand at the door and knock, but neither heaven nor hell can come in unless we will.“We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making their nests in our hair.”Mat 12:43-45—“The unclean spirit, when he is gone out of a man”—suggests that the man who gets rid of one vice but does not occupy his mind with better things is ready to be repossessed.“Seven other spirits more evil than himself”implies that some demons are more wicked than others and so are harder to cast out (Mark 9:29). The Jews had cast out idolatry, but other and worse sins had taken possession of them.
Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 129—“The hypnotic subject cannot be controlled so far as to make him do what he knows to be wrong, unless he himself voluntarily assents.”A. S. Hart:“Unless one is willing to be hypnotized, no one can put him under the influence. The more intelligent one is, the more susceptible. Hypnotism requires the subject to do two-thirds of the work, while the instructor does only one-third—that of telling the subject what to do. It is not an inherent influence, nor a gift, but can be learned by any one who can read. It is impossible to compel a person to do wrong while under the influence, for the subject retains a consciousness of the difference between right and wrong.”
Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, 330-335—“Some persons have the power of intentionally calling up hallucinations; but it often happens to them as to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, or apprentice-magician, that the phantoms gain power over them and will not be again dispersed. Goethe's Fischer—‘Half she drew him down and half he sank’—repeats the duality in the second term; for to sink is to let one's self sink.”Manton, the Puritan:“A stranger cannot call off a dog from the flock, but the Shepherd can do so with a word; so the Lord can easily rebuke Satan when he finds him most violent.”Spurgeon, the modern Puritan, remarks on the above:“O Lord, when I am worried by my great enemy, call him off, I pray thee! Let me hear a voice saying:‘Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!’(Zech. 3:2). By thine election of me, rebuke him, I pray thee, and deliver me from‘the power of the dog’! (Ps. 22:20).”
Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permission of their evil agency.
1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
1 Cor. 10:13—“God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”;Jude 6—“angels which kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he[pg 459]attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).
Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.
Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought“to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”(Heb. 2:14)and“having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,”i. e., in the Cross (Col. 2:15).1 John 3:8—“To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.”
Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe's Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray:‘What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently uponmyroad to train him!’And inJob 1:11; 2:5, Satan wagers:‘He will renounce thee to thy face.’”William Ashmore:“Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.”In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose.