38. If the Holy Ghost had not caused this to be written by inspiration for our warning, we could not imagine the possibility of satanic power, cunning and cruelty reaching to this point: that parents should be willing to take their tender, helpless babes, and deliver them over to a most agonizing form of assassination, as an act of homage to the powers of hell, while they themselves were actually fed, day by day, with manna from heaven sent down by the merciful God, who quenched their hourly thirst with water flowing from a stony rock, and miraculously following them through the wilderness; where every step of their way was marked by some wonder of supernatural care, and all-endearing love. Here, indeed, must vile human nature lay its unclean lips in the dust; and here may proud man learn to tremble at the dreadful sovereignty exercised by Satan over all who are not translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God, by living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Although every form of idolatry, or devil-worship, was not so murderous as that of Moloch, cruelty was, and is, the distinguishing feature of all. In a passage already quoted, when the Lord tells his faithful Church of Smyrna that he will, for the trial of their faith, give Satan power over some of them, the consequences are, of course, to be imprisonment and tribulation. We may judge from the manner of his dealing with Job, what use Satan naturally makes of any such indul

gence. Calamities were heaped on that patient man faster than the tongues of his messengers could utter them. Blood and slaughter, burning and crushing, were the immediate indications of the devil's temporary authority over his possessions and his family; and when he was permitted to touch the body of his victim, he left him no sound part, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, but transformed every particle of healthful flesh into a loathsome and agonized sore. Not satisfied with this, he stirred up the very person who should have been the soother of his sorrows and the strengthener of his faith, to prompt the self-commission of what Satan himself was withheld from doing : for there can be little doubt that her wicked suggestion to " curse God, and die," implied the act of self-murder, to be committed in blasphemous defiance of the Lord. But here the adversary prevailed not; God had permitted him to break the hedge set about Job's temporal possessions and comforts, but his life and his soul were still secured. Failing in this, with what refinement of prolonged cruelty did the arch-fiend instigate his professed comforters to help forward Job's affliction !

Man's destruction is indeed the regular employment of Satan. The Apostle Peter tells us, "Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour." 1 Pet. v. 8. Like "the young lions roaring after their food," he prowls about, hoping

to find some one forsaken of God, and left as a prey to his teeth. That this does sometimes happen, even with reference to the Lord's people, we are clearly told. Paul expresses it, when directing the Corinthian Church how to act towards a heinous offender, who, having given place to the devil, was now doomed to experience the nature of that service for which he had cast away the easy yoke of Christ. "I, verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." 1 Cor. v. 3-5. It appears, however, that on giving proof of very deep sorrow, and unfeigned repentance, the transgressor was received again, after experiencing, no doubt for a time, what it was to be under the temporal power of the evil one. Another case of this sort is also mentioned by the same Apostle. "Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck of whom is Hymenæus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." 1 Tim. i. 19, 20. It would appear from this, that a temporary endurance of the devil's power is sometimes seen needful for the perverse children of God, in order to terrify

them by the foretaste of what an eternal subjection to so cruel a master must be: and as Satan knows the length of his chain, he is probably quite aware when correction, not destruction, is all that he is licensed to inflict. Accordingly, he makes the most of his time, not lulling and soothing them in their guilt, as with those who are wholly his own, but striving, as he did with Job, to render them desperate under the rod, that they may either run into despairing sin, curse God, and die," or else, as was near being the case with the Corinthian offender, may utterly faint and perish, being "swallowed up of overmuch sorrow."

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The Bible does not specify the particular cruelties practised under various forms of idolatry; but from what is perpetrated in the dark places of the earth at this day, we may judge of Satan's habitual proceedings among his worshippers. Human sacrifices, accompanied with circumstances of most horrible barbarity, are common in many parts of the world: mothers are required to butcher their tender infants, children their aged parents, and vast numbers of all ages are frequently put to death, as an offering to the spirit of a deceased ruler, or to be attendants on his soul in another world. Self-immolation is enforced as a sacred duty; and if not willingly performed, the reluctant victim is murdered. On harmless animals most cruel tortures are inflicted, as an acceptable service to the devils whom the heathen seek to propitiate; and in that

nominally Christian system, of which the "coming is after the working of Satan," 2 Thess. ii. 9. whose teachers are "seducing spirits," and its distinguishing requirements "doctrines of devils," 1 Tim. iv. 1. we find the satanic feature of wanton cruelty developed in full deformity. The rack is its main instrument of conversion to an idolatrous faith; and the flames its award to such as will not venture to encounter everlasting burnings. Massacre on a scale only bounded by the number of its defenceless victims, and the limits of its physical power; persecution, to the utmost stretch of human endurance, these are the lot of its opponents: while for the members of its own system it has the discipline of the scourge, of famishing hunger, of bodily austerity in every imaginable shape; and a merciless rending apart of every tie that God has formed to sweeten the cup of human life. In all this we should recognize the cruel hand of him who was a murderer from the beginning, even had not the word of God so distinctly set him forth as the framer and upholder of Popery, as to warrant our numbering among Scriptureevidences, what the prophetic page declares in the passages already quoted from St. Paul; and in those of John, when describing the Beast which he saw rising out of the sea. He says, "The dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority." Rev. xiii. 2. In the preceding chapter we are told, ver. 9, that the dragon is, "that old serpent, called the devil, and