Ye

and a renunciation of Christ's sole mediatorship, and a pernicious sanction to the Gentile belief in, and dependance on, this multitude of inferior mediating divinities; the apostle would not have them hold, even in appearance, a fellowship with these; and would wish them to refrain from participations, the intention and ideas attached to which, by the Gentiles, were a contradiction of, and wholly incompatible with those symbolized in their own holy sacrament." What say J, then? that the idol is anything? or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is anything? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to DAIMONS, and not to GOD-and I would not that ye should have fellowship with DAIMONS. cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of DAIMONS. Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of DAIMONS. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy?"-1 Cor. x. 19, 22. Now, jealousy would not be the term for the sentiment which their conduct would justly excite, if these participations constituted a worship of, and sacramental fellowship with, infernal spirits. Such a crime were the most deliberate apostasy and worship of Satan. But the-even apparent and constructive-acknowledgment of and holding fellowship with any but the One Mediator, through whom they had fellowship with the One God the Father; this infidelity before the eyes of the Gentile world to their own Lord, is appropriately described as provocative of jealousy in Him who loved them, and washed them in his blood, and would have their undivided love in return. "All things," adds the apostle, immediately after the above passage, "are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient." And why? Because "all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth (welfare)," v. 23, 24. Thus, it is clear that the prohibitive counsel is given, not on account of anything intrinsic— any real fellowship with daimons-in the act itself; but on account of its effect upon the mind and belief of others. "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no questions for conscience sake"--but, "If any of them that believe not (i. c., any of the Gentiles) bid you to a feast, and ye

VOL. XXXII.-NO. Cxc.

be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no questions for conscience sake. But if any man say unto you, this is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not, for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake ;-conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other; for why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience? For, if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil-spoken of for that for which I give thanks?"-1 Cor. x. 27, 30.

From the whole of the above, it is apparent that there was no intrinsic evil in eating meats offered to idols. The evil arose, first, when those who had not this knowledge-viz., that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is but one God, and one Lord, and Mediator-eating with conscience of the idol, defiled their weak conscience. Secondly, when those who had knowledge, by eating those meats in the idol's temple, or elsewhere, in presence of the weak, emboldened the latter, by their example, to sin against their own secret scruples and convictions. Thirdly, when those more enlightened Christians, by participating in meats offered to idols, in presence of the Gentiles, whether in the idol's temple, or in the house of the heathen entertainer after some one had said, "This is sacrificed to idols"-(for, this may be either the warning of a scrupulous Christian, or a declaration and invitation to the sacrificial participation, on the part of the Gentile host)-when they, by such sacramental participation, in presence of the Gentiles, lent the apparent sanction of their example to the belief in, and worship of, and dependance on, and fellowship with, a multitude of daimons, i. e., of subordinate gods and mediators, instead of signifying, by their refusal, and refraining from participations connected-by religious associations and rites-with such ideas, their belief in, and worship of the one sole God-and their dependance on, and fellowship with, the one sole Mediator between God and man. For, had their offerings been really made to, and really received by wicked spirits-diaboloi-truly existing in or about the idols, as the patristic church believed and had a participation in them, as in that case it must have done-constituted a real sacramental

2 G

fellowship with such diaboloi, could the apostle's eating have been thus harm less? Could he by grace have been a partaker, and have given thanks? Undoubtedly not.

On the other hand, how accordant is our interpretation with the language of St. Paul on another occasion, when he addressed the Athenians from the Hill of Mars, as related in Acts, xvii. We are there told that "his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry" (v. 16); and thus he addressed its inhabitants (v. 22)" Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." In the original, deisidaimon-esterous [duodamovicTigovs], a word which signifies literally "overgiven to fear or reverence daimons"i. e. (according to the belief of the Athenians, to whom this language is addressed) mediate celestial powers, superior to, and exercising providence over man, but inferior to the supreme and highest God: for such the multitude of deities worshipped by the heathens, whose shrines rose on every side of the speaker and his auditory, confessedly were, according to their own account. And thus Leslie says, upon this very passage:"They (the Athenians) had blended the worship of God with these inferior gods or demons, which was their superstition, for so the word signifies — δεισιδαιμονια

the

fear of these demons." And again"They owned these to be lesser gods, and only the virtues and powers of the Great God." To proceed, however, with the Apostle's address:-"For, as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription TO THE UNKNOWN GOD" (v. 23).

This is the proof St. Paul adduces. So addicted were they to fear and propitiate by their worship a multitude of these daimons or celestial protectors, that, lest perhaps they had missed, and should incur the anger of any, they had erected and dedicated this altar to the unknown God. Now, it is self-evident that St. Paul here attaches to the idea of daimon, which is embodied in the word he makes use of, not the sense of a wicked, infernal spirit, but the favourable sense of the Athenians themselves-viz., a subor. dinate celestial power-an angelic protector and mediator-using the word angelic to denote the nature in

termediate between God and man. And what is the remedy he proposes, to cure them of this servile fear and propitiation of subordinate daimoniac powers this "voluntary humility" and "worshipping of angels?" Precisely that which he holds forth in all his writings. Taking advantage of the inscription TO THE UNKNOWN GOD, he makes this happy transition — "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you-God that made the world," &c. And then he leads them gradually, and with consummate skill, to that "

day when he will judge the world in righteous

ness, BY THAT MAN WHOM HE HATH OR

DAINED, whereof he hath given assu rance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (v. 31). Thus, whether he warn against Gnostic errors, or caution against wounding weak brethren's consciences, and countenancing the Gentiles in their false belief and worship, by an inexpedient participation in the meats sacrificed by the latter, as they themselves supposed and intended, to a multitude of daimons, or secondary celestial powers, or preach to the daimonfearing Athenians, or refer to the revival of this daimon-worship in the latter times, one idea is ever uppermost in his mind, one theme upon his tongue-the one true God, and the one Mediator between God and man: the renunciation of that voluntary humility or self-abasement, which deemed itself unworthy of access to the Most High; of all worshipping of angels; of all reverence of and fellowship with daimons, or secondary celes tial mediators; or with any divine powers short of the very highest. He would raise man above all this, and place him on that elevated position in the celestial hierarchy, which Christ had purchased for him by his death. He would have him hold the Head, admit of no spiritual fellowship but that of his own Lord; and, having this great High Priest, he would have him go boldly unto the throne of grace, and prepare himself to judge angels, rather than worship them. In all these views, as propounded and enforced, in different forms of speech, upon three or four different classes of men, there is a wonderful elevation and harmony, which, if not utterly destroyed, is at least very much low

ered, by the popular sense of devil given to the term daimon, as used in the passages we have been discussing.

Now, as St. Paul uses the term daimon in this Gentile or Pagan sense, in special connexion with the idol-worship of the old Pagan world which prevailed in his own time, and, in 1 Tim. iv. 1, in reference to the revived Pagan notions of subordinate mediators, foretold by the Spirit for the apostasy of the latter times; so the author of the Revelations applies it in precisely a similar sense, in connexion with the idol-worship of this corrupt and Paganized Christianity. In this sense only can we, consistently with the truth of prophecy, and the facts of ecclesiastical history, understand the word daimonia, as used in Rev. ix. 20

"And the rest of the men-yet repented not of the work of their hands, that they should worship devils [daimons], and idols of gold and silver," &c. For this passage occurs in the description of events which follow the sounding of the sixth angel's trumpet, and refers, according to the opinion of all commentators, to the judgments inflicted upon the corrupted nations of Christendom, more especially, perhaps, the Eastern churches, by the invasions of the Arabian, Turkish, and Tartar hordes, symbolized, in the prophecy, by the loosing of "the four angels, which are bound in the great river Euphrates, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men." Now, none of the Christians of the Eastern, the African, or the Spanish Churches, upon whom this judgment principally fell, or indeed of any Christian Church whatever, since the first preaching of the Gospel, have ever been guilty of worshipping devils or infernal spirits. But a very large portion of Christendom, both East and West, fell into the worship of daimons or intermediate beings-namely, of angels, and deified or canonized men and women, and conjoined with this the use and worship, or veneration, of images, or idols of gold and silver, &c.

This, therefore, must be the sin here imputed to them, since the other never existed. Here, therefore, also, as in 1 Tim. iv. 1, and 1 Cor. x. 20, 21, daimon means something very different from devil in our sense, and had better have been rendered by dæmon, or some

other word which would have marked its distinction from diabolos.

As for the "three unclean spirits like frogs," that are called "the spirits of daimons" in Rev. xvi. 13, 14, they must denote wicked doctrines or principles, and not individuals; for how could one personal spirit come out of the mouth of another? Commentators are, we believe, agreed upon this point, that the going forth of these three spirits "out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet," symbolizes the simultaneous rise and spread of three different forms of evil principle over the earth. This interpretation we shall vindicate upon grounds not before brought forward, which will place the passage in a new, and, we trust, a fuller light.

If it should be asked why they are designated "unclean spirits"-nuμara, like frogs-the spirits of daimons, working miracles, we would point to the part which they enact on the prophetic scroll. They "go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Now if, as we have shown, or, as we hope to show before we conclude this paper, the term daimon, everywhere in the New Testament, except in the mouth of the Apostle of the Gentiles, by whom it is used in a Gentile or Pagan sense, and in that passage of Revelations, which, referring to a Pa. gan condition of apostate Christendom, to a worship of daimoniac mediators, and of idols or images, employs the term in the same Pagan sense and connexion, if everywhere else it indicates the phenomena of some species of lunacy, madness, epilepsy, or other disease, manifested by convulsive action and mental derangement (as we, from association, to this day, say "he is possessed," to express extravagant and unaccountable conduct)-if the phrase "unclean spirit," constantly used as synonymous with daimon, is, as we have seen above, but another nameamong the Jews as among the Hindoos-for affections either of a lunatic, an epileptic, or an hysteric type, from the abandonment of clothes, and other acts and habits of an uncleanly and repulsive character, which persons thus affected commonly exhibit; and

if the prophet mean to designate the sudden rise, and contagious, and, as it were, convulsionary, propagation of wild principles and doctrines, whether of political phrenzy, or social madness, or spiritual delusion, circulating from city to city, from throne to throne, with electric speed and galvanic action, literally convulsing the world, producing in a few days the revolutions and changes which centuries of systematic effort in man's regular progress were necessary to accomplish, and boding the catastrophe of universal war and confusion upon earth, may we not recognise a most just and appropriate picture, of such a startling phase in the world's history, in the striking words which he employs, without supposing that any personal fallen angel is at all designated? And, further, have we not, apparently, some reason to fear, from the signs in the heaven and upon the earth, that the exodus of these three-spirits of daimons-these three contagious and convulsing phrenzies has already commenced in these our days?

It is a curious point, that nowhere in the New Testament, nowhere, indeed, in the whole Bible, is there indicated any connexion or resemblance between Satan, the diabolos, or proper devil who is called "the wicked one," "the dragon," and "the serpent"and these daimons, such as would lead us to conclude them personal wicked spirits, similar to him in his moral nature, and obedient to his will; or to infer any relation whatever to exist between them, other than that by which they, in common with death, and sickness, and infirmity, and all other human misery, and even serpents and scorpions, and the unwilling subjection of the creature to vanity and the bondage of corruption, and the groaning and travailing of the whole creation, are represented as a result and a portion of his permitted power upon earth. Never are they termed his ministers. Whenever the fallen spirits who obey the behests of Satan are alluded to, they are called "his angels." Thus, in Matt. xxv. 41, we read, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil [diabolos] and his angels." So also in Rev. xii. 7, " And the dragon fought, and his angels ;" and v. 9, " And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent,

called the devil [diabolos], and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels [not daimons] were cast out with him."

But there is one other important passage that must not be passed over, and which, being apparently the strongest, we have reserved to the last. St. James says Epistle ii. 19-"The devils [daimons] also believe, and tremble." This, it cannot be denied, seems, at first sight, very much opposed to the views we have been proposing; and yet, it is but a seeming opposition, which, upon consideration, entirely disappears, or rather is changed into a confirmation. For is not the apostle here alluding to the very belief and confessions made by the daimoniacs and pythonic spirits, both to our Lord and to St. Paul, as formerly noticed, and doubtless to the other apostles also, when sent forth to heal the sick and cast out daimons? And does not the trembling, spoken of by St. James, refer to that convulsive tremor and shuddering which was the unfailing indication and accompaniment of a paroxysm of the daimoniac disorder, which, it will be found, is the charac teristic symptom of the approach of the afflatus to the Hindoo Pythonics of the present day, and which is the common symptom attending the accession of epileptic, hysteric, and similar convulsive seizures? The history of the convulsionaries, and of the first quakers [tremblers], show the invariable connexion that exists between convulsive action of the body, and spiritual exaltation of whatever kind, whether hysteric, enthusiastic, or what the Jews considered daimoniac. After having witnessed the phenomena of Hindoo possession, and looking to the sense in which these words daimon and daimoniac are so invariably employed in the Gospels, we believe the foregoing to be the true sense-or, at least, a very probable explanation-of the passage. And should this interpretation appear strange, as, doubtless, from its novelty it may, we would pray those who doubt its correctness to look into the church history of the first ages, to mark the importance attached-as in the case of SS. Gervasius and Protanius before alluded to-to the trembling, and convulsions, and horrified cries of the daimoniacs at the

sight, or touch, or approach of relics, for the testing of which they were retained as a sort of spiritual alembic—to note the degree of conclusive proof which this shuddering testimony was supposed to afford; and then to say, is not this the terrified credence, the believing and trembling of the duimons, to which St. James refers? Was the apostle alluding to what passes in the world of spirits among the fallen angels, of which our Lord himself never vouchsafes a hint, and to which, were they even revealed to himself, St. James could hardly refer as an argument calculated to influence forcibly those he was addressing? Or was he not, rather, referring to the fearful cries, and the confessions made amid tremblings and convulsions of the frame, by parties under the daimoniac paroxysm, which they had all, probably, frequently witnessed; and which they, as well as he, in common with their times, believed to proceed from tabernacling daimons?

"So

We find this very mode of speech, this treating the acts of the possessed, as if performed immediately, and almost visibly, by the daimons themselves, in many other portions of the New Testament. Thus, in the account of the Gadarene daimoniac already quoted, Mark, v. 10, we read, "HE [the possessed] besought him much that he would not send THEM [the daimons] out of the country." But immediately afterwards, v. 12, the man is lost sight of altogether, and the daimons are introduced as the sole actors. "ALL the devils [daimons] besought him, saying, Send us into the swine." And so, also, in Matt. viii. 31. the devils [daimons] besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine." If we may, and must understand the entreaty here nakedly described as one made by the daimons, to mean an entreaty preferred in the personality, indeed, of daimons, but through the bodily form and organs of possessed man, may we not with equal justice, must we not upon consistent principles of interpretation, understand the belief of the daimons alluded to by St. James, to be a belief, expressed, indeed, in like manner, in the personality of daimons, but through the frame and mouth of possessed man also, the very addition of trembling, or convulsive shuddering, being an emphatic cha

racteristic of that condition; and the revelations of this condition - when man's own consciousness, turned back from and blinded to the relations of the outer world, and losing, or bewildered as to his own true identity, may only be the more awakened to an intuitive and perhaps painful perception of the reality of deity, and the awful beauty of holiness-the revelations of such a condition constituting, possibly, as we before suggested, as true, nay, more true and unexceptionable testimonies to the truth of the divine existence, than utterances proceeding from the angels of him who is the father of liesspirits irreparably lost, and therefore irretrievably wicked; whose sole and eternal thought and feeling towards God and his beloved, must be hopeless hatred; whose eternal word, denial; whose eternal action, the endeavour to destroy his works, and mar the purposes of his love?

But we do not wish, nor is it requisite, to press this point of critical interpretation any further. We are profoundly impressed with the marked distinction, which is everywhere preserved in the original of the New Testament as we imagine every Greek scholar must be- between the two terms, diabolos and daimon. We see in the former everywhere indicated a being, whose nature is morally wicked; in the latter we see denoted-when not applied by St. Paul, in the Greek sense, to the mediate divinities worshipped by the Gentiles, or by him and the author of Revelations, to a similar worship revived in corrupted Christendom-that state of man's altered consciousness, when he is said expressly to be beside himself, and an intelligence different from his sane and ordinary self seems to direct his words and actions-a state which the heathens (as the modern Turks) looked upon as having something divine, or, as Plato would express it, something daimoniacal in it; which the Jews, like the modern Hindoos, in one phase of their pythonic systemfor in the other they resemble the Greeks and Romans-supposed to result from the indwelling of an evil spirit; but which medical men of the present day would pronounce to be epilepsy or lunacy, and which the express language of the Gospels themselves warrants them in doing so. For,