contemporaneous and subsequent writers give evidence of an alteration of conception, both with regard to the personality of a great principle of evil, and to the organization of subordinate evil spirits, or demons. This change of views was not equally rapid along the whole line of thought; but, the germs of new opinions having been implanted, they grew slowly but surely, until they completely overshadowed the original dogma, and created what practically amounted to a new religion.

The Chaldeans or Babylonians believed in the existence of vast multitudes of spirits, good, bad and indifferent, with which the physical and moral universe was peopled, and by which all phenomena of nature, and the events of life, were regulated and influenced. The Hebrews had already a belief in the existence of angels or spirits, whose business it was to regulate the affairs of mankind in obedience to the divine behests. We have appearances of angels to Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Joshua, and others, bringing them assistance and angels destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, the first-born of Egypt, directing the pestilence in Jerusalem, and slaying the army of Sennacherib: but there is nothing to show that the old Hebrew considered every tree, stone and river, as possessed with its own personal spirit, which might at any moment quit its abode, and exercise a direct influence upon his life

and welfare. After the return from the Captivity, however, Jewish thought took a fresh departure, Rabbinical speculations ran riot on the subject of angels and demons, and vied with the Babylonians in their realization of good and evil spiritual beings, interfering with, and regulating, the most trivial events of life: they numbered them by millions and billions, and were accustomed to talk of them as being so numerous and ubiquitous, that, if visible, no one could bear the shock. This idea grew in intensity as time went on, and we find in the text of the New Testament ample evidence of an established belief in the existence of innumerable demonslegions of devils-possessing and tyrannizing over the bodies of men and animals; and myriads of angels, surrounding the saints, and ministering to them.

Side by side with this belief in the multitude of good and evil spirits, there was slowly growing up in the Jewish mind a belief in a prince of evil, malignant, powerful and successful; hating Jehovah and all good; directing the spiritual hierarchy of evil to ceaseless attacks upon Jehovah's works, intimately acquainted with all the foibles of weak humanity, and employing this knowledge for their ruin and destruction. The first prince of the demons was Asmodeus, the demon of fiery and uncontrollable lust. The besetting sin of the nation, impurity,

here received its apt embodiment, as the most dreaded power of evil. The Rabbins were never tired of recounting adventures in which Asmodeus and historical personages had played their parts, and the apocryphal book of Tobit presents an instance of one of these episodes. Asmodeus, however, is only bad in the main, without being wholly devoid of generous feelings: he could be moved by pity, and could even use his power for good purposes. He was a Persian demon, but not the Persian god of evil : he answered the Jewish conception during a transition period, when there were still hosts of good spirits engaged in perpetually ministering to humanity, and hosts of demons counteracting and thwarting these good offices each spirit, good or bad, a personal being, and not a mere abstraction. Asmodeus was reigning at the period of which the Gospels treat, he was no doubt "the devil" who tempted Jesus in the wilderness, employing the lusts of appetite and power as his allies. The more philosophical Christian writers drew gradually away from the somewhat human Asmodeus, and abstracted the idea of evil until the arch-fiend's character became one of unmixed malignancy, consisting of nothing but evil, and incapable of any other motive or result. This is another Persian ideal, that of Ahriman, the Anra-mainyu of the Zend religion, the god of evil. In the Persian system a complete dualism existed:

Ormuzd, Ahura-mazdu, the supreme Good, created all that was good, and inspired every good thought and action; Ahriman, the supreme Evil, created everything that was bad in itself, and everything that could oppose the work of Ormuzd; he marred and frustrated all the good that Ormuzd had created, and systematically attacked every good thought and action, and endeavoured to turn it into evil. Ormuzd and Ahriman were of equal origin, and practically of equal power, and, although the latter was destined some day to be overcome by, and subjected to, the former, yet in the meantime he enjoyed an ample share of success.

These principles and beliefs were sufficiently received and recognized by the Jews, to be passed on by them into the Christian creed, which proved a congenial soil: we find the Fathers fully persuaded of the power and number of the demons, and also of the great and implacable malignancy of "the devil." Still, so long as there were a heavenly host of angels and saints between man and Jehovah, and to a great extent, by their multitudinous offices of good to man, veiling Jehovah from his sight, so long the prince of the devils was equally unnoticed in the assumed presence of the legion of demons who worked out the details of the diabolical schemes. It was left for the Reformation and its sternest votaries to sweep away the saints and angels, the demons and devils, leaving

face to face, the Deity, as the abstract personification of good, and Satan, as the abstract personification of evil, each pulling down the strongholds of the other, and waging a perpetual warfare: by associating with these ideas the doctrine of absolute predestination, before the foundation of the world, for evil as well as for good, the nearest possible approach to the Persian dualism was made by some followers of Calvin. It is often asserted, and strenuously maintained, that the Jewish and Christian doctrine has never been that of the Persian dualism: that may be true of the Jewish faith throughout, and of the early and medieval Christians: but the seed of the Persian dogma was sown in the Jewish mind during the Captivity, was fostered and strengthened by after intercourse, and although not appearing on the surface, it formed an under-current, hardly felt, but always present, until after the Reformation, when it again reached the surface, and practically monopolized the middle channel of the Christian creed; it had even become more sombre, for instead of Ahriman being destined to final reconciliation with Ormuzd, as the Persians taught, we find Satan, and all his victims and followers, doomed, without any sort of hope, to everlasting fire, expressly prepared for them.

In the New Testament, Satan is either called by his old Hebrew name of "Satanas," the adversary; or by that of "Diabolos," the Devil, the false accuser or