those whose religious nature is more imbued with fear
than with hope. The timid worshipped the deadly and destructive powers,
and their prayers were deprecations. The bolder worshipped the good gods.
Similarly, in Greece, the Chtonic deities had their shrines and
worshippers, as had the powers of Blight, Famine, and Pestilence at Rome.

Yet only in the Avesta is this great principle of evil set forth in full
antagonism against the powers of light and love. And probably from
Persia, after the captivity, this view of Satan entered into Jewish
theology. In the Old Testament, indeed, where Satan or the Devil as a
proper name only occurs four times[404], in all which cases he is a
subordinate angel, the true Devil does not appear. In the Apocrypha he is
said (Wisdom ii. 24) to have brought death into the world. The New
Testament does not teach a doctrine of Satan, or the Devil, as something
new and revealed then for the first time, but assumes a general though
vague belief in such a being. This belief evidently existed among the Jews
when Christ came. It as evidently was not taught in the Old Testament. The
inevitable inference is that it grew up in the Jewish mind from its
communication with the Persian dualism.

But though the doctrine of a Devil is no essential part of
Christianity[405], the reality and power of evil is fully recognized in
the New Testament and in the teachings of the Church. Indeed, in the
doctrine of everlasting punishment and of an eternal hell, it has been
carried to a dangerous extreme. The Divine sovereignty is seriously
infringed and invaded by such a view. If any outlying part of the universe
continues in a state of permanent rebellion, God is not the absolute
sovereign. But wickedness is rebellion. If any are to continue eternally
in hell, it is because they continue in perpetual wickedness; that is, the
rebellion against God will never be effectually suppressed. Only when
every knee bows, and every tongue confesses that Christ is Lord to the
glory of God the Father; only when truth and love have subdued all enemies
by converting them into friends, is redemption complete and the universe
at peace.

Now, Christianity (in spite of the illogical doctrine of everlasting
punishment) has always inspired a faith in the redeeming power of love to
conquer all evil. It has taught that evil can be overcome by good. It
asserts truth to be more powerful than error, right than wrong. It teaches
us in our dai