But it is also certain that this belief amongst the Jews was one of'gradual growth, and is not to be tracedin the Old Testament in any such definite form as we meet with it in the New. The expression “Satan” is indeed found in the Old Testament, but only five times, if so frequently, as a proper name,—thrice in the book of Job (L 6, 12; ii. 1), once in the opening of the 21st chap, of 1 Chronicles (although here the allusion to a distinct personality may be held doubtful), and in Zechariah (iii. 1). In all other places where the word occurs, “Satan” is used in its common sense of “adversary,” a sense in which it also occurs in the Gospels, in the well-known passage (Matt, xvi. 23) where our Lord addresses St Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” or “adversary.” The books of Chronicles and Zechariah are indisputably amongst the latest writings of the Old Testament; and, although the date of Job is unsettled, it may also be presumed to belong to a late period in the history of revelation. In the earlier prophetic literature of the Hebrews there is no recognition of any spirit of evil at war with Jehovah. All power and dominion are, on the contrary, clearly ascribed to Jehovah himself, who is supreme i∏ heaven, on earth, and under the earth. The connection of Satan with the serpent in the garden of Eden in Genesis (iii. 1-7) is an inference of later dogmatic opinion, arising probably out of the use of the expression “Old Serpent” applied to Satan in Rev. (xx. 2), but receives no countenance from the scriptural narrative itself, which speaks of the serpent purely as an animal, and pronounces a curse against him with reference to his animal nature solely. The idea of a distinct personality of evil, therefore, is not to be found in the earlier Hebrew Scriptures, and is, in fact, inconsistent with the cardinal ∙principle of the older Hebrew theology that Jehovah was the sole source of all power, the author both of good and evil, who hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exod. x. 27), and sent a lying spirit among the prophets of Ahab (I Kings xxii. 20-3). Even in the later Scriptures in which “Satan” is spoken of as a distinct person, there is little or no analogy betwixt what is said of such a person in these Scriptures and what is said of him in the New Testament. The “Satan” of the book of Job is described as coming among the “sons of God” to present himself before the Lord. He is the image of malice, restlessness, and envy— the willing messenger of evil to Job; but he is not represented as the impersonation of evil, or as a spiritual assailant of the patriarch. He is really a delegated agent in the hands of Jehovah to execute His will, and the evils with which he assails Job are outward evils. The picture is quite different from that of the “Archangel ruined,” or the devil, or Satan, of later theology.

The question then arises as to the special source of the conception of the devil as a fallen and evil spirit. The explanation commonly given of this conception by our modern critical schools is that it sprang out of the intercourse of the Jews with the Persians during their period of exile. In the Persian, or Iranian, mythology it is well known that a personal power of evil was conspicuously recognized. The Iranian religion divided the world betwixt two opposing self-existent deities, the one good and the other evil, but both alike having a share in creation and in man. Ormuzd, or Ahuramazda, was holy and true, and to be honoured and worshipped. But Ahriman, or Anra-mainyu, the evil-minded, the spirit of darkness, was no less powerful, and claimed an equal share of man’s homage. These were the good and the evil in thought, word, and deed. Man has to choose betwixt the two. He cannot serve both. With this dualistic system the Jews came in contact during their captivity at Babylon, and are supposed to have retained permanent traces of it in their subsequent theology. The conception of the devil, and of a lower kingdom of demons, or devils, is the evident illustration of this. The case is put in this way by a Christian writer of moderation and knowledge :—“That the Hebrew prophets had reiterated their belief in one God with the most profound conviction is not to be questioned; but as little can it be doubted that, as a people, the Jews had exhibited little impulse towards monotheism, and that from this time (the period of their captivity) we discern a readiness to adopt the Zoroastrian demonology” (Cox’s Aryan Mythology, ii. 356). The conception of Satan in the later canonical books of Chronicles and Zechariah is even attributed to this source. “Thus far Satan had appeared, as in the book of Job, among the ministers of God; but in later books we have a closer approximation to the Iranian creed. In Zechariah and the first book of Chronicles, Satan assumes the character of Ahriman, and appears as the author of evil. Still later he becomes the prince of devils, the source of wicked thoughts, the enemy of the Word and Son of God” (Ibid., p. 351).

The process by which the Jewish mind worked out this conception and the whole scheme of demonology found in the New Testament was of course gradual. The Book of Wisdom, a product of Alexandriau-Jewish thought in the 2d century before Christ, which speaks of the devil having “through envy introduced evil into the world” (ii. 24), is supposed to represent a stage in this development; and the apocryphal books of Enoch and Esdras (IV.), the former of which is pre-Christian, indicate further .stages. Another stage is supposed to be marked by the recognition of a “devil,” or evil spirit, under the name of Asmodeus, in the book of Tobit (1Õ0 b.c.) There is certainly a remarkable analogy betwixt parts of the eschatological teaching of the book of Enoch and other apocryphal books and that σf the gospels. But the development of Jewish theology as a whole, in the ages immediately antecedent to Christianity, is still involved in considerable obscurity; and it is difficult to say how much of the. eschatology and demonology of the New Testament is to be regarded as original, and how much as derived or inherited from prior modes of thought.

It must also be conceded that, even should we accept the modern critical theory of the rise of the New Testament conception of the devil and of demons, there is much in it that must be pronounced very different from the Zoroastrian or Iranian conception. The devil of the gospels is in some respects very unlike the Ahriman of Zoroastrianism. He is in no sense a twin-creator of man. He has no original share in him, and no right to his homage. In the Persian system the warfare of good or evil is a warfare of balanced forces. But the evil personality of the New Testament, powerful as he is, and always the enemy of the divine, is yet a subordinated and inferior being. He is the tempter of the Son of God and the enemy of man. He has power on earth, and even a certain power over the Son of man; and yet the Son can restrain and bid him get behind Him. The subordinated forces of evil—the demons—are all subject to Christ. They hear His word and obey it. In short, the devil of the New Testament is, in comparison with the source of evil recognized by Zoroastrianism, a limited power. He is a subordinate although insurrectionary spirit, working by spiritual means upon the heart of man, and in no sense a native power having an original or creative hold of him. This sets the evangelical conception on a higher level than the Persian, and proves that the Jewish mind, supposing that it did borrow certain impulses from the Iranian dualism with which it came in contact in the period of exile, yet wrought out the conception in the depth of its own religious and moral consciousness within the sphere of revealed truth which was its great educational medium.

The idea of an evil personality was therefore so far a native growth of the Jewish mind, working upon hints contained, although not developed, in the earlier Hebrew Scriptures. It is evident from various passages, both of the Pentateuch (Lev. xvii. 17; Deut, xxxii. 17) and of the prophetic Scriptures and the Psalms (Isa. xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14; Jer. xv. 36; Ps. cvi. 37), that the Hebrews were cognizant of evil beings supposed to dwell in darkness and waste places. The names applied to those beings in the passages referred to are various, sometimes seirim—lit. goats (Lev. xvii. 7; Isa. xiii. 21), and sometimes shedim (Deut, xxxii. 17), probably a name for demigods, both phrases being translated “devils” in our authorized version of the Pentateuch. This translation suggests later associations; but such expressions plainly denote a belief in evil beings, the survival, probably, in the Hebrew consciousness of fragments of an older native faith which deified the powers of evil as well as of good. Some have traced a similar survival in the name Azazel, translated in our version scape-goat (Levit, xvi. 8, 10, 26), and which has been supposed to represent an evil being haunting the desert, to which was devoted the goat sent away on the great day of atonement. This opinion is disputed by others on grounds both philological and theological. But it may be almost certainly assumed that, with all the jealous monotheism of the Jews, there was an undergrowth of darker conceptions, pointing to evil existences opposed to the divine, and that to some extent the later idea of the devil sprang out of this natural growth in the Hebrew mind of an evil side to nature and to life. This process of growth may have been greatly aided by contact with the Persian dualism, and especially the idea of a kingdom and hierarchy of evil powers seems to have been indebted to this source. But it was also largely original, and at the end, as at the beginning, the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the devil and his angels were very distinct from those of the Persian faith. They belong to a higher level of thought, and are the product of a more advanced stage of moral and spiritual feeling.

The idea of the devil so clearly expressed in the New Testament passed as a dominant factor into the early Christian theology, acquiring for many centuries an always deeper hold on the popular religious imagination. In the writings of the fathers of the 2d and 3d centuries the devil plays an important part. The whole of the Roman imperial system, and all that opposed the progress of the gospel, was identified with his kingdom. Satan was the “prince of this world,” he was the rival and caricature of the divine. “Satan,” said Tertullian, “is God’s ape;” and the saying passed into a proverb. He fell by pride and arrogance and envy of the divine creation (Iren., Adv. Haer., iv. 40). He was, according to Cyprian (De Unitate Ecclst, the author of all heresies and delusions; he held man by reason of his sin in rightful possession, and man could only be rescued from his power by the ransom of Christ’s blood. This extraordinary idea of a payment or satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price of man’s salvation is found both in Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., v. 1. 1.) and in Origen, and may be said to have held its sway in the church for nearly a thousand years. And yet Origen is credited with the opinion that, bad as the devil was, he was not altogether beyond hope of pardon. In this as in other respects the early Alexandrian school showed a milder and broader type of thought than the prevailing theology of the church. Occasionally in later times the milder opinion was expressed, as by Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century; but gradually it vanished, and the devil was drawn by the theological pencil in darker and more terrible colours. Augustine greatly helped to strengthen and confirm the darker view, and to give in this as in other things a gloomier tinge to religious thought. During the Middle Ages the belief in the devil was absorbing—saints conceived themselves and others to be in constant conflict with him. It is hardly possible for us now, as M. Reville says in his short treatise on the subject, “to imagine to what a degree this belief controlled men’s whole lives. It was the one fixed idea with every one, particularly from the 13th to the 15th century—the period at which we may consider this superstition to have reached its climax.” The superstition showed certainly but slight signs of yielding in the 15th, or even in the 16th or 17th centuries. Luther lived in a constant consciousness of contact and opposition with the evil one. At his study, in bed, or in his cell, the devil was incessantly interfering with his work or rest. As he was going to begin his studies he heard a noise which he immediately interpreted as proceeding from his enemy. “As I found he was about to begin again, I gathered together my books and got into bed. Another time in the night I heard him above my cell walking in the cloister; but as I knew it was the devil I paid no attention to him and went to sleep.” Again he says: “Early this morning, when I awoke the fiend came and began disputing with me. ‘ Thou art a great sinner,’ said he. I replied, ‘ Canst thou not tell me something new, Satan? ’”

This realism of belief in an evil power near to man, and constantly assailing him, continued more or less all through the 17th century, and was especially strong, as Mr Buckle has shown in his well-known volumes, in Scotland. He has somewhat overcharged his picture; but he presents at the same time indisputable facts which leave no doubt that the clergy and people alike imagined that “the devil was always and literally at hand—that he was haunting them, speaking to them, and tempting them. Go where they would he was there.” With the rise of a rationalistic temper throughout Europe, in the 18th century, this belief in the pervading influence of diabolic agency began to disappear. The sense of the supernatural decayed in all directions, and especially the old belief in the arbitrary control exercised by an evil power over human destiny. And while the religious impulse has gained greatly since then, and shown renewed vigour both in an evangelical and catholic direction, it cannot be said that the earlier faith in the operations of a personal devil has acquired reascendency. It may be still the prevailing opinion of Christendom that there is an evil power working in the world opposed to the divine; but whether this power is personal, or how far it touches the human will, or again, whether there is a subterranean kingdom of demons with a prince of demons or devil at their head, and how far such a kingdom has arty relation to human destiny, are all questions that must be held to be very unsettled, or maintained with very doubtful confidence in any section of the Christian church. It is our business simply to note such a change in the attitude of Christian belief, and not to express any opinion as to its advantage or otherwise. It is too much to speak with Μ. Reville of Satan as a “fallen majesty;” but the idea of the devil certainly no longer bulks in Christian thought as it once did, nor is his reign the recognized influence that it once was over human life and experience. (j. τ.)

That there are angels and spirits, good and bad, says an eminent writer; that at the head of these last, there is one more considerable and malignant than the rest, who, in the form, or under the name, of a serpent, was deeply concerned in the fall of man, and whose head, in the language of prophecy, the Son of Man was one day to bruise; that this evil spirit, though that prophecy be in part fulfilled, has not yet received his death’s wound, but is still permitted, for ends to us unsearchable, and in ways which we cannot particularly explain, to have a certain degree of power in this world, hostile to its virtue and happiness,--all this is so clear from Scripture, that no believer, unless he be previously “spoiled by philosophy and vain deceit,” can possibly entertain a doubt of it. Certainly, among the numerous refinements of modern times, there is scarcely any thing more extraordinary than the attempt that has been made, and is still making, to persuade us that there really exists no such being in the world as the devil; and that when the inspired writers speak of such a being, all that they mean is, to personify the evil principle! A bold effort unquestionably; and could its advocates succeed in persuading men into the universal belief of it, they would do more to promote his cause and interest in the world than he himself has been able to effect since the seduction of our first parents. But to be armed against this subtle stratagem, let us attend to the plain doctrine of divine revelation respecting this matter. In the Old Testament, particularly in the first two chapters of Job, this evil spirit is called Satan; and in the New Testament, he is spoken of under various titles, which are also descriptive of his power and malignity; as for example, he is called, “the prince of this world,” John xii, 31; “the prince of the power of the air,” Eph. ii, 2; “the god of this world,” 2 Cor. iv, 4; “the dragon, that old serpent, the devil,” Rev. xx, 2; “the wicked one,” 1 John v, 19. He is represented as exercising a sovereign sway over the human race in their natural state, or previous to their being enlightened, regenerated, and sanctified by the Gospel, Eph. ii, 2, 3. His kingdom is described as a kingdom of darkness; and the influence which he exercises over the human mind is called “the power,” or energy, “of darkness,” Col. i, 13. Hence believers are said to be “called out of darkness into marvellous light,” 1 Peter ii, 9. Farther, he is said to go about “as a roaring lion, seeking its prey, that he may destroy men’s souls,” 1 Peter v, 8. Christ says, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him; when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of that which is his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it,” John viii, 44. We are also taught that this grand adversary of God and man has a numerous band of fallen spirits under his control; and that both he and they are reserved under a sentence of condemnation unto the judgment of the great day, Jude 6; and that “everlasting fire,” or perpetual torment, “is prepared for the devil and his angels,” Matt. xxv, 41. In these various passages of Scripture, and many others which might be added, the existence of the devil is expressly stated; but if, as our modern Sadducees affirm, nothing more is intended in them than a personification of the abstract quality of evil, the Bible, and especially the New Testament, must be eminently calculated to mislead us in matters which intimately concern our eternal interests. If, in inferring from them the existence of evil spirits in this world, we can be mistaken, it will not be an easy matter to show what inference deduced from Scripture premises may safely be relied on. It ought not, however, to surprise Christians that attempts of this kind should be made. St. Paul tells us, that in his day there were “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ; and no wonder,” says he, “for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light,” 2 Cor. xi, 13, 14.

To the notion, that the Jews derived their opinions on this subject from the oriental philosophy, and that like the Persians they set up a rival god; it may be replied, that the Jewish notion of the devil had no resemblance to what the Persians first, and the Manicheans afterward, called the evil principle; which they made in some sort coördinate with God, and the first source of all evil, as the other is of good. For the devil, in the Jewish system, is a creature as much as any other being in the universe, and is liable to be controlled by omnipotence,--an attribute which they ascribed to God alone.

The arguments from philosophy against the existence of evil spirits are as frail as that which is pretended to be grounded upon criticism. For that there is nothing irrational in the notion of superior beings, is plain from this: that if there be other beings below us, there may be others above us. If we have demonstration of one Being at least who is invisible, there may be many other created invisible and spiritual beings. If we see men sometimes so bad as to delight in tempting others to sin and ruin, there may exist a whole order of fallen beings who may have the same business and the same malignant pleasure; and if we see some men furiously bent upon destroying truth and piety, this is precisely what is ascribed to these evil spirits. It is one of the serious circumstances of our probation on earth, that we should be exposed to this influence of Satan, and we are therefore called to “watch and pray that we enter not into temptation.”

The establishment of the worship of devils so general in some form throughout a great part of the Heathen world, is at once a painful and a curious subject, and deserves a more careful investigation than it has received. In modern times, devil-worship is seen systematized in Ceylon, Burmah, and many parts of the East Indies; and an order of devil-priests exists, though contrary to the Budhist religion, against the temples of which it sets up rival altars. Mr. Ives, in his Travels through Persia, gives the following curious account of devil-worship: “These people (the Sanjacks, a nation inhabiting the country about Mosul, the ancient Nineveh) once professed Christianity, then Mohammedanism, and last of all devilism. They say it is true that the devil has at present a quarrel with God; but the time will come when, the pride of his heart being subdued, he will make his submission to the Almighty; and, as the Deity cannot be implacable, the devil will receive a full pardon for all his transgressions, and both he, and all those who paid him attention during his disgrace, will be admitted into the blessed mansions. This is the foundation of their hope, and this chance for heaven they esteem to be a better one than that of trusting to their own merits, or the merits of the leader of any other religion whatsoever. The person of the devil they look on as sacred; and when they affirm any thing solemnly, they do it by his name. All disrespectful expressions of him they would punish with death, did not the Turkish power prevent them. Whenever they speak of him, it is with the utmost respect; and they always put before his name a certain title corresponding to that of highness or lord.” The worshippers of the devil mentioned by Ives were also found by Niebuhr in the same country, in a village between Bagdad and Mosul, called Abd-el-asis, on the great Zab, a river which empties itself into the Tigris. This village, says he, is entirely inhabited by people who are called Isidians, and also Dauâsin. As the Turks allow the free exercise of religion only to those who possess sacred books, that is, the Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews, the Isidians are obliged to keep the principles of their religion very secret. They therefore call themselves Mohammedans, Christians, or Jews, according to the party of him who inquires what their religion is. Some accuse them of worshipping the devil under the name of Tschellebi; that is, Lord. Others say that they show great reverence for the sun and fire, that they are unpolished Heathens, and have horrid customs. I have also been assured that the Dauâsins do not worship the devil; but adore God alone as the Creator and Benefactor of all mankind. They will not speak of Satan, nor even have his name mentioned. They say that it is just as improper for men to take a part in the dispute between God and a fallen angel, as for a peasant to ridicule and curse a servant of the pacha who has fallen into disgrace; that God did not require our assistance to punish Satan for his disobedience; it might happen that he might receive him into favour again; and then we must be ashamed before the judgment seat of God, if we had, uncalled for, abused one of his angels: it was therefore the best not to trouble one’s self about the devil; but endeavour not to incur God’s displeasure ourselves. When the Isidians go to Mosul, they are not detained by the magistrates, even if they are known. The vulgar, however, sometimes attempt to extort money from them. When they offer eggs or butter to them for sale, they endeavour first to get the articles into their hands, and then dispute about the price, or for this or other reasons to abuse Satan with all their might; on which the Dauâsin is often polite enough to leave every thing behind, rather than hear the devil abused. But in the countries where they have the upper hand, nobody is allowed to curse him, unless he chooses to be beaten, or perhaps even to lose his life.