If our author be a Biblical scholar, his scholarship is greatly at fault in the passage he refers to in Ezekiel xiv. 9: "And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel." According to the Hebrew language, God is often said to do a thing which He only suffers or permits. How can God be understood to harden Pharaoh's heart in any other sense? The character of God is too plainly described in the Bible to leave any uncertainty on this point.
The passages quoted from the New Testament only apparently support his statement. He quotes Dr. Mansel in reference to them, and no doubt his words truly apply where he says, "The supposed miracles are not true miracles at all, i.e., are not the effects of Divine power, but of human deception or some other agency." The existence and powers of angels, good and bad, we know little about, because little is revealed; but it is not the Bible but superstition which teaches that the fallen spirits have more power than the faithful ones in the affairs of this world, that Satan is more potent than Gabriel. If we knew more about the origin of evil, this matter would probably be less mysterious to our finite intelligence.
Our author describes (vol. i. page 47) what he supposes orthodox Christianity includes; and among other strange assertions he says that man was tempted into sin by Satan, "an all-powerful and persistent enemy of God," thus making the fallen angel an Almighty being.
This matter has an important bearing on the proper exhibition of religious truth, for the more superstition is intermingled with it, the more will unbelief be likely to be prevalent. On the one hand, infidelity engenders superstition, and on the other, superstition creates aversion to religion. I cannot but think that there is something wrong in the way in which Christian men, in the pulpit and elsewhere, often allude to the spirit of evil. He is represented in Scripture as the "god of this world," but surely that is not to be understood literally.
Jesus told the Jews that the devil was their father, as their deeds being evil indicated, who 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."[8] As, therefore, the devil is the father of lies, so are we to understand he is the God of this world. Not in any other sense. He is potent, but not omnipotent; knowing, but not omniscient; has his representatives distributed among the scenes of sin and death in our world, and himself goeth "to and fro in the earth,"[9] but he is not omnipresent. It is Oriental demonology which teaches that two equal principles—good and evil—are alike dominant, not "the truth as it is in Jesus;" Persian superstition, Gnostical heresy, not Divine revelation.
The frivolous use of words and matters connected with the spiritual world and our eternal interests is greatly to be disapproved and condemned; but surely the mention of Satan is not to be designated as profane, as if God's holy name were taken in vain. To comment on what are called profane oaths in such a way is not to enlighten the minds of the vulgar, but to mystify and conceal the truth of Christianity. It is one thing to believe that there is in existence the spiritual being whose evil doings our Saviour's coming into our world frustrates, whose power is great, whose emissaries are innumerable, and whose baneful suggestions and influence the Holy Spirit alone can withstand, and quite another thing to believe that Satan could give miraculous attestation to a lie, as God did to the truth. If there are some passages of Scripture that seem to favour this false view, it behoves us to suspect, having regard to the whole tenour of Scripture affecting the doctrine, that the correct interpretation has not been arrived at.
The existence of Satan, and his influence, personal, and by the legions who fell with him, are of course superhuman ideas, and in the category of the miraculous; but there is a wide difference between the most striking sign of his spiritual power and the Divine miracles wrought to attest the truth. It is God "who alone doeth great wonders."[10]
"If this man were not of God he could do nothing."[11] "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not."[12]
"A miracle is a sign for our faith, to be apprehended in its Divine intention, though it cannot be comprehended, because it is God's especial work." When the magicians in the Court of Pharaoh saw the miracles which Moses wrought, they said, "This is the finger of God,"[13] which is, and intended to be, the inevitable inference. They knew that all they could do was a sham, a pretence.
Counterfeits are as prominent in the history of our race as any feature that could be specified, and an imaginary devil is conspicuous in the category of the spurious. If there had been no real one, the counterfeit could scarcely have been conceived. He is the father of lies, and how numerous his progeny! While all else is misrepresented, parodied, travestied, burlesqued, falsified, belied, it would be strange if he had escaped. From the Eternal Himself down to the most insignificant thing that is worth a forgery, what a catalogue may in an instant be specified! The Divine law with its ceremonial rites, and the Church with its ordinances; prophets and apostles; gospels and epistles; science and philosophy; history and biography; and, assuredly, miracles; in short, all truth—stem, branch, twig, and leaf—is more or less, and at one time or another, got up artificially, and the spurious or adulterated article offered, in competition with the genuine one, to human credulity. This, if it makes absolute truth difficult to buy, renders the injunction to "sell it not," when bought, true wisdom. It seems to be, and of course is, absurd to doubt the genuineness of the currency of a nation because spurious coins are met with, but I believe that more scepticism is produced by the consideration of the many religious impostures in the world than by any other influence. The inference is childish in the ignorant and unphilosophical in the scholar, but it is often unconsciously arrived at in many minds as a plain and easy solution of the question which cannot be evaded—Is Divine revelation a reality?