Binet, in his Alterations of Personality, says that experiments on hysterical patients have produced in his mind the conviction that, in them at least, “a plurality of persons exists.... We have established almost with certainty that in such patients, side by side with the principal personality, there is a secondary personality, which is unknown by the first, which sees, hears, reflects, reasons and acts”; see Andover Review, April, 1890:422. Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 81-143, claims that we have two minds, the objective and conscious, and the subjective and unconscious. The latter works automatically upon suggestion from the objective or from other minds. In view of the facts referred to by Binet and Hudson, we claim that the influence of angelic spirits is no more incredible than is the influence of suggestion from living men. There is no need of attributing the phenomena of hypnotism to spirits of the dead. Our human nature is larger and more susceptible to spiritual influence than we have commonly believed. These psychical phenomena indeed furnish us with a corroboration of our Ethical Monism, for if in one human being there may be two or more consciousnesses, then in the one God there may be not only three infinite personalities but also multitudinous finite personalities. See T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, 124-133.
B. The employments of evil angels.
(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word “Satan” means “adversary”—primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term “devil” signifies “slanderer”—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the “man of sin” as “he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God.”
Job 1:6—Satan appears among “the sons of God”; Zech. 3:1—“Joshua the high priest ... and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary”; Mat. 13:39—“the enemy that sowed them is the devil”; 1 Pet. 5:8—“your adversary the devil.” Satan slanders God to men, in Gen. 3:1, 4—“Yea, hath God said?... Ye shall not surely die”; men to God, in Job 1:9, 11—“Doth Job fear God for naught?... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face”; 2:4, 5—“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face”; Rev. 12:10—“the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God night and day.”
Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God: John 16:8—“he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment”; Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Hence Balaam can say: Num. 23:21, “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel”; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua: “Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee” (Zech. 3:2). “Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them” (C. H. M.). For the description of the “man of sin,” see 2 Thess. 2:3, 4—“he that opposeth”; cf. verse 9—“whose coming is according to the working of Satan.”
On the “man of sin,” see Wm. Arnold Stevens, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328-360. As in Daniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, he who “shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every God”, is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so the man of lawlessness described by Paul in 2 Thess. 2:3, 4 was “the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age.”This only had its seat in the temple of God. It was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But this fulfilment does not preclude a future and final fulfilment of the prophecy.
Contrasts between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil: 1. The dove, and the serpent; 2. the father of lies, and the Spirit of truth; 3. men possessed by dumb spirits, and men given wonderful utterance in diverse tongues; 4. the murderer from the beginning, and the life-giving Spirit, who regenerates the soul and quickens our mortal bodies; 5. the adversary, and the Helper; 6. the slanderer, and the Advocate; 7. Satan's sifting, and the Master's winnowing; 8. the organizing intelligence and malignity of the evil one, and the Holy Spirit's combination of all the forces of matter and mind to build up [pg 455] the kingdom of God; 9. the strong man fully armed, and a stronger than he; 10. the evil one who works only evil, and the holy One who is the author of holiness in the hearts of men. The opposition of evil angels, at first and ever since their fall, may be a reason why they are incapable of redemption.
(b) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.
Control of natural phenomena is ascribed to evil spirits in Job 1:12, 16, 19 and 2:7—“all that he hath is in thy power”—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes; Luke 13:11, 16—“a woman that had a spirit of infirmity ... whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years”; Acts 10:38—“healing all that were oppressed of the devil”; 2 Cor. 12:7—“a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me”; 1 Thess. 2:18—“we would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us”; Heb. 2:14—“him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits in Gen. 3:1 sq.—“Now the serpent was more subtle”; cf. Rev. 20:2—“the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan”; Mat. 4:3—“the tempter came”; John 13:27—“after the sop, then entered Satan into him”; Acts 5:3—“why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” Eph. 2:2—“the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”; 1 Thess. 3:5—“lest by any means the tempter had tempted you”; 1 Pet 5:8—“your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”