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not enter, but that it will, during the mil- | peace and joy shall endure; there at the lennial period of the Church's peace and gates, the "everlasting doors," angelic Satan's imprisonment, be fully visible to guards shall hold their safe and pleasant men upon the earth, among whom its post, evermore employed in the service of happy inhabitants will have full freedom their glorious King. Blindly erring as to intermingle, by the same facilities that now we do, in vain attempts fully to complaced Moses and Elias on the Mount, and prehend what it will require, new and enbrought the holy angels so often into com- larged faculties to take in, even when the panionship with man. We do believe that things now unseen are displayed to our in this heavenly Jerusalem no distinction sight, we shall then see clearly, and know whatever subsists between Jew and Gen- even as we are known. tile, male and female, bond and free; all being one in Christ Jesus, and like, and equal unto, the angels; while in the earthly Jerusalem we certainly believe that the children of Abraham, according to the flesh, shall dwell under the acknowledged rule of their Messiah, possessed of every privilege that can belong to the citizens of the world's metropolis; and invested with such honours and advantages as never yet were by any nation enjoyed. We believe that by a peculiar dispensation, frequently alluded to by our Lord and by the inspired writers, a subordinate rule under Christ, will be exercised by the saints of the Church triumphant over the church still on earth; while an intercourse no less frequent than are now the visits of those unseen ministering spirits, who have the charge over us to keep us in all our ways, will subsist between those who are, and those who are not yet perfected in heavenly felicity. This view necessarily brings the holy angels forward as partaking richly in the triumphant glories of Christ's reign: they will have gathered out the tares, gathered in the wheat, and have seen their rebellious fellows who kept not their first estate, consigned to the abyss from whence they will no more escape; or if permitted to share the short season of Satan's enlargement, and to aid in deceiving those whom he will finally assail, they will speedily be cast into the fiery pit forever. We are told that at the final judgment of all men, which follows this last outburst of Satanic malignity, the earth and its heaven shall flee away, and no more place be found for them; but the holy Jerusalem is imperishable it is a building of God, eternal in those heavens with which our globe has no necessary connexion. There, without a pause, the songs of the redeemed shall ascend; there, without a night, the day of

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There is a practical application of this high and holy subject, the realities of the spiritual world, both angelic and Satanic, that must not be overlooked. No action of our lives, nothing that we can do or say, is unconnected with the two classes into which those spiritual beings are divided. It fearfully aggravates sin to commit it, as we do, in the presence of those whom the Lord has commissioned to watch over and to minister unto us, and who cannot but be very jealous for their divine Master's honour; and in the presence too of those apostates who delight in our transgressions, because they dishonour God. how circumspectly should we walk, in many a case where now our ways are most inconsistent and perverse, if we could see the pure, bright, searching eye of a holy angel intently fixed on us, with a desire to mark how the Christian glorifies his Master; or if we caught the exulting leer of a devil, tracing out our crooked ways, or turned in mockery and scorn to the record of God's will, which we profess to follow, but from which we so perpetually swerve! Both might address us in the same language, and ask, the one in sorrowful reproach, the other in grinning exultation, "Is this thy kindness to thy friend ?" that friend who has done all for us, even to the sacrifice of himself, for our redemption; and who has given such large supplies of grace, and such unlimited promises of help, that we may walk worthy our high calling, and enable him to present his church to God, holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. To spot it, to wrinkle it, to pollute it, is the unceasing aim of Satan and his crew, while no created being can lend the smallest aid to stay the workings of sin, to palliate it when committed, or to supply a particle of help towards canceling this debt. There is no moment of our

lives when we are perfectly secure from | thee, cherubim and seraphim continually the approach of evil spirits; and though the Lord himself is ever present with his people, and his presence is all-sufficient to protect and to sustain them, yet we have clear intimations, as has been shown in these pages, that against those who would harm us an adverse armament is arrayed, watchful, zealous, and filled with holy love and tender compassion for the feeble children of men. It is sweet to be able to say, by faith, what Paul said from actual right, on occasions of imminent danger and deliverance: "There stood by me the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve." It does not derogate from the omnipotence or the omniscience of the Most High, while it exceedingly enhances his gracious care for both parties, that he should depute his bright angels to render loving service to his people. On their part, we may be assured, it forms a very endearing tie; and it is strange that we, who are the great gainers, should be so utterly indifferent to the revealed fact, as to pass weeks, months, and some perhaps years, without bestowing a thankful thought on the matter.

do cry, Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth!" What a scene would open to our mental and spiritual view every time we utter these words, if we had habitually paid due attention to what the Lord God of Sabaoth,-of hosts, or armies,-has vouchsafed to show us in his word! If all the imagery which we are so slow to remark was deduced from the Psalms of David, we should scarcely recognise them, so altered, so impoverished would they become; and instead of thrusting his precious doctrine into the shade, we should do well to bring it very prominently forward, even at the expense of some topics which usually occupy a large share of attention, and which do but gender needless strife. We all, occasionally, are compelled to cry, Our soul cleaveth to the dust, and to ask for quickening grace, according to God's word; but we make too little use of some of the means which that word supplies for contemplations of a most elevating character. If God's angels took no more thought for us than we do for them, we should go stumbling about the world in a very uncomfortable manner.

With some it is a favourite plan to place the angels in a position vastly subordinate, or at best inferior to that of the saints. Yet when our Lord took upon him our nature, even the sinless nature, wholly exempt from Adam's rebellious taint, he is said to have been made a little lower than the angels. Paul, reproving the Cor

Our notions of an earthly monarch's greatness are enlarged by observing that his sway extends over a multitude of subjects; and that he has under his command an exceedingly numerous, formidable, obedient, and beautifully disciplined army, so ordered as to hold effectually at bay a no less numerous hostile force, perpetually menacing his dominions. Nebuchadnez-inthians for going to law before the un zar, himself a great king and conqueror, understood this; and how striking is the reference he makes to that peculiar feature in the majesty of the divine government! "He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, what doest thou?" Our views on this subject are rarely so enlarged as those of the Chaldean king. To judge by the tenour of religious books, and ministerial discourses in general, very little praise is rendered to God for revealing to us this branch of the glory of his kingdom. We use in our public worship that exceedingly beautiful and most scriptural hymn, the Te Deum; and fluently recite, "To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein; to

just, and not before the saints, reminds them that by the saints the world shall be judged; and adds, "Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" 1 Cor. vi. 3. This seems evidently to refer to the judgment of condemnation, the "judgment of the great day," mentioned by Jude, unto which the angels that kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, are reserved. It does not warrant the assumption that God will make over to his saints the government of his angels. Another ground for this supposed exaltation over the heavenly host is alleged by some to be the closer proximity of the saints to the throne, as seen by John, where the angels are described as forming the outermost circle, (Rev. v. 11,) but surely this does not argue anything. The

officials who guard the king's palace are often of much higher rank than those admitted to the presence-chamber. Our Lord has distinctly said of his glorified saints, "They are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Luke xx. 36. With the prospect of such glorious equality, well may the sinful worms of earth rest thankfully contented. The angels are ministering spirits; and their Master and ours came also "to minister." It is well to note these things: men are apt to adopt, without sufficient consideration, the notions of those who have perhaps borrowed from preceding writers, and amongst them framed systems in which the plain word of Scripture is less prominent than are their own glosses upon it.

But whatever discoveries are reserved for the period when we shall know even as we are known, the present is a time to make use of what God has distinctly declared to us. We are in the world; in that field where the devil is now plentifully sowing, and carefully fostering his tares, for the twofold purpose of diminishing the Lord's harvest, and heaping up fuel for the unquenchable flames, in which the only solace of his own torments will be the sight of myriads suffering with him. His great seed-time is while men sleep: they will awake but to find the strong hands of God's angels binding the weeds for their final doom. This is a solemn thought for those who are appointed to watch the field; for kings, and persons in authority; for bishops, and ministers of religion; for parents, and the heads of every household; for all, in fact, to whom is committed the oversight of any fellow-creature. When they slumber at their posts, the enemy steals along, and injures their master's property, for which they must give account to him.

Another point where Satan must be met and resisted is chiefly personal; each individual must look to himself. The seed of the word being sown by the great Husbandman, the devil is sure to come and endeavour to take it away, ere it can sink and be rooted in their hearts. He knows how needful is prayer, with meditation, to render effectual that precious seed; and by a multitude of devices, he

will seek to divert the mind from such indispensable exercise. In this quarter the angels cannot oppose him; they are not authorized to interfere, nor permitted to bear a part in the mighty work of man's regeneration, conversion, sanctification: there God alone operates. Jesus is the author and the finisher, and only on him can the soul lean for help against the mighty. The wisest and most faithful of God's servants cannot always discern a blade of wheat from a tare: they are told both must grow together until the harvest; lest in attempting to root out the weeds they pull up the good plants also; the reapers, with whom is discernment for the task, will come forth at the appointed time, and effect the separation, but though they can gather in the whole harvest without letting fall a single ripe grain, still they have nothing to do with the seedtime, or with the secret growth of the plant. They cannot hinder the choking of the word by worldly cares and pleasures; they cannot cause that to take root which falls where no depth of spiritual susceptibility exists; they cannot wrest from Satan's grasp what he has snatched away from the heedless hearer; nor can they impart fertility to the heart of man, that it should so receive and retain as to bring forth fruit. So wonderfully has our gracious Lord guarded this and every other doctrine from abuse, that no humble, believing hearer need fear for a moment to be led into error by conceding to the subject of these imperfect pages that prominence to which it is entitled, as occupying a very important place in the revelations of God.

We sometimes have the counsel gravely given to leave these things to learned men as being too high for simple minds. The seventy disciples whom our Lord sent forth, we are told, returned to him with joy, because even the very devils were subject unto them through his name. They were simple, unlearned people, who, fully believing all that he had said, instead of setting down to hold a learned disquisition on the nature of evil spirits, went and acted upon what he told them, commanding the devils in his name. He answers their glad communication by telling them that he beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven; he invested them

with unlimited controul over "all the nence of superior intellect and conscious

power of the enemy," and, after cautioning them not to rejoice so much in this supernatural gift as in the knowledge that their own names were written in heaven, "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." Luke x. 21. With this encouragement before us, with a perfect consciousness of being a mere babe in worldly wisdom and worldly prudence, and simply believing that every word spoken of God is true, we have fulfilled our task; may it be as profitable to the soul of the reader, as the writer feels it has been to her own, while with the Bible, and nothing but the Bible, to guide her, she has endeavoured to trace the outlines of what can never be perfectly filled up, until the veil of mortality is withdrawn, which now withholds our eyes from contemplating in all its wondrous details, the mysterious world of spirits.

CONCLUSION

"WATCH."

"DELIVER US from the evil one," is the prayer which our Lord has instructed us to put up; and it is much to be regretted, that we are accustomed to use a different form of expression, calculated to withdraw our attention from the great personal adversary, and to present to our minds a vague notion of evil in general. Whatever isolates man, separating between him and the rest of God's creation, is inimical to his best interests. He looks on the inferior animals, and forgetting in how many respects their natural sensibilities resemble his own, he becomes their cruel oppressor. He dooms them to protracted hunger and thirst; he overworks them, until every sinew of their exhausted frames is wrung by the anguish of intolerable fatigue; he breaks the endearing ties by which the Lord of all has seen good to sweeten their humble existence; and standing on a haughty emi

immortality, he degrades some of the most marvellous of God's works, using them as mere tools for the supply of his artificial wants, the gratification of his avaricious propensities; until the whole creation, groaning and travailing in pain together, sends up a fearful cry into the ears of Him who from the glorious high throne of his eternal Majesty stoops to feed the young ravens that call upon him. Man was placed in dominion over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, that he might exercise a becoming vicegerency, brethren as they all are of the dust out of which his own body is so curiously formed; but Satan fills his mind with pride and hardens his heart against the pleadings of natural feeling on behalf of those who have no voice to utter in their own cause; and so, man, standing superciliously aloof from the creatures that his sin has subjected to vanity, works the work of devils in conniving at, if not wantonly inflicting, needless torments upon them.

Again, as below, so above his own scale of being there are races with which he is nearly affianced: not corporeally as here, but spiritually. These he cannot see, therefore he resolves to banish their existence from his thoughts. He is aware that of such superior creatures one class is ever about him for good, the other for evil; but what little he may have incidentally gathered on that subject he heeds not: and as to inquiry, he considers it a worthier employment to explode the depths of the earth for the fossil remains of some extinct species of animals, which had he met with it alive he would probably have hunted to death for his barbarous sport, than to seek a clearer knowledge of those beings among whom he must, assuredly and inevitably, dwell to eternity. Such insolation, we repeat, is most injurious to man: God never intended it for him. The record of creation, the repeated injunctions to mercy, and the beautiful provision made for its exercise under the glorious code of Israel's law, all declare on the one hand, as do on the other the many revelations given of angelic ministry and of Satanic malice, that man is not authorized to lose sight of his actual position as a link in the chain of created being.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation," said our blessed Lord. Against what were they to watch? He had apprized them long before, when he had taught them to pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one," and had also put into their mouths a plea for being thus guarded, thus delivered: "FOR thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever." The evil one seeks to usurp God's kingdom within us, to stir us up in resistance to His power, and by our rebellion, our ungrateful, unblushing scorn of His pure law, to tarnish the glory that rests upon His Church. We pray that Satan may not succeed in so seducing us into the robbery of God; we pray to be delivered from his wiles; and our prayer is accepted, if it be offered up in sincerity, the heart accompanying the lips, and with a willingness on our part to watch against the approach of that from which we have prayed to be preserved.

When the Christian, in pursuit of his lawful calling, finds himself entering those ways where the ungodly take council, and sinners walk, and scorners fix their seat, he knows that he must watch, and feels that he must pray. Temptation will surely then assail him; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, will each find its suitable incitement prepared: the fear of man will bring one snare, the love of man another; and he has no difficulty in realizing the presiding presence of Satan and his angels in the haunts of mammon or among the splendours of earthly pomp, or where contending parties strive for mastery in the field of worldly distinction. He does not love such scenes, but duty calls him into them, and he goes softly, humbled in spirit, wary in mind, taking heed lest, amid the abundance of stumbling-blocks, he should fall. Thus the six days of labour pass, and how joyful is the Sabbath dawn releasing him from such necessary exposure to temptation. He thinks, perhaps, with a sigh of compassionate sorrow of those who, turning the grace of God into licentiousness, will certainly keep a Sabbath to Satan, and use the day of release from worldly business as an especial opportunity for sinning greedily in other ways than those of covetousness and strife; but he goes

himself to the house of prayer, under a delightful conviction that in seeking the sanctuary of God he flies from the presence of all his foes.

And so he does; but alas! God has as yet no sanctuary on earth into which those foes cannot enter. There is nothing in consecrated walls to repel them; nor is the most devotional frame of mind that man can bring himself into, a safeguard against their near approach. Rather does our conscientiousness of being on hallowed ground, and its attendant feeling of security, encourage the wily foe to do his boldest and his worst, where two or three are gathered together, with Christ Himself in the midst, there stands Satan, or some trusty emissary of his, at their right hand, to resist them. We are not left to conjecture whether it be so or not; our Lord distinctly expresses it, when explaining the parable of the sower: "Then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved." Matt. viii. 12. This, indeed, refers to a case where no true faith exists; but it proves that when the word is preached, Satan is at hand to render it of no effect; and where is the Christian who has never realized the presence, even in the hour of real communion with God, of something over which he has had to mourn as being sadly opposed to that perfect spirituality of mind, that joy and peace in believing, which he knows he ought to attain unto?

We do not rightly estimate the enormous power of the enemy at those times and in those places where he may be considered as suffering an effectual check. A man may know "the plague of his own heart," but he will gain very little in his efforts to subdue it, if he thinks he has that alone to strive against. It is the Devil whom we are told to resist; and if half the prayers that we put up against the evil of our nature, were directed against him, personally and by name, we should soon experience a relief that is now more hardly and more partially obtained. Inquiry into the character and extent of Satanic power, however successful, is nothing without a vigorous application of the knowledge gained to our individual case: it is to reconnoiter an enemy whom we do not intend to fight; and who laughs at the

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