A little pamphlet of twenty-three pages, has been handed me by a friend with a request to read it, and to express my opinion of its merits. It appears to have been published in London, but without a date, and is intitled, “Essay on the Devil; proving a belief in the existence of such a being, contrary to Scripture, reason and philosophy.” The author’s name does not appear. This, however, is of no consequence, the matter of its pages, not the man, being the object of interest to the inquirer after truth.

The writer rejects the existence of a spiritual and invisible being called “the Devil,” by the Gentiles of “Christendom,” as contrary to scripture and reason. “It is,” says he, “a heathen doctrine:” and as the conclusion of the whole matter remarks, “If we believe in the existence of a God, we cannot rationally believe in the existence of a Devil, for it would be wholly destructive of every true principle of reason, natural philosophy, and religion.”

In saying this, he does not deny that something is spoken of in Scripture answering to the words, devil and satan; he only rejects the Gentile interpretation of these words, and denies that that interpretation christened orthodox by “divines,” is a correct representation of the mind of God revealed through prophets and apostles. He inclines to the belief, that the words Serpent, Satan, and Devil, are personifications of corrupt human nature. Thus, in Nismath Chasim, it is said, “for Messias will purify the uncleanness of the Serpent,” by which is signified, that Messias shall destroy the Serpent. And in the Arodath Hakkodash, it is said, “that this Serpent (that is, the devil) is the evil part.” And it has been justly observed, that when it is said in Genesis 3: 15, “I will put enmity between thee and the Woman,” it must be wholly allegorical, the Serpent being the Satan or Devil, the emblem of the carnal, sensual, mind of man, which is at enmity against God. And as this carnal, sensual, mind beguiled Eve, so did Paul fear that by it the minds of the Corinthians would be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

There is truth in this. The Serpent’s mind was a purely carnal mind. When it thought, its thinking was performed from the necessity of things as the blood circulated, and its lungs breathed. It saw and heard, and spoke according to the impression made upon its sensorium by the excitation of its auditory and ophthalmic nerves from without. This is the way men think who are too wise to be taught of God by his word. The Serpent taught Eve to think in this way; that is, without regard to the guidance of the divine precept inculcated in the Eden law. Her descendants have followed her ill example to the present time; so that the Serpent mode of thinking has been transferred to the mother of all living and her posterity. He lied, as every other animal would lie, if speech were given it to express its thoughts upon what would be right or wrong before God: he lied, as every man lies, however pious and sincere he may be, who, ignorant of God’s word, expresses his thoughts of what is pleasing to Him. Hence, the Serpent is a fit emblem of all who lie, or express a judgment contrary to God’s truth. He was a liar in this sense. He reasoned from certain appearances to a conclusion directly at variance with what God had spoken. Thus, “He caused not to stand—ouch hesteken—in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” When he may have spoken—hotan lalee 2. a subj.—the lie, he speaks of his own thoughts. In the serpent there is no truth, nor ever was, the creature not having capacity for its reception; neither is there truth in a man ignorant of the word. A man untaught of God is a serpent in human form, that hisses at any bible sentiment not in harmony with the thinking of his brain-flesh. Hence, the original Serpent is very properly regarded as his progenitor; and all such are styled by the Lord Jesus, “serpents” and a generation of vipers; because like their grandfather, “they judge of the flesh.” “From a father of the devil are ye,” said he to this class of Jews. That is a remarkable expression, hymeis ek patros tou diabolou este. Griesbach considers that tou, should precede patros; so that it would read “from the father of the devil,” or as some would prefer it, “of the father the devil,” by apposition, as this would make the devil the original father, instead of the son of the original serpent. But ek patros does very well. The Serpents of Israel were from a progenitor, which was sin’s father; and because the father of sin, or of the devil, was a serpent, they being sinners, were serpents likewise.

The mind of the Serpent transferred to man, the serpent henceforth occupied the place only of an emblem, or symbol, representative of all Sin’s doings, that is, the Devil’s, in man; and through him. I repeat, what I conceive I have elsewhere proved, that Diabolos translated devil, is SIN in the flesh, which causes those who yield to it, to cross the line forbidden to be passed by the Divine law. It is for this reason called diabolos; and is clearly shown by Moses to be the Serpent’s son, begotten in the heart of the Mother of all living, who, as reproducers of their kind, give birth only to sinners, and therefore grandsons of the Serpent, and children of Sin. This is the parentage of all mankind, be they the children of infidels or believers. “If ye,” said Jesus to the apostles, “being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, by how much more shall your Father who is in the heavens, give good things to them that ask him?” If he styled those evil who have God for their father, how much more so are they who are not of God, but of sinful flesh only. The apostles were evil in the sense expressed by Paul, in Romans 7: 17-18, saying, “Sin dwelleth in me; for I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing;” and in the thirteenth verse, this sin he personifies by the phrase kath’ hyperboleen amartolos, a hyperbolical, or pre-eminent sinner.

Mankind then have descended not from a righteous but a guilty pair. Had the first parents never sinned, the generations of mankind would have been born holy or clean, that is, without sin in the flesh; and there would have been no distinction in the world of “saint” and “sinner.” But the reverse is the fact. The first parents were defiled by transgression, and so became unclean; hence, Job, speaking of “man that is born of woman,” inquires, “who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” and then answers the question, saying emphatically, “Not one. Man dieth and wasteth away: yea, he giveth up the ghost and where is he? He lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep.” The uncleanness of all born of woman causes them to die and waste away; and this uncleanness is sin in the flesh. “By one man sin entered into the world, in which man all sinned;” for at that time the germ of the future race was in his loins. Hence the constitutional genealogy of mankind is, the serpent by his subtlety begat sin in the human nature, and sin in the flesh, or the will of man, begat Cain and all his brethren; so that all mankind by natural generation, “are—ek toon katoo—of things below,” pertaining to the world, “servants of sin,” children of the devil. Hence, they were “made sinners” by a constitution founded on the disobedience of the first man. They were made or constituted sinners from the physical necessity of the case; and this elemental quality of man’s nature, the devil within him, causes all the evil manifestations emanating from individuals and organizations of individuals, popularly styled societies, associations, governments, &c., such as the “all things created, the things in the heavens, and things upon the earth, things seen and unseen, whether thrones, or lordships, or principalities, or powers;” and which, as a whole, constitute the—aioon tou kosmou toutou—the Age of this World—a system of things over which Sin presides, as “the prince of the power of the air,” styled by Paul “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” This system of things in the old Assyrian, Medo-Persian, Macedonian, and Roman oikoumenee, or habitable, is represented by symbols, such as Nebuchadnezzar’s Image, Daniel’s Four Beasts, and John’s Beasts, Image, Drunken Harlot, and Dragon—emblems of sin in its civil and ecclesiastical manifestations, antagonistic to God’s nation of the Twelve Tribes of Israel; his Two Witnesses, and the Holy City, or community of the saints, “who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” These symbols represent the power of the enemy of God and his people. This power, in its undivided form, or rather in combination, is emblematised in Genesis 3: 15 by the serpent, whose “head,” or chief is the imperial prince of the serpent organization of sin, contemporary with “the great prince,” or Woman’s Seed, who stands up for Israel when the time comes to bruise Gog and bind the Dragon.

If these things are rightly discerned there will be no difficulty in understanding the Bible teaching concerning the devil and satan. The pamphlet before me only catches a glimpse of them, and therefore, although there is much approvable, the writer’s exposition of divers texts, though much more scriptural and rational than the current theological, are not satisfactory to me. He first examines the testimony of Moses and the prophets on the subject of “the devil.” He tells us that in those writings the phrase “the Devil is not anywhere mentioned in the singular;” therefore he says, “it necessarily follows that such a being is there unknown as peculiarly an individual being—a dignified personage, a devil by eminence.” He then tells us that the only places where the name occurs in the plural are four. Devil is found nowhere in the singular and only four times in the plural. This is susceptible of demonstration. The four texts are Leviticus 17: 7; 2 Chronicles 11: 15; and Deuteronomy 32: 17; Psalm 106: 37. In the former two the Hebrew word is seirim; and in the latter two it is shaidim, whom Moses styles elohim lo yedahum, “gods they knew not.” Here then are two different words, each of which has a separate idea, which needs to be distinguished. In Leviticus it reads, “they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto seirim, after whom they have gone a whoring.” In the common version it is devils. This statute shows that when Israel was in Egypt the tribes worshipped seirim, whose idolatry was connected with prostitution. The singular, sahir signifies shaggy, hairy. They worshipped hairy ones, or goats. In Genesis 37: 31, it is sahir izzim, and rendered in the common version “a kid of the goats.”

The sahir was the god Pan of the Gentiles, “the idolatrous emblem of nature’s prolific powers, and the Devil of idolatrous antichristianity; a large he-goat, with his cloven foot, horns, and tail. It was to this imaginary being, representing the imaginary powers of nature, that the Canaanites were in the habit of sacrificing the kid, and seething it in its mother’s milk, and then sprinkling the sown fields to induce fertility. Every one acquainted with the beastly acts that attended the priapian worship of Pans will not be surprised at the severe penalty annexed to the idolatrous rite.”

The other word is shaidim. “They sacrificed,” says Moses, “to shaidim, not God, gods they knew not, new ones not feared by their fathers.” In this text shaidim is also rendered devils in the common version. David says, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto shaidim, unto the idols of Canaan.” The Egyptian idols were called seirim, and those of Canaan shaidim, as would appear from these texts. Gesenius says this word is only used in the plural. The root of this is the obsolete shahdahh, to pour forth. The writer of the pamphlet remarks that, “in the sense of pouring forth it is used for a cup-bearer, one who pours forth the wine, and very frequently for the field which pours forth the bounties of the God of nature for the support of life; it is also frequently used as a title of Deity, the Pourer Forth, the All-Bountiful, and also for the breast (shod or shad) which pours forth its milk. Hence, the shaidim, the pourers forth, the great agents of nature, the heavens, which cause the earth to send forth springs and shed her increase of milk, and corn, and fruits for human nourishment. The Egyptian Isis was one of these shaidim, which was clustered over with breasts, because all things are sustained by nature. Such was also the Diana of Ephesus, on which was inscribed, “All various Nature, Mother of all things.” It is said of the Mexicans that, before the arrival of the Spaniards, at the first appearance of green corn children were offered up; also when the corn was a foot above the ground, and again when it was two feet high. In like manner Moses foretells that the Israelites would turn idolaters, and would sacrifice to “all various nature,” whom our translators call devils; and the Psalmist declares that to this idol goddess they actually did sacrifice their sons and daughters.

But enough for the present. Another time we will look more into these matters.

EDITOR.

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