feeling towards God was wonderfully pure, and that his faith in God was absolutely perfect. But this beautiful sentiment seems never to have become exact philosophy. And when we take up Christ's intellectual apprehension, or dogmatic theory of God, we feel painfully its inadequacy to convey a feeling so pure and simple. For example, the intelligent belief in an Infinite God, infinite in power, in wisdom, and in goodness, seems inconsistent with such a belief in Satan as was entertained by the Jews; for the admission of a spirit essentially evil into the economies of the universe in a measure qualifies every one of the Divine attributes. The realm allotted to the Devil must be snatched from the dominion of God. That portion of the world, like the castle of an insurgent baron, is not actually in the Lord's possession, and is even fortified against his approach. There is a Power that can maintain itself against the Supreme, which therefore is no longer Supreme. A king, one-half whose empire is in a state of permanent and successful revolt, is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Now Jesus, so far as we can judge, believed in this Evil Spirit. Not only when he may be accommodating himself to popular opinions, but when he must be supposed to enunciate his own, he asserts, or at least never so much as by implication denies the existence of a personal Power of Malignity, a dark and dangerous Being, who disputed with God the empire of the earth. The least ambiguous proofs of this occur in the third Gospel, but in the first Gospel they are not wanting. The Prince of Evil is called Satan, Devil, Beelzebub, the Wicked One, and most of the hellish attributes are ascribed to him. "Then was brought unto Jesus one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb, and he healed him ; and said, "If Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then shall his kingdom stand?"-Matt. xvi. 22-26. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the Wicked One and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart."-xiii. 19. "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the Kingdom; the tares are the children of the Wicked One; the enemy that sowed them is the Devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels."-xiii. 38, 39. If the belief in Satan had not prevailed among the Jews, in the time of Christ, we might say that he merely made use, as a poet, of figurative language. But since the words that are put into his mouth

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express a belief which was commonly entertained, even by the wise and learned and pious of that age, we have no right to say that when Jesus used them, as in the cases cited above, he meant something else, or meant nothing. We have no right to presume that while he employed the popular speech, he discarded the popular prejudice.

It was during the Persian Captivity that the Jews, as appears from books produced after the Exile, adopted the dæmonology of the East, and found a place for evil spirits in the order of Providence. In the Apocryphal writings the existence of "dæmons" is a fact assumed. They are described as dwelling in desolate and ruinous places. They have intercourse with men, and possess them, and can only by occult agencies be expelled. One of them, a lustful dæmon, occupies the body of a beautiful maid and kills her seven husbands on the marriage-night. These dæmons were not supposed to be the departed spirits of evil men, which were allowed to haunt the earth and disturb the peace of its inhabitants, according to the notion that widely prevails in modern times, and in defence of which the believers in spiritual intercourse have much to say. They were fallen angels, born in heaven and born good, but plunged by their own transgressions into hell. This is the belief that plainly appears in the New Testament, and that is fully stated in the following passage, Matt. xii. 43-46: "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first." The Jews, in common with other nations, ascribed to the influence of evil spirits the more mysterious and uncontrollable maladies, such as epilepsy, convulsions, paralysis, dumbness, blindness, more especially madness, lunacy, delirium, idiocy, and melancholy. The Jewish physicians or Magì resorted to various methods of exorcism for the restoration of such as were thus afflicted, using incantations, prescribing charms, talismans, and mystic formulas, which evil spirits could not withstand. When the sufferers in this kind are brought to Jesus, he rebukes the spirits and expels them "by his word," always humoring the patient's whim, but apparently, too, sharing in his delusion. Did he share in it? This is

the question. In the absence of any intimation to the contrary, we must presume that he did. And in the whole New Testament there is not a single suggestion, however faint, of any disagreement on this matter between Jesus and his contemporaries. More than this, his own words carry an assent to the popular belief. He bids his disciples "cast out devils" (Matt. x. 8)- quite a needless direction and a barren authority, if he deemed there were no devils to cast out. In a particular case which his followers had been unable to manage, he rebukes them by saying "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." (See Strauss' Life of Christ, vol. ii., p. 241-2. The whole chapter is admirable.) In one place (Matt. xii. 26-29) Christ speaks of a "kingdom" and a "household" of the Devil, in language which one talking figuratively would hardly use.

If we are reluctant to grant that Jesus shared a superstition so fanciful as this,-which, after all, is held to be no superstition to this day by the majority of Christendom, we must remember that it was the general and deeply rooted persuasion of his age and country. The rabbins believed it as much as the vulgar, as pleasing to the imagination, and suggesting an obvious explanation of the facts of natural and moral evils. How should Jesus question a doctrine that was dear to the popular heart, that was countenanced by the national literature (1 Sam. xvi. 14-23), and that was expounded in the leading schools?

[To be concluded.]

RUDIMENTS.

Must realize his Cant, not cast it off.-JOHN STERLING.

THERE is a vulgar belief that our Revolution conquered for our nation its liberties, and that each generation of Americans inherits a free country. Of course, revolution can no more conquer Freedom for a people than it can conquer scholarship or regeneration for it. All the Americas can not make, of inborn serfs, freemen. It becomes us, therefore, to start from the fact that the phraseology of Freedom is as yet Cant; that the reading of the Declaration of Independence, the celebration of the birthdays of our heroic rebels, the holidays of Radicalism, glorified by Con

servatism, are Cant. By this I would say, that these, our early traditions, are like the unevoked compositions left by Beethoven, in a score beyond the power of any instruments to which they are given for rendering. Instead of giving us that great music, our orchestra mingles in it the clank of chains and the yelp of the blood-hound. When, again and again, we hold up the luminous page, and say, "This is the score we gave you to execute," the players stammer at first, then, being pressed, honestly say that their instruments can not perform those "glittering generalities," nor the dancers keep step to them.

I fear that the Reformers are hasty in charging dishonesty and hypocrisy where there is disloyality to Freedom. There is no denying that the truths which Jefferson and Henry declare to be selfevident, are not self-evident at all; they are the last refinements of civilization; not the world's seed nor stem, but it's flower-one, too, whose fragrance is to be inhaled with the flower of the mind. Our fathers had the quick heats of personal oppression and revolution to bring them to this result; but what can we expect of a generation of maggots, the sole ambition of each of which is to be a fatter maggot than the other, and all seeing nothing beyond their special old Stilton? We must begin low enough even with the best. What is the highest position which the Republican party in 1860 can bear? Only that slavery is quite proper where it exists, but very bad where it does not exist! How many of those who fancy themselves friends of Freedom, do we find laying down Wall Street and Kansas land-lots, as the corner-stones of her temple? And surely, to a real freeman, this association with liberty of the advantage of free labor or equal power of the general government, is as low as one who should mingle with vows of love inquiries as to the bulk of his lady's purse, or the extent of the betrothed larder. That brotherhood of freemen, who join hands through all lands and ages, must teach others the RUDIMENTS; looking upon professions of devotion to Freedom as Cant, yet Cant, in which line for line a real face is masked; Cant to which the people must be held fast, until the flood-tide shall come to make it real. For this end we must be content to go far down on the dry beach and foster the faintest, feeblest wave that beats in the right direction in every mind; nor despise it because it is not floating ships stranded up by the high-water marks.

- It was in the autumn of one of these late years that I received from an old classmate the following note:

W

VIRGINIA, Oct. 20. DEAR C.:- - Do come over and see us! I hear that you have become a fearful Abolitionist, and my wife says she's afraid of you; but still, come ! That topic shall be sunk in the river Styx. Yours, as ever,

PHILIP.

Something moved me to comply. A week after, I entered, by the familiar old stage and the same old driver, (always much “tighter” than the reins he held,) the grass-grown streets of one of the oldest towns of Virginia. I found my friend surrounded by the luxuries of a new, neat cottage, and a happy honeymoon, which were shared by an interesting young wife.

The afternoon had passed pleasantly, and we had seated ourselves comfortably beside the glowing hearth; already deep in memories of old friendships and earlier scenes, forgetful of the chasms by which we were separated, and, as it were, grasping hands once more tightly before a parting, which promised to be for many a long, sad year, we gave ourselves up to the pleasure of the occasion. Then, suddenly, close to the door a sob was heard,— and then, in quick succession, a sob, a groan, and a low voice said, "Oh, my poor Tom!'

The young wife, pale as marble, was at the door in an instant. On opening it a young colored woman stood in view, sobbing violently. She had just heard that her husband, to whom she had been married about two months, had been sold that morning to the far South, by his master, who lived a few miles off. The poor thing was in despair, and sank upon the floor, moaning. My friend's wife knelt down by her, speechless, her arm placed kindly about the neck of the unfortunate. Then came a silence that was mournful, indeed. Presently this young woman, Philip's wife, arose and turned upon us, her face wet with tears, with the dignity of Rachel, and gave me her hand, she cried, "I am not afraid of you! You see own! No, no, dear husband, don't speak to me. I hate it! hate, hate, hate Slavery! Go back and tell them all that we are in Sodom! I will go out into the kitchen and tell every servant to go, go, go—where they shall live in some peace!" And out she rushed, her husband after her. (I think I have preserved the ipsissima verba of this Pythoness.)

it

strode across

“Now, sir,”

is all Satan's