universal conceptions of an under-world. Lazarus is borne by angels to Abraham's bosom. Dives awakes after death in the midst of flames, and sees Lazarus afar off in happiness. The rich man, convinced of the folly of his sinful life, wishes to warn his surviving brothers, and to be relieved from his torments with a drop of water by Lazarus. But there is a great gulf fixed between them, so that the wicked can no longer be aided by the benevolence of the righteous.

To the people of that age such language conveyed a spiritual truth, at the same time that it conformed to what they supposed to be physical realities. To us it conveys the same spiritual truth, though the images in which it is embodied, and through which it is communicated, are no longer believed to correspond to physical reality.

Here, then, is the distinction which I am endeavoring to inculcate between doctrines and opinions, fully exemplified and brought out. The future misery of a selfish, hard-hearted sensualist, and the future happiness of a patient, resigned, and uncomplaining child of affliction, are positive doctrines, true then and true for ever. The circumstances, the localities, Abraham's bosom and the tormenting flames, are images conformed to the floating opinions of the times. Ages went on believing them literally, and they would have done so at any rate. Science at last undermined the opinion, but it left the doctrine standing forth in all its original prominence and impressiveness; for the same intellectual enlightenment which outgrew the opinion enabled men to distinguish between form and substance, between

the illustration and the principle illustrated. It was no more necessary that the circumstances and localities in the parable of Dives and Lazarus should have been literal realities, in order to establish the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, than that a traveller going from Jerusalem to Jericho, and falling among thieves, should have actually experienced kindness from a Samaritan, to establish the duty of universal kindness to the unfortunate.

Yet the inveterate propensity of mankind to petrify everything into a dogma led the Church to involve itself in considerable doctrinal difficulty, by converting this ancient opinion in relation to an under-world into an article of Christian faith. On the cross, our Lord said to the penitent thief: "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." This Paradise was a locality in the subterranean world, — the receptacle of the souls of the good, and was contrasted with Gehenna, the place of torment for the wicked. The purpose of Christ in using this phraseology was undoubtedly to give the dying man an assurance that his penitence was acceptable in the sight of God, and that he would be happy in a future life. He made use of such language as would be most intelligible and striking to a man entertaining the common opinions of the time. But upon this address of Christ, and an obscure passage in the First Epistle of Peter, the ancient Church founded a clause in what has since been called the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into hell." But the progress of science, revealing the true structure of the earth, has gradually dispelled the belief upon which the clause was founded. And it is

now discarded from the copies used in most of the Protestant churches.

Such, then, is the legitimate distinction, which is ever to be kept in view in reading the New Testament, between the doctrines taught and the opinions alluded to. One is matter of faith, to be received as fact, the other is to be regarded as an accidental appendage, used only for illustration and impression.

DISCOURSE XVII.

A PERSONAL DEVIL.

YE ARE OF YOUR FATHER THE DEVIL, AND THE LUSTS OF YOUR FATHER YE WILL DO. 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 HIS OWN: FOR HE IS A LIAR, AND THE FATHER OF IT. - John viii. 44.

AMONG the opinions entertained by the Jews in the time of Christ and his Apostles, which are alluded to in the New Testament, is that concerning the existence and agency of an evil being called "Satan," or "the Devil," or "the Evil One," or "the Prince of the power of the air."

The allusions to this being, though frequent, are of so general and indefinite a character, that it is difficult to make out from them all what the conceptions of that age concerning his nature, history, and employments were. They have, however, been gathered up by an English poet, a man as wonderful for his learning as for his genius, and wrought into a poem, one of the most marvellous productions of all time. Milton, by his Rabbinical as well as Biblical learning, and his profound ac

quaintance with Oriental literature, has gathered into the "Paradise Lost" the whole history of that being whom the Jews considered as the father of evil.

He was considered as the head and leader of a legion of fallen angels. They were once holy and pure, but rebelled against God, and were banished from heaven, and confined, for the most part, to those dark, subterraneous regions which the ancients imagined to lie under the earth, to an equal length, breadth, and depth as the heavens above. This opinion is referred to in the Epistle of Jude: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, against the judgment of the great day."

Another part of this opinion was, with about as much consistency as usually pertains to popular superstitions, that they were permitted to inhabit that part of the atmosphere which is nearest our earth. Paul writes to the Ephesians: "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked, according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." Philo, a Jewish writer, contemporary with Jesus and his Apostles, speaks of the whole region of the atmosphere as being "filled with spirits both good and bad, called by the Jews angels, but by the Greeks demons, some tempting men to evil, others prompting them to good." Hence the phrase of the Apostle, "that now worketh in the children of disobedience."