whether it can be consistent with love on the part of God towards Holy Angels, to require them, according to admitted facts, to be the bearers of messages of rebuke and wrath, or to be the executioners of penal inflictions, even to the extermination, nay, to the final perdition, of the offenders. An answer to this question will be deduced from the reply to be returned to another. Is it consistent with love, to send messages of rebuke and wrath, to decree penal inflictions, to ordain the extermination and even the final perdition of offenders? If these messages and decisions be consistent with love, it cannot be inconsistent with love to employ other beings as agents to communicate and to accomplish them. Are they then consistent with the character of a Being who is Love? Unquestionably messages of rebuke and indignation may be proceedings of positive and signal kindness to the transgressor, calculated to awaken his conscience and to lead him to repentance and forgiveness. If he remains perseveringly and determinately unimpressible by these manifestations of love, and can no longer be fitly an object of the exercise of love; his merited and necessary punishment, be it even to final perdition, may yet be an exercise of love towards incalculable multitudes of other intelligent and responsible existences, whom the example of his punishment may stimulate as a powerful admonition to obedience; whom impunity permitted to him might have encouraged to transgression, and have beguiled to destruction. In noticing the preceding objection I have purposely forborne from entering prematurely into the discussion of the great question, which must inevitably be met in the progress of this investigation; How can the existence of evil, physical or moral, among created beings, be compatible with the truth of the position that God is love? The objection seemed entitled to be produced; and the remarks which have been made concerning it appear to furnish for the present a sufficient reply. 24 CHAP. III. RESPECTING EVIL ANGELS. OF Evil Spirits, as of Holy Angels, our knowledge is derived exclusively from the word of God. The Scriptures, which never afford insight into such circumstances connected with the unseen Universe, as, if disclosed, would merely gratify curiosity and foster unprofitable speculation, say little concerning the rebellion of these unhappy beings against their Maker in addition to the statement of the fact and of its consequences. And that statement is uniformly introduced in the way of an aweful warning to men not to offend. God spared not the Angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgement.1 The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust unto the day of Judgement, to be punished. Of these fallen spirits who revolted from their allegiance to Jehovah, the instigator and the leader, himself originally, as 1 2 Pet. ii. 4. 9., and Jude, ver. 6. it should seem, an Angel eminent in dignity, is denominated specifically, The Devil, and also Satan, the adversary, the adversary of God and subsequently of man, and Beelzebub the Prince of the Devils.1 From the time of his original apostasy he has persisted in his enmity against God; and since the formation of the human race has displayed unceasing hatred against them as favoured creatures of the Almighty. No sooner were our first parents stationed in Paradise, than Satan planned and accomplished their ruin. Assuming the shape, or using the organs, of the serpent, he persuaded Eve, and by her instrumentality, induced Adam to transgress the commandment, ordained to be the test of their obedience. Thus, having drawn them away from God, and subjected them to his own influence and dominion, he became the author of sin, and of wretchedness, and of death, to them and to all their posterity. Hence the Scriptures describe the Devil as having the power of death.2 With reference to this transaction, he is termed in the New Testament the Serpent, the old Serpent, the great Dragon, which deceiveth the whole world. With re : ference also to the destruction, which by his subtle falsehood he brought upon mankind, and perhaps with a view to the everlasting misery in which he has overwhelmed the Angels whom he has deluded; he is pronounced by our Saviour to have been a murderer from the beginning: to have no truth in him to be a liar and the father of lies. Through his temptations all flesh has corrupted its way upon earth: the whole world lieth in wickedness.1 Hence unrighteous men are denominated in the Scriptures the children of Satan. He that committeth sin is of the Devil: for the Devil sinneth from the beginning. In this the children of God are manifest and the Children of the Devil. The field is the world: the tares are Children of the wicked one: the enemy that sowed them is the Devil.3 Ye are of your father the Devil: and the lusts of your father ye will do. One of you is a Devil. Sins of every description, and without exception, are habitually described as works of Satan. Christ came to destroy the works of the Devil. coming of the Man of Sin is after the working of 1 1 John, v. 19. 21 John, iii. 8-10. 3 Matth. xiii. 38, 39. 4 John, viii. 44. 5 John, vi. 70. 6 1 John, iii. 8. The |