many centuries since to be members of the church militant. The master-fiend himself, who had suffered so severely from the forceps of St. Dunstan, appears to have set a brave example to his subordinates, for so little was he disheartened by that adventure, that we find him laying snares a good many centuries later about the path of that arch-student in the forbidden science, Dr. Faustus, with as much alertness and courage as could have been expected if no such misfortune had ever befallen him. Certainly, if the good people of those times possessed more wisdom in some respects than their pagan fathers, and a great deal more of virtue and humanity-all of which we most cheerfully admit-in the matter of credulity, the dark age of catholicism has hardly its parallel in the dark age of any one thing beside that has ever found a stable footing among

men.

It was a perilous time when men began to emerge from that darkness. Happily, in the moral, as in the natural world, the day light is made to break upon us by little and little as we are able to bear it. Still, how startling were the revelations then made to the thoughts both of the weak and the strong, each following the other as though there would be no end! That ecclesiastical machinery which had been venerated through so many ages as communicating spiritual life, was denounced as an elaborate fraud, generating delusions, and conducing to spiritual death. Priesthood, and all the rites of priesthood, over the greater part of Europe, were regarded as having their place in the world to destroy the souls of men rather than to save them. Even the throne of the pontiff himself, instead of being honoured as the elevation due to the ecclesiastical head of christendom, was declared to be the very citadel of anti-christ, and to demolish it utterly, was the object against which the men of the reformed faith brought the utmost strength of their artillery. Looking to the extent and suddenness of that change, and to the very partial culture which the popular mind had then received, it would not have been surprising if great numbers had passed from one extreme to another-from believing everything to believing nothing. But during two centuries from the preaching of Luther, protestant Europe, faulty or imperfect as its mental history may have been, exhibited, with little exception, a manliness of intellect, such as enabled it to distinguish between the forms of religion and its spirit; between priesthood and worship; and between the falsehood which had been foisted on men through times of ignorance, and the truth constituting the religion of the cross and giving to it a living power. If to begin such a revolution demanded no ordinary courage, to know where to stop demanded no ordinary discrimination. Conceding that the

reformers may not have halted in all respects at the right point, but that while in some cases they proceeded too far, and in others not far enough, still the spirit of protestant Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the spirit diffused through it by those extraordinary men, and shows them to have been men of bold hearts and sagacious heads-aye, and of large charity to boot.

Superstition has always a nucleus of truth, and it belongs to the understanding to distinguish between them, and not to cast away the pearl and the shell together because they happen to be in adhesion. Wherever fiction is lasting, it is because there is enough of truth in it to render it lasting. The truth found in the different systems of religion may be natural truth, or traditionary truth, or a mixture of both in various degrees, and such a mixture we think is to be found in the religions of all nations. It must not be forgotten, that the Christianity of the middle age was the religion-the verily believed and deeply felt religion, of such men as Augustine and Ambrose, Anselm and Duns Scotus-men, who, had they lived in our time instead of their own, would have competed in skill of intellect, and in boldness of heart with the best among us.

We have been led into this train of remark by the subject of the work before us. In this volume we possess the ninth series of the Congregational Lecture. We have long needed a good book on this topic-a book which should present the whole subject in its scriptural light, and with the intelligence required by the advanced mental and physical science of our times. Nothing is more natural to feeble men than that they should reject truth altogether, if found subject to the graftings of falsehood. Minds imbued with that very sapient species of philosophy which supposes that what is misunderstood must be false, and that what is badly applied must be bad in its own nature, have often made sorry work of it when attempting to discourse on the subject of Evil Spirits.' The superstitions, and follies, and even gross absurdities which we all know have been mixed up with this doctrine, by very able men in times past, and by multitudes of very well-meaning and worthy persons even in our own times, have so disturbed the refined taste of the class of theologians adverted to, as to have left them without the power to look on this subject with steadiness sufficient to distinguish between the doctrine itself and its heterogeneous adjuncts. We know, generally, pretty well how to bear with this want of aptitude to discern between things that differ in the case of the untaught and unpretending multitude of mankind, but our patience has been sometimes sorely tried as we have had to mark the special displays of such imbecility, in

persons flattering themselves with the notion of being raised by their mental culture greatly above the vulgar.

These lectures are seven in number. The first treats of the existence of evil spirits; the second, of their character, state, and powers; the third, of their agency, considered in the nature and manners of their intercourse with this world, and in regard to witchcraft, divination, &c.; the fourth, consists of the same subject continued; the fifth is occupied with the controversy respecting the demoniacs; the sixth, relates to the temptation in the wilderness; the seventh, to the agency of evil spirits in ordinary temptation.

On a subject which affords so much space for difference of judgment, we do not of course pledge ourselves to an approval of every statement made by the esteemed author in this volume; but we feel no scruple in saying, that, on the whole, we have no book on the subject in our literature so thoroughly good, and so little open to exception. It deserves to be read, and to be well reflected on by the divinity student. It is fraught with material which can never cease to be of service to him as a moral and religious instructor. The style of the volume is plain and unpretending, but, like its thoughts, is generally clear and weighty; and in the course of interpretation adopted, a judicious balance is commonly retained between credulity on the one hand, and scepticism on the other. Were we disposed to take exception to any part of the volume, it would be to some parts of the last lecture, which exhibits, as we think, a tendency rather to overrate the probable influence of evil spirits in ordinary temptation. Our fear sometimes is, lest men should be found imputing to such influence, evils which belong purely to themselves, and lest, in so doing, the moral power of conscience should be weakened. We are persuaded, however, that we only need cite a few passages from the volume, in order to satisfy our readers that it is characterized by many qualities of great excellence; the following is from the first lecture.

'Reason and analogy will lead us to conclude that the truth of the common doctrine respecting evil spirits or fallen angels, is at the least possible, nay, even probable. Surely none will maintain, even if they deny the existence of angels, that man is the only, or the most noble rational creature in the universe. He evidently appears to be the connecting link between the irrational and the rational creation; and therefore, it would seem, the lowest order in the latter. How many ranks there may be above him, exhibiting various forms and degrees of intellectual power and moral excellence, and displaying the riches and wonders of the divine wisdom and power, who can undertake to say? and surely all who believe in the immateriality of the soul, and that it is more excellent than the body, must allow that many of these beings may be pure spirits.

Our senses and experience, it is true, can give us no information how these exist without any connection with matter; and this I apprehend is the cause of the theories,-of the imaginations, I had almost said, of the dreams (and I would not shrink from using the term, because of the celebrity of some by whom the sentiment has been advocated), of those who maintain that all created spirits have some kind of airy or ethereal vehicles, or bodies, by means of which they act, and which indeed are necessary to enable them to perform various operations; so that God is the only pure spirit in existence. This opinion, I must think, has no foundation in either reason or scripture; or rather it is contrary to both. However, this does not affect the doctrine which I am endeavouring to maintain. And even those who deny the existence of spirits, properly so called, who assert that the soul of man is material, or the result of the organization of his body, must still grant that matter may be moulded into far more subtle, refined, ethereal, or what may be called spiritual forms, than that in which it exists in him; and that therefore, even on this theory, there may be many orders of rational creatures, far superior to us and that they must be, as we are, accountable to God, and may have been placed in a state of probation. Farther, facts and experience lead us to conclude that, like men, they may have fallen from their state of integrity. All creatures, however great their powers, however pure and noble their natures, must be fallible or defectible. Infallibility, is obviously one of the incommunicable prerogatives of Jehovah. If then they were fallible, they may have fallen. To grant the former, and yet to deny the latter, involves a contradiction, and sin would certainly, from its very nature and necessary operation, pervert their views and feelings, and render them depraved creatures, and may we not conclude that the depth and malignity of the depravity would, if they were left entirely to themselves, and especially in a situation which excluded them from hope, and led them to view God as having cast them off for ever, be proportional to their former excellence, to the exalted privileges which they enjoyed, and to the folly, the enormity, and the high aggravations of their crime? that the depth of the gulf of perdition into which they sunk, would be in proportion to the height of that elevation of honour and happiness from which they precipitated themselves? Do not facts prove that such is the influence of sin, the result of wilful rebellion against the God of heaven? If so, then these fallen beings would immediately become, as far as they had opportunity, the tempters of others, endeavouring to involve their fellow-creatures in a condition like their own. We are warranted, I apprehend, to assert that there is not a sinner in the universe, if he is left entirely under the influence of sin, who is not disposed to become a tempter to others, nay, who will not necessarily be so.'--pp. 10-13.

Our next extract will suffice to show the author's manner of dealing with what may be deemed the philosophy of the subject.

Now there are several things which seem to indicate that man is the very lowest order of accountable creatures. We know that in him the rational and irrational natures, with their different capacities and powers, are united. He partakes of the senses and instinct of mere animals, and

also of the capacities and powers of celestial spirits. Like the former, he is the subject of sensations, and appetites, and passions; he needs the support of matter, moulded into various kinds of nutriment: with the latter, he is capable of knowing the character, of performing the will of God, and of enjoying him as his portion: and it is almost unnecessary to say, that the rational and immaterial, is unspeakably the more important and excellent part of his frame; and that the body appears to contract the capacities of the soul, to fetter its power, and to impede them in their operations.'

'How often, in this respect as well as others, when the spirit is willing and even vigorous, the flesh is weak. Further, in man we see rationality in the lowest, feeblest form or state, in which it can possibly exist. Its principles lie dormant for some time in the breast of the infant. He is at first entirely the creature of instincts, and sensations, and appetites. Then he begins to have some faint perception of reality, and truth, and right, and wrong, and to reason on the facts with which he has gained a slight acquaintance. In a lower state than this, the power of reason cannot exist; here we see, as it were, its very commencement, its first glimmering dawn, connected, in the improvement, which is afterwards realized, with its advancement towards the perfect day. But betwixt its most effective development, its highest attainments in man, in his present state, and its absolute perfection, its infinitude in the Divine Being, what a distance, what a chasm, presents itself! Is it then left entirely empty of rational beings? Is it possible that man is at once the lowest and the highest order of them? Would not this be a notion similar to that of those who, in times that are past, imagined, that because this world was the part of the universe to which they had personal access, the inhabitants and productions of which they could examine for themselves, that it alone is inhabited; and that all the stars and planets are only shining points or gems, the sparkling ornaments of the canopy which is stretched over our heads, and that they were all created for the exclusive pleasure or benefit of men? And will not this remark apply, at least in some degree, to the opinions of those who deny the existence of angels, either good or bad, for no other reason, that I can conceive, but because they cannot bring them in any way beneath the cognizance of their senses? see a gradation, without any voids or chasm in vegetable life, from its very lowest to its highest forms, endued, as far as we can conceive, with all its possible sensibilities and beauties; and also in animal life and capacity, from the very dullest insect or shell, to the half reasoning dog, or beaver, or elephant.'-pp. 121, 124.

Our author then recurs to his argument from analogy.

We

Are we not then warranted, by analogy and reason, to think that there will be found, in the universe, a similar gradation, of which man is the commencement, the lowest step, in rational capacities and powers, to an inconceivable height above us in various forms of glorious creatures? And how high may it rise? How extensive may be the capacity, how mighty the powers of many of these orders or ranks, especially of the highest? While still there is, and must be, an infinite distance betwixt them and the great infinite Eternal. How delightful, how animating,