The Extent of the Deceiver's Snares

That we may perceive somewhat of the assiduity and success with which this arch-Deceiver has cultivated his powers, we propose in the present chapter to advert to the extent of his deceptions. The Scriptures speak of “the depths of Satan,” and of his amazing power. They represent him as a “roaring lion going about seeking whom he may devour;” — as “going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it;” and as “deceiving the nations’’’’ and the “whole world.”

His powers of locomotion are not known to us, nor are they to be comprehended by human organs. As a spirit, he is possessed of wonderful activity. Milton well represents him as an “archangel ruined.” The angel Gabriel flew from the supreme heavens to this world, a distance far beyond the starry firmament, during the time that the prophet Daniel was employed in uttering a short prayer. Nor is there any reason to believe that the activity of infernal spirits is less than that of these celestial beings. He who “maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire,” has given to these invisible ones of the world of darkness, powers of moving from ylace to place, which, while we have no means of ascertaining, are so great, that when combined with their subtle artifices, would render them still more fearful engines of evil, but for him who restrains the wrath of devils as well as men. Not only are the measures of this common foe planned with wonderful adroitness, but from his amazing activity, laid out upon a large scale. He is the great moral juggler of the universe. This earth is spread out before him like a vast chess-board, every part of which he has been studying for G,000 years. There is not a square of it which his eye has not surveyed; not a king, nor bishop, nor knight, nor castle, nor pawn, nor the meanest figure that has a part in the great game of life, with the power and value of which he is not acquainted, and which he knows not how to make use of to the best advantage, both for the purposes of defence and attack. If there were but less proportion between his skill and the value of the stake for which he plays, his indefatigable assiduity would not excite so much alarm. The stake is infinite; the skill, blessed be God, falls short of that which is infinite; he is a creature,, though probably the greatest of creatures. Yet though a creature, it is no ordinary place that lie occupies; no common powers that lie possesses. It is no small game that he is seeking after. His aim is to blind and infatuate men by millions, and make his victims as the sand of the shore. He does not indeed overlook individual and isolated man; nor suppress his exultation when he circumvents the poorest and meanest of our race. But his eagle eye is fixed upon the nations and for nothing does he utter a louder shout of triumph, than when he has them hoodwinked in his hands, degraded and enslaved.

Among the various ways in which he aims to do this, we will direct our attention, in the first place, to the extensive prevalence of those institutions and mstoms by which large portions of the human race are held tender his dominion. If every age is distinguished by some peculiarity of moral character, it is for the most part a peculiarity in wickedness. Any one who has observed the amazing power which corrupt institutions and customs exert upon the character of the world, will not doubt that they constitute a part of that moral machinery by which this Deceiver retains the minds of men in inexorable bondage. Men and nations who would recoil from a sinful act, are cheated into upholding a sinful custom. Institutions and customs which, proposed for the first time, would strike the mind with horror, cease to be revolting when, by their long standing, men have become familiar with them. If they are handed down to them from their ancestors, they venerate them, because they are slow to believe that those whom they have been accustomed to respect could do wrong. No matter how absurd the usage, if it comes to them under the sanction of great names, and universal adoption, and by-gone ages. It is enough that it is inwoven with the framework, of human society, and comes to them under all the force of a prescriptive law; they have no settled opinions about it, except that change would be an inroad upon the past.

As a general fact, the customs and institutions of the world belong to a concern in which the great Adversary traffics in wholesale deception. This invincible attachment to long-established usage, is the principal reason why, in most of the countries of the East, the female mind is so degraded. Woman holds too important a place in human society, fills too interesting a sphere, and is fitted to exert too wide an influence, to be overlooked by the common enemy. There, her place is the harem; the light of day may scarcely look upon her; her mind is unimproved, and her office is that of a pet-slave. Yet, strange to say, such is the power of custom, that even if the longimprisoned bird were let loose, it would return to its cage.

This also is the principal reason of the division of castes throughout India, by which a large majority of the inhabitants are reduced to the most hopeless state of humiliation. No advantage results from it to any one order of society; the humbled classes are by far the more numerous, and might easily become the more powerful; but they have been so long accustomed to the yoke, that they know not how to live without it. Here is a territory containing one hundred and fifty millions of inhabitants, where this wretched system, primarily a religious, but so inwoven with the social and civil institutions of the country, and indeed with the entire life of the Hindus, not only precludes all improvement in their secular affairs, but so enslaves the minds of the people as to present the most discouraging obstacles to the propagation of Christianity, and their consequent elevation.

The same delusion attaches itself to ike feudal system. The most striking features of this system were its landed aristocracy, the absolute subjection of the vassal to his lord, the tenure of land by military service, ecclesiastical nobility, and the independence of the peers and barons of the crown. The two great evils of this system, furnished the great adversary with the most effective instruments of destruction to the souls of men. They were the personal servitude of the greater portion of mankind during the dark ages, and the elevation of the profession of arms, to the absolute contempt of the more honorable, virtuous and peaceful occupations. Chivalry too, was the proud and restive associate of the feudal system. And who does not see, that, that passion for arms, that reckless spirit, that honor of knighthood, those rewards of valor, that splendor of equipage, those romantic ideas of justice, that love of wild adventure, and that affability and gallantry, so artfully inwoven with all its dissipation and blood, were but the false glare thrown around it by the prince of darkness?

The religious frenzy of the Crusades is another feature of this strange delusion. It is no extravagance to say, that in these military expeditions Satan himself bore the banner of the cross. Under the pretence of recovering the Holy Land from the power of infidels, he has by this device immolated millions on his own altar. So absolutely did this wild fanaticism take possession of the mind of Europe for several centuries, that not only sovereigns, princes of the blood, dignitaries of the church, and a countless multitude of the common people, but women and children enlisted by thousands under its colors. Ninety thousand children, commanded by a child, were once engaged in this adventure, only to be murdered, or starved, or sold as slaves. “So many crimes and SO much misery have seldom been accumulated as in the three years of the first crusade.” It is not enough to confess that these expeditions were the result of a misguided enthusiasm; they were the result of marvellous delusion, and led on by the angel of the bottomless pit.

The long-established custom of war is also one of the artifices of the great adversary. The moral perceptions and sensibilities even of Christian men and Christian nations, in relation to this fearful scourge of humanity, have actually been blinded and blunted by his subtle influence. As a source of crime and misery, this unnatural, absurd and barbarous custom stands out beyond every scourge of the earth. Yet is it a perfect illusion. There is no reason for it in the world. No good comes of it. There is no such enmity between nations as war intimates. Men do not hate those they kill, for they do not hnow them. No; there is strange delusion here. It was inwrought into the habits of society by their greatest foe. It was among the earlier lessons instilled into the youthful mind, both in the brightest and in the darkest ages of the world’s history. The maxims, the laws, and the pohcy of nations have been founded upon it; and it has been sustained by the talent, the poetry, and the enthusiasm of the world. But the devil is at the bottom of it. Nor is his deception yet fully detected and abhorred. When I see the enthusiasm which excites the thirst for military glory; when I observe the almost universal admiration of military talent which is so fatal to the souls of men; when I hear mothers chanting the praises of warriors in order to soothe the sobs of the cradle; I have evidence which I cannot resist, that the wise and the good, — nay, the loveliest and the best, are sinfully heedless of the extent of his subtlety who “goeth about seeking whom he may devour.”

This same attachment to customs and institutions is also one of the reasons for all those corriiting amusements by which the deceiver has obtained such power over large masses of men, and drugged their cup of pleasure. The early amphitheatres at Rome, and especially its gigantic Coliseum, so long the arena of games, and spectacles, and gladiatorial shows, cannot now be contemplated without horror. Those scenes of carnage and blood, and licentiousness, could never have obtained the sanction of princes, and men and women of noble birth, and been made the favorite pastime of the people, but for a miserably deluded state of mind. The Greeks were more refined and civilized; yet their festivals, noted for folly and sin, were in honor of a heathen god and goddess, and their athletic games were celebrated in honor of Jupiter, Hercules, Apollo, and Neptune. Both their festivals and games confirmed one of the noblest races of men in all the atheism and vices of idolatry. The Bacchanalian orgies, celebrated in Greece, Egypt and India, consisted of horrid and unnatural rites, and were distinguished by every kind of lewdness and extravaoance. And what were the tilts and tournaments of the dark ages but the stimulus to magnificence and luxury, to those false notions of honor which have deprived society of so many bright ornaments, to passions which agitate, and to manners, habits and principles, which degrade and destroy?

If from amusements of this barbarous character, we advert to the dramatic exhibitions both of ancient and modern times, we cannot fail to discover indications of their dark origin. Whether in the form of opera, farce, pantomime, comedy, or tragedy, its tendency is to tempt men to sin, and then harden them in the commission of it. Strange to say, they were first introduced at Rome to appease the wrath of the gods on account of a prevailing pestilence. It were difficult to find a more convincing proof of the diabolical auspices under which they came into being. In Greece the theatre was notoriously dissolute; and historians have recorded that the fondness for theatrical representations was one of the principal causes of the degeneracy, corruption, and decline of the Athenian republic.

Nowhere has wickedness so systematically assumed the names of virtue as in the drama. Nowhere is vice exhibited in more harmless, not to say bewitching colors. And nowhere, when visited with its native consequences and just reward, is it so surrounded with incidents, and palliatives that secure it sympathy. Honor and sublimity are here attached to deeds and motives which religion shudders at; nor are there wanting instances in which woman is here seen as not the less lovely because she poisons, or assassinates her husband, nor the son the less detestable because he is a parricide. The most caj)tivating ingredients of the drama are its incentives to evil, adorned by all the charms of painting and poetry. Music herself, the native daughter of heaven, with all her enchanting harmony, is here pressed into the service of the devil. And as though this were not enough, under the auspices of the church of Rome, the drama has been 2^i“C)fanely spiritualized. Moses and the burning bush, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus, the holy sacrament, and the Eternal Father have in turn been produced upon the stage, and in inventions and language of the lowest farce. Nor are we greatly surprised to learn, that the infidel world has caught the spirit of holy ecclesiastics, and in our own day, and when “men’s hearts were failing them for fear,” the judgments of Almighty God have been grossly ridiculed, and his pestilence actually personified upon the stage, amid scenery and decorations that were fit emblems of the dark and invisible world where the first sketch was drawn.

There are other amusements too, far less corrupting indeed than these, against which the voice of the pul2:)it has often been lifted in vain. I regret to say it, but there are scenes, even in embellished society, among oui’selves, where when the “sons of God appear, Satan also comes among them.” And what is most deeply to be regretted, they are so interlaced with the modern systems of education, and unhappily form so essential a part of our social organization, that it would seem that nothing can root them out. Some of them are innocent and harmless in themselves, but from their nature so liable to abuse and perversion, that they become snares, and at best give no proof that those by whom they are sanctioned, “abstain from the appearance of evil.” And whatever may be said or thought of them now, few I think will doubt that they will have no place in Christian families alid in a Christian land, when that day shall come in which Satan shall be bound, and no more go forth to deceive the nations.

Institutions and customs like these indicate the subtle influence of a subtle foe. They spread through great masses of men; their action is insensibly and incessantly going on, and their efifect is to blind the mind, sear the conscience, harden the heart, and produce indiflference, if not contempt of all that assimilates the soul to the character of heaven. We take then a second thought, and it is certainly one not destitute of interest; I refer to the extended power wliicli the adversary exerts in the education of the young. He is not so destitute of knowledge and art as to overlook the rising generation. Give him the training of the youthful mind, and he asks no better opportunity of satiating his malignity upon the race. Give him this, and you invest him with power to do more to advance error and ungodliness, to corrupt and destroy the world, than can be accomytlished by any other means. That resistance to parental authority, that disregard of truth, those habits of self-indulgent idleness, that companionship with fools, that laxity of morals, that insidious intemperance, and that wide-spread infidelity, which mark the character and conduct of so many of the young, are all indications of his artful training. The examples of piety, the force of truth, the power and tenderness of parental love, have no such formidable enemy as his indefatigable subtlety. He well knows, that as a general law of the human mind, what the child is the man will be; and that in a few fleeting years the boys and the girls that are now overlooked by the risen generation, will themselves constitute the only effective portion of human society when the risen generation have de-Bcended to the tomb. We need not then be surprised at his zeal and artifices to control the education of the young. He begins his work early, and lays the axe at the root of the tree.

It is a fact well fitted to excite suspicion and alarm, that in his efforts to carry this foul device into effect, he has so extensively corrupted the literature of the world, and thereby poisoning the sources of human knowledge, has poisoned the community at the fountain-head. In few things is the cunning craftiness of this dextei’ous intriguer more apparent than in controlling literary men and literary institutions. The most important of these institutions were founded by his influence; while not a few of those founded “for Christ and his church,” have been wrested from them by his artifices; and for the few that remain pure he has already set his snare. From the school of Plato to the Royal Academy of Paris, the most renowned seats of learning have been sources of infidelity, or false religions.

Since the invention of the art of printing, he has also spared no effort to control the press. To a lamentable extent, it has dazzled only to blind the youthful inquirer. It has possessed so much genius and so little piety; its splendid intellect has been the vehicle of so much irreligious sentiment; it has so greatly abounded in caricaturing true religion, and in “daubing with untempered mortar;” that the marvel is that the fabric of the best organized communities lias not long ago crumbled to its foundations. Natural science and the fine arts, the researches of history and chronology, have been prostituted to the designs of the base Deceiver. The popular tales of fiction and romance, to say nothing of their positively demoralizing tendency, are for the most part distinguished for total absence of moral and religious principle, and especially amid scenes where moral and religious principle are demanded and looked for. No mind that indulges itself in this kind of literature, and especially the young mind, unwary and unarmed as it is, can be safe. Its talent and enticements constitute its danger. Artful is that device which thus entices so many thousands into the enemy’s country without any suspicion of the perils that await them. Of all the faculties of the human mind to which the Deceiver has the most ready access, the imagination is probably the most exposed. And here it is trifled with and polluted to a degree that renders it familiar with scenes of wickedness, progressively indifferent to sober reflection, and even decidedly averse to those teachings of practical wisdom which are its only security.

In adverting to the absence of religious and moral principle in the education of the young, I cannot repress the remark, that the growing disuse of the Holy Scriptures, in the system of instruction in common schools, is a blow aimed at the rising generation by the prince of darkness. It is a vain effort to conduct the youthful mind into the paths of light, while it shuts out the sun. It is nothing else than an attempt to educate a generation of human beings, born for immortality, without the knowledge of God. It is leaving them, amid all the lights of science, to feel their dark way to eternity in lonely gloom. I do not know that it is in the power of the devil to direct a more malignant, or more subtle blow against the best interests of men than this. If there is intelligence in the universe, it is in the word of God; if there is moral truth in the universe, it is found there. If there are treasures of thought which reason and philosophy could not acquire by the patience and toil of centuries, they are there. If the youthful mind is ever expanded, and its lofty faculties made more lofty; if its powers of will and feeling are ever wisely controlled; and if the true sources of intellectual and moral enjoyment are ever opened to it; this is the source of them all. Science and literature, and the social affections, the rights of conscience and the rights of man, his holiness and his hopes are all rooted in this consecrated soil. It is not the master intellect of the universe merely that is the author of the Bible; it is the all-pervading and infinite love of the universe. It js no marvel that the prince of darkness should endeavor to cut off the youthful mind from all access to this fountain of light and love. Who, but this “arch thief,” and those who are led captive by him at his will, would steal away this heavenly treasure? “Woe to that generation by which the testimony of God shall be abandoned! But woe also to that generation which is preparing the seed of evil-doers that shall perform the accursed work!”

There is another view of the general thought I am endeavoring to illustrate. I allude to those master-strokes of the deviVs ‘policy by v)hicli he involves large masses of men in the sin of a single individual. Such is the organization of human society, that when one man sins, others not only feel the consequences, but in very many instances, sympathize with the moral turpitude of his wickedness. They do it by treading in the footsteps of his example; by refraining to reprove his conduct; by justifying and vindicating it; and by neglecting to use all proper means for preventing future offences and reforming the offender. Hence the apostolic injunction, “Neither be ye partakers in other men’s sins.” One sin, also, often produces associations of wickedness, and gives vice a currency and a name. The dissolute conduct of Charles II. and the Duke of Buckingham stamped their own dissoluteness on large masses of the English nation; and the licentious court of Louis XIV. and XV. corrupted the mass of the French people.

One sin also not unfrequently promotes combinations in wickedness, just like combinations in trade; men grow rich by it, and make it a matter of speculation and gain. The distiller of ardent spirits thus fabricates iniquity; so does the opium dealer; so does the railroad corporation that profanes the Lord’s-day; and so does the purveyor of luxury in every form. The gaming-table, too, and the brothel, and the vile wretch who lives to pander to the lusts of men, sins that his own sin may become the sin of thousands.

Virtue weeps at this clustered wickedness. Some little spot, otherwise unnoticed, has become as famous in the annals of mankind as the palaces of kings, and not less fatally the slaughter-house of men, than many a bloody field of battle. The scythe of the Destroying Angel thus takes a wide and fell swath, and by a single sweep cuts down and throws together every green thing. If you inspect the corrupted character of men who congregate in large masses, and investigate their history, you will often trace their corruptions to some characteristic delinquency, some single sin of one man, little thought of on his part, but craftily devised by the adversary. The disobedience of Saul, and the rebellion of Absalom, were felt by other men and other times. By consulting the Sacred Records, it will be found that the vile character of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, extended its corrupting influence to twenty kings in succession, and demoralized the nation of Israel for nearly two hundred and fifty years after his death. The apostasy of Julian, and even the errors of Constantine, were felt by unborn ages. The horrors of the French Revolution may be traced to that depraved, unprincipled, and fallen nobleman, Mirabeau, who, to reinstate himself in the salons of Paris, secretly planned the destruction of the monarchy, the regeneration of the state, and sacrJiced his country to his ambition.

There are artifices practised by the great Deceiver which never take effect without vitiating everything with which they come in contact, and producing in the end a portentous amount of evil. Every reader of histoiy will easily recall facts by which this remark is illustrated. It is illustrated by the influence of men of great talents and great vices: such were Voltaire and Chesterfield. It is illustrated by the power of princes and princesses, who, though they have shed lustre over their reign, will, from their profligacy of principle, be remembered for nothing more, or longer, than that they were the models of ambition and injustice: such were Alexander VI. and Catharine II. of Russia. And a corrupt legislation illustrates it, “framing iniquity by a law;” enlisting the popular voice in favor of ti’ansgression, and giving it emphasis and yermanency by the solemnity of its deliberations, and the force of its enactments.

But this is not all. In adverting to the policy of the adversary in involving multitudes in the sins of others, there is more than the mere natural and associated tendencies of wickedness. Such is the moral constitution under which God has placed the human race from the beginning, and such the arrangements of the divine government, that no man sins for himself alone. “The iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate God;” the iniquity of one age of the world is visited upon another; and unless arrested by Him who came to arrest the current of human woes, will flow on to the end of time. On this great principle of the divine administration, the Deceiver has engrafted many a device of his own. If men inherit the sins of their fathers, he corrupts the parent stock; and if one generation is held responsible for the wickedness of previous generations, his stratagem is to corrupt the generations in their origin.

Among the exemplifications of this fact, the present condition of the Jews may not pass unnoticed. With some incidental variations of unbelief and suffering, their condition has been stationary for eighteen centuries. They are a dispersed people, but an undivided nation; a nation scattered throughout all nations, and intermingling with none; a people, with some honorable exceptions, bearing the ignominy of the world’s contempt and heaven’s reprobation. And all this is in fulfilment of an ancient curse, and for an ancient sin. Their ancestors crucified the Son of God, and uttered the fearful imprecation, “His blood be on us and on our children!” The Scriptures inform us that the great Deceiver was the prime mover in this deed of horror, as well as the secret instigator and sustainer of their present unbelief. “The veil that is upon their hearts is yet untaken away.” They constitute the greatest phenomenon in the world, not merely for their national peculiarities, but because they are a living witness of the truth which they themselves deny. Obstinate prejudice, inflexible resistance to all inquiry and argument, national pride, and a deeply imbedded hatred and scorn of Jesus of Nazareth, form the citadel within which they have entrenched themselves, the keys of which are hung up in the hall of the adversary, and among the trophies of his subtlety and conquests, who “blinds the minds of them that believe not.”

There is a large portion of the earth that is occupied by the descendants of Ishmael. This race originated in unbelief of the divine promise to Abraham; and, to the present day, bears the burden of the sentence, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son!” A bold manoeuvre of the adversary, practised upon Sarah, upon Abraham, and upon an Egyptian slave — a deep-laid plot, early concocted in the councils of the prince of darkness, severed this powerful people from the people of God, perpetuated the disunion, and branded the tribes of Ishmael with their characteristic features of enmity to God and man.

From the descendants of Ishmael, go back to a crushed, broken, and deserted people, the descendants of Ham. Facts show us that, thus far in the history of the world, the wrath of God has come upon this people. They were sold as slaves to the Hebrews as early as the days of David; and from that period to the present, the commerce of the world has been, to no small extent, a commerce in the Canaanitish race. And in this commerce of themselves, strange to say, they themselves have been in a great degree the participators. With wonderful infatuation, they have, from age to age, perpetuated this inheritance of crime and misery. It is calculated that Africa has thus annually been drained of no less than 150,000 of her own native inhabitants. We sigh over the wrongs of the colored man, and reprobate the slave-dealer with unsparing severity; and well we may. There is no land where, according to the unvarying narratives both of ancient and modern travellers, the great Deceiver holds such an undisputed and horrible supremacy. And if we would know by what avenue he entered those desert plains, and how it was that his throne is so firmly established there, we learn from authentic records. What became subsequently “the first commandment with promise,” was then the law of nature, and nature’s God. The benevolent Author of the social relations would have the precept respected, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and gave that obligation an emphasis at that early dawn of the world that should never be forgotten. It was just after the flood, and the three sons of Noah contained the germ of all sncceedinof erenerations. To strike a death-blow at the root of one of these great branches of the human family, was the deep policy of the foe; and it was by instigating Hmn to a flagrant violation of this great law. He had tempted Noah, and “he drank of the wine and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and went and told his two brethren without.” And when Noah awoke from his wine, he awoke in the spirit of prophecy, and said,” Cursed he Canaan a servant of servants shall he he to his brethren I Blessed be the God of Shem, and Car naan shall he his servant! God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall he his servant T Thrice was this emphatic curse repeated, in order to make it sure. The Deceiver had sprung the snare, and

this thrice-repeated curse sealed the fate of the Canaanitish race.

Now go to the garden of Eden. “God created man upright.” Integrity was never more exalted, nor innocence more pure, nor happiness more unalloyed, than when the first parents of oar race came from the foining hand of their Maker. But it was fit and proper that as the creature of God, and as the subject of a moral government, humanity should be tried and proved. For the wisest and best reasons, it was tried in the person of its great progenitor, who stood, not for himself alone, but by divine appointment, as the federal head and representative of his race. Since the character and condition of untold millions was thus suspended upon his perfect obedience, if the adversary could but inoculate the primeval stock, the poisonous taint would be transmitted to the end of time. Nor did his purpose fiiil. Through the foulest treachery, the venom took and poisoned every heart of man. This “prince of the power of the air” called up the storm, and wrecked the bark in which the race was bound for eternity. “By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men unto condemnation.” It was a mournful day, for it was the Deceiver’s hour, and the power of darkness.

There is one more thought by which our general position may be more forcibly illustrated, at

302 THE EXTENT OF THE DECEIVER’S SlfARES.

least to some minds. It has been often said, that man is a religioits being. Not that he possesses, by nature, anything like the spirit of true religion; but from his own immortal aspirations, and the demands of conscience, he is not satisfied without a religion of some sort. Temples he will have, and sacrifices, and a worship, and ministers of the sanctuary; and if they be not consecrated to the true God, they will be consecrated to gods which are “the work of men’s hands;” and if they be not the ministry of the true sanctuary, they will be an antichristian, or pagan priesthood. So long as natural conscience has a place in the human bosom, some religion men will have, even though it be false. Blot out the true, burn its Bible, demolish its temples, annihilate its worship, starve, or extirpate its ministry, and the generation now on the earth would not be long in their graves, before some false religion, with its false ministers, would spring up in its place.

No being is more aware of the importance of availing himself of this all-pervading sentiment of the human bosom, than the wary adversary. This, of all other principles of action, it is his policy to control; for if in the matter of their religion he can practise deception upon men, his work of destruction is accomplished. “There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Men never sin with so high and strong a hand, as when they sin from a perverted and blinded conscience. Never was there a more fiend-like plot, and never was a more tremendous engine wielded for the ruin of the nations, than when their religion is under the direction of the prince of darkness.

We need not go far for appropriate illustrations of these thoughts. The whole system oi paganism is the natural offspring of the “father of lies.” It had the same leading features in Greece and Kome, that it now has throughout the heathen world; everywhere, and at all times, “changing the truth of God into a lie.” Preposterous and absurd as are its rites, and impure and sanguinary as they are; the most melancholy feature of them is that they are not only virtually, and from their intrinsic wickedness paid to the great adversary, but to a great extent, professedly paid to him. The Scriptures teach us that “the things which the heathen sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils not to God.” Some they worship, that they may do them good, and others that they may not harm them. The object of religious sacrifices among the Magi of Persia, the Celtic tribes of Britain, and the savages of the western wilderness, was professedly the devil himself. We do not say that such devotees of false relisrions are not sincere:

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for we have no doubt they were, and are so; and for this reason, is their whole system so much the worse; for it is scarcely necessary to inquire what the character of that man, or nation is, that is a sincere worshipper of the devil. And whence is such a religion? It could not have been the unaided work of man. Wise as he is to do evil, paganism is too 2:)reposterous and silly ever to have entered the human intellect, but for the influence of some such invisible agent as the great Deceiver. The fact cannot otherwise be accounted for, that bright and illustrious minds — minds that were the adornment of the classic world in a classic age — minds to whom the wise and great of after-times have been wont to appeal as the great masters of thought and language — minds that have worn their literary honors untarnished, and whose laurels are still green on their brow, actually bowed down to gods of wood and stone! It is a stupidity and Bottishness altogether below the human intellect, even in the mass of the people, unless that intellect be degraded, and subdued by some potent spell.

It were no marvel that the state of the world called for some modification of these gross absurdities. It has called for such modification; nor has the author of all evil been inactive in producing them whenever he has seen that it best suited his own designs. Events have occurred, in the progress of which, a few reflecting minds or some one controlling mind, has been restive under this yoke of pagan ignorance; and from mercenary, or ambitious views, or both, has meditated reform. And when opportunity and the times favor it, the Deceiver stands by and moves the fitting instrument. A striking example of this agency is found in the fabrications of the Arabian impostor. The Roman empire was attacked on every side by barbarians; the pagan mind was unsettled, and the Jewish mind miserable; while the plot to circumvent them was so artfully formed as to take in a portion of them all. Such was the wild impulse under which Mohammedanism began its career, that although obstructed at the outset, in less than a century it diffused itself throughout Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Persia. It has subsisted in vigor for more than eleven hundred years; and even now, like some wayward and wandering planet, it casts its dark penumbra across the sun and shuts out a large portion of the earth from his healing beams. Nor is any satisfactory solution of this moral phenomenon to be found, save in the Scriptures; and there it is attributed to the agency of the devil. The revealing spirit, who well knows and watches all the designs and movements of the subtle foe, foresaw and foretold it; and that we may not mistake its origin, he compares it, in its obstructed and yet rapid advances, to the smoke that came up from the bottomless pit, and “darkened the air and the sun.”

But they are not false religions alone in which the craft of the adversary is discoverable. Among the most subtle, as well as the more effective of his devices, are to be found his corruption and perversion of the religion that is true. Nothing has escaped his polluting touch. You may turn over the pages of almost any dictionary of religious sects, and from the Adamites of the second century to the Universalists of the nineteenth, and from the beginning to the end of the alphabet, you will discover indications of his unremitting subtlety and zeal.

To begin with Rome: her radical error consists in denying that the sacred Scriptures are a sufficient and infallible rule of faith and practice, under the pretence that they are rectified by her wisdom and illumined by her superior light. The deception was artful, and had the effect which the adversary intended. It jostled the planet that was receiving its light from the Sun of Highteousness so far out of place, as to come into collision with the Sun itself, and produce almost total darkness. The delusion took the nations first by suryrise and surreptitiously, and then by force. It was the path of the sorcerer, who, while he held his way amid the mystic and secret rites of Paganism, professed enough of the words and charm of truth, to conceal his aim, until his spell-bound victim rejected the evidence of his own senses in order to abandon himself to deceit and falsehood. K we accredit the Scriptures, Romanism is Christianity metamorphosed into the “doctrine of devils.” They inform us, in explicit language, that the “great Dragon,” that old serpent, “gave power to the beast,” They speak of the papal antichrist as one whose “coming is after the working of Satan,” as the full-grown progeny of the world of darkness, as the very” son of perdition.’*

Now mark the cloven foot, sometimes in the sudden, and sometimes in the gradual transitions from the absurdities of Romanism to other and substituted errors. It would not be surprising, if when men come to see the absurdities and impiety of this system, they should be tempted to reject Christianity altogether; and this the great Deceiver led them to do in France. Elsewhere they satisfied themselves with baptizing radical error with the Christian name; this was the case with the German rationalists and the whole brotherhood of Socinianism. They bear witness to the truth, but propagate lies. “And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light; therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be trasformed as the ministers of righteousness.”

And what shall we say of the whole system of religious persecution f was it from heaven, or from him who “was a murderer from the beginning?” When Pope Innocent VIII. proclaimed that the true method of converting heretics is to burn them — to tread them under foot as venomous adders — to exterminate them; who was his counsellor but the devil? And whence was it that while this doctiine of devils was rampant in Italy, Spain, and France, the spiiit of the age was so imbued with it that it infected protestant Switzerland; and that the very Puritans who escaped from it in the old world, did not wholly escape from it in the new? And when the spirit of exclusiveness in some departments of the church of God, by which the ministry and ordinances of other departments, that do not suffer in comparison with those who thus proscribe them, are denied their “divine authority?” Such doctrines can hardly be expected to make any very deep impression upon the minds of thinking men. It is difficult to perceive how they can be seriously inculcated, did not melancholy facts teach us that the mind of man is subject to unaccountable delTJrsion. It is lamentable delusion — delusion that has been silenced, again and again silenced by sound argument — and yet it remains. It is a castle in the air. It has no more foundation in the word of God, than Pool’s fancied dragon had in the clouds. I pray that the subjects of it may be “kept from falling,” and that God would deliver them from the snare of the fowler. Whence, too, the epidemic terror of witchcraft and sorcery that has left such, a stain, not upon Rome only, but upon the fairest portions of Protestantism; but from that dreadful hallucination to which the adversary has been permitted sometimes to incite the superstitions of the best of men?

Nor is this all. Our own day has witnessed the Deceiver’s power, by the misdirected zeal of good men, and the machinations of those that are bad. He has endeavored to prescribe rules and a moral machinery for the work of God; and by his oftpractised artifices, has got up those unhallowed excitements by which the unwary and unstable have been misled to their own undoing. One piece of fanaticism has thus very naturally succeeded to another, until there are not wanting those who boast of their sinless perfection; and other some are led away by the ravings of an insane prophet, who prates of that of which he knows nothing, and of which the omniscient Saviour has said that angels themselves are ignorant. To these we might add those latitudinarian doctrines, by which such multitudes are “carried about by the cunning craftiness of men whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” The religion of forms without the power of godliness ever has been, and still is the religion which flourishes only under the auspices of the Deceiver. That disheartening stupidity, too, which, in defiance of returning Sabbaths, and the faithful instructions of God’s ministers, and the admonitions and rebukes of divine providence, has superinduced the sleep of death in the world, and a dreamy, lifeless inaction in the church; what is this but the work of the Enemy?

We could easily extend this tragical survey. The adversary has always had a well-fortified kingdom in this world, and it is now lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes. Evidence is not wanting of his character as the Deceiver, and of the extent of his deception.

If there is any one thought which has filled my own mind with solicitude in the course of the preceding illustrations, it is the fear that men would throw the criminality and responsibility of their wickedness on this great Deceiver, rather than, in all self-reproach and humiliation, take them upon themselves. This is just what he would have them do; it is one of his own cherished sophistries. It is not easy to make an impressive representation of his power without seeming to furnish something like a palliative for human wickedness. “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat!” But the excuse is no extenuation of the crime, plausible as it may seem. While it is no crime to be tempted to sin, unless men themselves solicit the temptation, yet is there emphasis in the words, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” A conscientious fear and hatred of iniquity, and an humble reliance on God, will quench all the fiery darts of the fowler. We may have no truce with an enemy who is so alert in the arts of seduction. One there is who is not only able “to keep us from being tempted above what we are able to bear,” but “with every temptation to make a way of escape;” who “knoweth how to deliver the godly out of teinptation’’ and who has himself taught us to pray daily, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The counsels of heavenly wisdom are, “Be sober; be vigilant; for your adversay, the devil, goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Be sober, lest you tempt the tempter; be vigilant, because your foes are subtle, and aim their envenomed arrows in the dark. To those who are the people of God, the days of temptation will soon be over; nor should it surprise them if the enemy should yet “come down in great wrath, knowing that his time is short.” It is but a little longer, and the issues of the conflict will be announced in the exulting gratulation, “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ!” With those who are not the people of God, time is also urging its rapid flight, and if the chains of temptation and the bonds of iniquity be not speedily broken, they will feel the bondage forever.

Are we not also called upon by the previous thoughts to appreciate the importaiuie of moral and o’eligious truth as the great and appointed means whereby the power of the adversary is to he successfidly resisted? There is nothing this Deceiver has so much reason to fear as the truth of God. Plain, honest truth, Bible truth, is the onlysuccessful antagonist to a system of measures and efforts whose only success depends on subtlety and deception. Truth penetrates those dark chambers of the human mind which have so long been the lurking-places of this foul fiend; dispels the mists in which he remains enveloped and undetected; discloses his hideous and ugly form; drives him out from all classes of human society, and ultimately destroys his influence in the world. The devil cannot long retain possession of the heart, or the community, that loves the truth of God. His element is darkness, or dim and misty speculation. He shrinks with instinctive repulsiveness from a pure atmosphere, and a sky beautified by the illuminations of heaven. It is frightful to see what a space in an ignorant mind one false notion can fill, and to what a series of errors, and what active power of mischief it can give rise; and on the other hand, it is delightful to see how wide a place one great truth can occupy, and to what a train of truths it gives birth, and what elevating and reforming influences it exerts.

How constraining then are the obligations on the church of God to extend his gospel to ev&i’y creature. This thraldom to the great Deceiver is to be broken in no other way. O when shall the time come, that the polluting errors of the nations that know not God shall be superseded by the purifying counsels of heavenly wisdom; the noxious, though poetic, dreams of heathen mythology be forgotten in the messages of truth and love, and these ldctims of delusion and misery be made joyful in the glad tidings of great joy! How many more circles shall this planet of ours accomplish round the sun before these dreadful caverns of iniquity shall be invaded by the truths of God, there to combat and conquer the powers of darkness! Vigor, wisdom, courage, fidelity, self-denial, prayer, never were put in greater requisition than by the existing enterprise of Christendom to wrest these usurped domains of the adversary from him, and restore them to their rightful owner and Lord.

And how full of encouragement is the thought, that notwithstanding the deceptions of the adversary, and the extent of his power, we may triu7npli in his final and certain overthrow! In defiance of the convictions of our better judgment, a sort of superstitious dread comes over us, when we call to mind that we live in a world where he who “was a murderer from the beginning,” goes “to and fro in the earth, and walks up and down in it.” There is one view in which this alarm is causeless. One there is of woman born, who is “stronger than the strong man armed,” and wiser than the crafty serpent. Perplex, tempt, ensnare, and depress the people of God he may; but his power over them extends not beyond this partial and temporary injuiy. “God shall bruise Satan under their feet shortly.” Extend his ravages over this fallen world he may; but never to final conquest. “Thou shalt bruise his heel,^’’ is the utmost limit of his power. It is a great and glorious truth, that” for this purpose was the son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works OF the DEVIL. The very curse which the tempter provoked upon the woman, enveloped the germ of her hopes, and contained the foreshadowing of that “promised seed” who should “bruise the serpent’s head.” The adversary was caught in his own snare. That vilest and most artful of his machinations, the death of the Son of God on the cross, was the most fatal to his hopes, and the surest presage of his defeat and shame. After three short days of seeming triumph over the sleeping Son of Mary in the tomb of Joseph, the manifesto was published and the war began, which is to terminate not until the “devil and his angels” are consigned to “their own place,” to go no more out. Even now he durst not venture beyond the length of his chain; nor will many centuries pass away ere he is shut up within the fiery

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walls of his prison, and bound forever in chains of darkness and wrath.

With joyful lips, therefore, do we proclaim the supremacy of our redeeming God and King. “Dominion is with him!” The very hostility of Satan to his great design and work, is in itself a guarantee of his triumphs. It is a contest of no doubtful issue, in which the King of Zion is engaged with the great Deceiver. “He shall reign until all enemies are put under his feet.” In councils far back of the ages of time, this great question was decided; and amid scenes far beyond this changing world, and to be hereafter realized, the triumphs of the Great Conqueror shall be proclaimed in the song, “He loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God, and we shall reign with him forever and ever!”