from which all the demonstration of power and wisdom that he gave was not able to protect him at the last. And if his ministry had been thus arrested in its opening bud, there would have been no cleansing of his disciples from the carnal state by the word, for the indwelling of the Spirit with power, to make them the foundation of the church. And how utterly unable the Jewish people were to receive such an avowal, is made most manifest by the doubt and disbelief of his own disciples and apostles, who had seen all his works, and heard all his wisdom. And when at length he did avouch the solemn truth in the hearing of the council, the high priest rent his clothes, and said, "What more need have we of evidence? ye have heard what he saith." The most capital disservice, therefore, which these demons could do him, and the people whom he would fain have saved, and all future generations, was to mar the gradual unfolding of the mystery; and at once stake him upon the moral weapons of his enemies, before he had provided for himself any covert in the hearts of the people, or laid the secure basis of his church in fulfilment of the prophecy and ministry of the word. And this they continually strove to do. The first instance which we have upon record is that which took place in the synagogue at Capernaum, where, the first time he preached, one of these crafty demons withstood him, and cried aloud, "Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God." In which brief sentence is manifested, first, that fearful and trembling faith, that faith yielding no joy but only fear, which these reprobate spirits are possessed of: The demons also believe, and tremble." Being without hope, their faith in the power of Christ is only the food of despair, the assurance of their own fore-doomed misery. In another Evangelist it is, "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" that is, before the time of the judgment of the great day, until which the angels that kept not their first estate are reserved in chains of darkness. There is annexed to this the most malicious and contemptuous defiance of the Lord's cautious and considerate promulgation of his Divinity, and a throwing in his teeth of that which above all things he sought for the present to withhold: "I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God:" with which Christ was so grievously offended, that he rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him." And on the same day, it is added in the narrative, "At even, when the sun was set, he cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him." And in the third chapter of the same Evangelist it is said, "And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he straitly charged them that they should

66

66

not make him known." Which rebukes and charges of the Lord do all teach us, that those demons which possessed men did use whatever knowledge they are capable of, which seems infinitely more than man's, not to the furtherance, but to the hindrance of God's glory, and to the sweet processes of his redeeming grace; ever attempting to frustrate that purpose of the Lord, which must to their frustration be fulfilled; ever seeking to substantiate a lie and to realize an impossibility. Wasted powers, disappointed hopes, frustrated purposes, compose their miserable activity. Ever active to accomplish nothing, ever passive to suffer all things; their intelligence a light which lureth them into misery. Such is their calamity; and such the calamity of all who are overruled of wickedness, who resist the good and gracious counsels of the Lord to extinguish wickedness, and establish righteousness triumphant on the earth.

If, before leaving the influences of demons upon the persons of those whom they possessed, and in whom they were for a season to shew their inhuman cruelty, you be disposed to inquire of me for what ends the Lord did permit such a supernatural presence and power of evil spirits, I answer, In order to manifest the supernatural power of the Son of Man in expelling them, which there was no other possible way of revealing. To bruise the serpent's head, and destroy the works of the devil, was the very end for which the Seed of the woman was promised, and in due time revealed: but if there had been no opposition made to him save by men, it is manifestly impossible that the accomplishment of this hope and promise could have been manifested. I say not that it might not have taken place, but I say that it could not have been manifested. For there is no doubt that in overcoming sin in the flesh, and in conquering death and hell, the power of Satan was overcome: but that only in the invisible, not in the visible region. Now, forasmuch as the incarnation was a visible manifestation of the power of the Son of God in manhood, intended to be looked upon and felt by all creatures, and as this earth was the theatre of the devil's ambition, so ought it to be the theatre of his defeat; and forasmuch as the former advent was to give the earnest and rudiments of what in the second advent shall be completely done and accomplished, it was altogether according to the promise and the progress of the revelation, that thus the powers of hell should come up into the field, and contend with him for that which they had won and so long possessed. That this is the view which our Lord himself had of these miraculous possessions, I can shew from the xth chapter of this very Gospel, where it is said, at the 17th verse, The Seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils (demons) are subject unto us through thy name.' In which Jesus, perceiving the downful of Satan's kingdom, thus

maketh answer, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the devils are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." In these words I behold the revelation of a great bereavement and humiliation of Satan's power and dignity, in virtue of the incarnation of the Son of Man, and of the power which he bestoweth on his disciples: that God did therein give us the assurance of strength and might against the power of the devil; which comfortable assurance we could in no other way possess. I believe, moreover, that the chain of darkness was loosed, and certain of its miserable prisoners permitted to come abroad, in order to shadow forth that judgment of devils which Christ and his saints shall yet exercise at the judgment of the great day; when Satan with all his host of wicked spirits shall be loosed, to put forth their wicked and malicious power upon men, previous to their great and everlasting consignment to the lake that burneth. And here I have to observe, that there are but three such processions of the unclean spirits mentioned in Scripture, and each at the end of an apostasy. The first, of which we now treat, at the end of the Jewish; the second under the sixth vial, in this very time, at the conclusion of the Gentile apostasy; and the third at the end of the Millennium, in the time of the universal apostasy; each immediately preceding a judgment the former before the judgment of the Jewish apostasy, this now in being before the punishment of the Gentile apostasy, and that last before the judgment of the whole earth. And I observe further, that the former of these was a carnal and visible manifestation of those unclean spirits, because the dispensation was carnal and visible: the present, which is now proceeding, is a spiritual, but not less real, as we shall see in the sequel, because our dispensation is essentially spiritual: and the last will, I believe, be both visible and spiritual, according to the more complete character of that Millennial church for which we wait and pray. Furthermore, and finally upon this part of the subject, I do believe that the wretched men who were made the particular subjects of this diabolical possession were in general far gone in wickedness; or, if not so, were made temporary sufferers, in order that the glory of God's power might be manifest in them but in general the former: which I ground upon that remarkable passage in the xith of Luke, to which I have already made so much reference, when the Lord, speaking of the sevenfold misery to which the Jewish nation should be brought, represents them by the emblem of a man who hath had a spirit cast out of him; which spirit afterward returneth with seven more, and finds his former house swept and garnish

ed, and straightway takes possession of it. This sweeping and garnishing of the Jewish nation lay in their having rejected the Holy Ghost, and being to all good reprobate. Therefore the seven evil spirits have racked and tormented them above aught endured by them in Egypt from Pharoah, before the evil spirit was first cast out of their nation by the ordinance of God. Wherefore, so far as you can reason from a similitude or emblem, I do infer, that these evil spirits, being let abroad, did enter into those tenements which they found swept and garnished; that is, into those men whom they found most void of the Divine Spirit of faith and love, and furnished with that garniture of evil lusts and passions, of which they make unto them wicked and unclean ministers.

And now I pass onwards, to open up some other views of the nature and influences of those demons, besides those personal and bodily influences which they took in the days of our Lord's flesh. And these are two-fold: the one as connected with Pagan worship, and the other as connected with the Christian apostasy. With respect to the influence which demons had in Pagan worship, we have to direct your attention to three passages of Scripture. The first in the viii th chapter of the First of Corinthians, where the Apostle is instructing the church in the true principles upon which they should abstain from idol sacrifices, if they should deem it good to abstain: not, saith he, through any idea of its being polluted by the idol, "for we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one;" but because "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice unto devils (demons), and not to God; and I would not that ye should have any fellowship with demons. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of demons." Now, it hath been argued upon this passage, and that by a very learned and acute doctor of the church, that the Apostle doth not identify these demons, whom, under the false name of gods, the Gentiles worshipped, with those evil and malignant spirits who are mentioned in the Gospels, but useth it rather in the good sense in which the heathens did use the word-as when Socrates spake of his demon-to signify those powers, inferior to the one Almighty God, to whom the heathen offered worship and homage. But to me it is manifest, from the constant use of the word in Scripture of evil spirits, and from the scope of the passage, that this interpretation cannot be received. In those times, when the Christian church was gathered from among the Gentiles, the converts were much tempted by the universal presence and practice of idolotry, which, as is still the case in heathen countries, introduced itself to their private tables, because parts of the victims which had been sacrificed were eagerly desired and

bought up in the shambles, where they were exposed to sale. Whether they might eat those or not, became a question amongst the brethren; the stronger-minded, with the Apostle, being disposed to disregard the idol and all his appurtenances as nothing at all; while those of weaker mind and very tender conscience were afraid, lest they might be countenancing or consenting to the idolatry. The Apostle, having in the viiith chapter put this question upon its proper basis of mutual charity and con-descension of the stronger to the weaker party, and shewn them that there was no principle of absolute unlawfulness involved in it, but a principle of mutual love and forbearance, takes up the subject again in the xth chapter, under another form, and guards them against the danger of the creeping in of idolatry by the door of that liberty which he had given to them of partaking when they could do so without offending a brother. And his mode of reasoning is simple and conclusive. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, being many, are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread." That is, our sacrament of the Holy Supper, which we eat in common, doth declare and signify that we are one with Christ, and one in Christ; having communion and fellowship with him and with the Father in spirit and in truth. Though we be individuals as to our old man, having each a central will within himself; as to our new man we are gathered into one, having Christ as the common centre of our being, whose members we are: one in him, as he is one with the Father. Having laid down this undeniable principle, the Apostle then proceeds to apply it to the practice of communicating with the heathen in their temple feasts; and he takes his first instance from the Jews, saying, "Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices, partakers of the altar?" That is, Are they not of the community of the altar? would it be allowed to any but a circumcised undefiled Jew to partake thereof? Is it not a sacramentary act? Is it not of the covenant; and proper only to the children of the covenant to sit down and feast upon that whose fat and other more holy parts have been offered on the great altar in the temple? Well then, saith the Apostle, and if it be so both in the carnal sacrifices of the Jews and the Holy Supper of the Christians, what else is it in respect to those heathen sacrifices, if you should sit down and partake of them, than that you become of their fellowship, and of the fellowship of those demons to whom they offer the victims, and in honour of whom they assemble together in their temples, to eat the victims? It is not, saith he, that the idol is any thing; or that which is offered to idols is any thing more than common meat; which, if you find in the shambles exposed to sale, buy and eat;