the Satans and Devils of our day, and are using all their power to help rebels at the South and traitors at the North to resist the coming of the Son of man. These are the men, who, when God is evidently shaking the heavens and earth in order to establish a new heaven and earth in which shall dwell righteousness, cabal and struggle and conspire and contrive, and band together all that is base, mean, selfish, and evil, in order, if possible, to keep back the progress of justice and humanity. I cannot believe in optimism while such men continue to exist; and if men with such baleful influence are allowed by God to exist here, and conquer for a time, as they often do, the followers of Christ, and crucify the Son of man afresh in each age, as their prototypes did in Judæa, then I do not know why there may not be also spiritual powers permitted to work similar evil in the higher politics of the universe, thrones and principalities and powers; and perhaps one mightier than all the rest, whose dark shadow of evil influence falls across the stellar system, tending, in whatever worlds it may touch, to increase selfishness, doubt, and despair. Astronomers account for the cold seasons which sometimes occur, by saying that the whole solar system has drifted into a cool region of the universe. Why not account for some horrible periods in human history, by admitting that the cold influence of some higher spiritual being may for a time have fallen on the minds and hearts of mankind? I see nothing unphilosophical or incredible in that.

I ought, however, here to make this limitation. I do not believe in any spirit being absolutely evil. When Jesus called Peter Satan, and said, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" Peter was not wholly evil. Peter was, on the whole, a good man. But Peter was a Satan then, because he had put his will in a false direction. He had set him

self in opposition to Christ's holy purpose of dying for mankind. So the Devil, in this world, is the man who is setting himself against Christ's present purpose (whatever it be) of humanity and love. If the Lord Jesus is looking with pity on the wrongs of the black man, and seeking him in his abasement, and is preparing to break every yoke and let the oppressed go free, and if there be those who are opposing this, and trying their best to prevent it from being accomplished, then these are the Devils of our time. They are "the rulers of the darkness of this world." They may be amiable men in other ways, kind to their friends, pleasant to their companions, pious men in church: but they are, in relation to God and his purposes, Satans; they are fighting against God. And the worst of it is, that men, having once set their wills in this way, are apt to go on. Their pride becomes involved in it; they harden themselves in their purpose; they abstain from looking at the other side; they associate only with those who think as they do; and so they solidify (if I may say so) their diabolic tendency, and at last it becomes the leading trait in their character. So the Devil, if there be one, in worlds above this, is probably a being with majestic intellect, with vast treasures of imagination and sensibility, with great concentrative energy, who, in the pride of the freedom in which God has left him at large, has determined that the great creative and redeeming plans of God are false and wrong. He probably considers God's plan of redeeming men by Christ as a piece of rose-water philanthropy, quite inconsistent with good sense and the real interests of the universe; and so he has set himself against it, and hardens his will at last into an iron opposition, and considers himself a martyr to a great cause in suffering for his ideas. He never says, “Evil, be thou my good!" as Milton makes him say. No moral being ever

accepts evil, knowing it to be evil. He calls around him all he can to help him in what he considers his struggle for freedom against tyranny. To him, God is a tyrant; and the great secession which he heads and leads and organizes, of angels and men, is not, in his opinion, a rebellion, but an effort for independence against a despotic power. God is to him a tyrant to be opposed. Such is the view, no doubt, which the Devil takes of himself. And why not suppose it possible that such beings may influence men in this world with their ideas? We think that good spirits may put good ideas into our minds. Why may not perverse spirits send perverse ideas? These men and women who sneer at all philanthropy, who harden their hearts against all efforts to do justice to a down-trodden race, may really be under this diabolic influence. Indeed, I find it hard to account for the course of such men as Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, of President Lord of Dartmouth College, and others, who teach that the slavery of the colored race is right, unless they are under some such satanic influence.

I read a remarkable article the other day in Brownson's Quarterly, which describes the views of Augustin, the father of Catholic theology, in regard to evil. It says that Augustin taught that human nature is good, and that there can be no such thing as a positively evil nature or substance, because the existence of all things is from God. He says, the very notion of total depravity is impossible. No being can choose evil; for there is no evil to choose: he only chooses the wrong good. Finally, he says that the nature of the Devil himself is not bad, but good. Diabolus, in quantum habet esse, est bonus." "Proinde nec ipsius Diaboli natura est mala." Existence, moreover, is a good, even to those who are finally lost. The damned are better off, though in hell, than if they had not

existed. Hell is only evil in comparison with heaven; but, in itself, it is good. Existence is, always and everywhere, better than non-existence. The most sinful, being good, so far as they have positive being, have a place and work in the lowest circles of the universe; and are only inferior in office, not in nature, to the angels. God does not hate them, but loves them; for the original act of creative love, which brought all creatures into existence, is a continued and eternal act, in which even Satan is included.

With this view of Satan as a being not absolutely evil, but misled and misleading, I see nothing unphilosophical in the belief.

But, while making these concessions to optimism, we must not forget that our Saviour emphasized, in the most earnest manner, the evil of evil. He taught, indeed, that God's providence extends to all his creatures; that his sun shines on the evil and the good; and that he loves and pities his wandering and prodigal child with an especial depth and tenderness of affection. But in one text he says of Judas, that though it was ordained that the Son of man should go as it is written, yet woe to him by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It were good for the Son of man that that man had not been born. He does not think it a good thing that Jerusalem should reject him. He weeps over Jerusalem, and says, "If thou hadst known, in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace!" The agonizing conflict of Jesus with the powers of darkness; his cry on the cross, "My God, my God!"—do not savor of that kind of optimism which teaches that every thing that happens is about right.

The deeper we go into experience, the more we find that life is thus a warfare, and all progress is born out of struggle. It is no wonder that one of the most ancient religions should have made this dualism its fundamental

principle. The great religion of Zoroaster-perhaps the noblest of all the religions before Christianity-declares that God, the Infinite, set light and darkness, good and evil, to contend together, and that the life of the good is warfare. Christianity accepts this saying, and declares that we wrestle here not with flesh and blood; that we are soldiers; and tells us to fight the good fight of faith.

The deepest insight of truth leads us to see antagonistic truths in all things opposing laws everywhere. But virtue consists in the equipoise and harmony of opposing virtues. It teaches us to be cautious, and yet courageous; to be truthful, and yet not to let our truth be harsh and cruel and cold; to be kind, and yet not to let our kindness be concession and falsehood and treason to the great law of Right; to be harmless as doves, and yet wise as serpents; to be generous in our aims, yet prudent in our measures; to be severe in judging ourselves, and yet hopeful, trusting in God; to be generous in judging others, and yet faithful to them, and frank in telling them the truth, even though it may offend them. All virtue is thus the harmony of opposites; and no virtue is noble which does not try, at least, to realize this harmony.

And, in religion, the deepest and highest experience of all is that which combines the sense of responsibility and sense of dependence, law and love, duty and prayer, faith and works, morality and piety.

It is because the Bible states everywhere this warfare as the duty of man, that it retains such a hold on the conscience of the race. Other books are popular in one age, and forgotten and superseded in the next; but the Bible, the book for all ages, is like a great and magnificent vessel, which goes out to sea, ready for storms or for calms, equipped in every part. It is fit for peace, capable of war; on sunny days, and with favoring winds, clothed like