e presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute
power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom
are all things. Pure himself, He can create nothing impure. Evil,
therefore, has no eternity in the past. The fact of its present actual
existence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand
the secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord
become the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes of
the Infinite Parent. Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the dark
mystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye of
humble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity,
justice, and mercy of Him who is "light, and in whom is no darkness at
all."

"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformist
Robinson. "I believe in God," was the reply; "don't you?"

Henry of Nettesheim says "that it is unanimously maintained that devils
do wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are,
ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded." Origen, in his Platonic
speculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by
repentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed
to the Father of spirits, and He become all in all. Justin Martyr was of
the opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and the
Cabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded. One is
irresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the _Address to the
Deil_, by Burns:--

"But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben!
Gin ye wad take a thought and mend,
Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--
Still has a stake
I'm was to think upon yon den
Fen for your sake."

The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his
ministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and
liable to injury and pain. Origen has a curious notion that any evil
spirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from
thenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who
has lost his sting.

"The Devil," said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a
discourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks."
Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the serious
consideration of all who "tarry long at the wine," that, in t