is apostle uses
the terms devil and evil one with literal belief or with
figurative accommodation. We have not a doubt that the former is
the true view. The popular denial of the existence of evil
spirits, with an arch demon over them, is the birth of a
philosophy much later than the apostolic age. The use of the term
"devil" merely as the poetic or ethical personification of the
seductive influences of the world is the fruit of theological
speculation neither originated nor adopted by the Jewish prophets
or by the Christian apostles. Whoso will remember the prevailing
faith of the Jews at that time, and the general state of
speculative opinion, and will recollect the education of John, and
notice the particular manner in which he alludes to the subject
throughout his epistles and in his reports of the discourses of
Jesus, we think will be convinced that the Johannean system
includes a belief in the actual existence of Satan according to
the current Pharisaic dogma of that age. It is not to be
disguised, either, that the investigations of the ablest critics
have led an overwhelming majority of them to this interpretation.
"I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil
one." "He that is begotten of God guardeth himself, and the evil
one toucheth him not." "He that committeth sin is of the devil,
for the devil sinneth from the beginning." "Whosoever is born of
God cannot sin. In this the children of God are manifest, and the
children of the devil." "Ye are of your father the devil, and his
lusts ye will do." There can be no doubt that these, and other
passages of a kindred and complementary nature, yield the
following view. Good men are allied to God, because their
characteristics are the same as his, truth, light, love, life,
righteousness. "As he is, so are we in this world." Bad men are
allied to the devil, because their characteristics are the same as
his, falsehood, darkness, hatred, death, sin. "Cain, who slew his
brother, was of the evil one." The facts, then, of the great moral
problem of the world, according to John, were these. God is the
infinite Father, whose nature and attributes comprehend all holy,
beautiful, desirable realities, and who would draw mankind to his
blessed embrace forever. The goodness, illumination, and joy of
holy souls reflect his holiness and display his reign. The devil
is the great spirit of wickedness, whose attributes comprehend all
evil, dark, fearful realities, an