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."

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

Satan, which deceiveth the whole world:" and again, of the Beast to whom he gave his power, it is written, "It was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.” xiii. 7. The predictions of the Bible are no less certain than its historical relations; and if we desire an instance of the sustained cruelty of Satan, manifested through a space of twelve hundred years and upwards, not among barbarous people who never heard of the true God, but in the heart, and throughout the extent of Christendom, we must look at Popery-the Babylon of prophecy, concerning whom it is said, "Babylon the great... is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Rev. xviii. 2.

The case of those possessed with devils is represented as being nearly always one of great suffering. The exceptions seem to be those instances where the infernal inmate was a welcome confederate, for the sake of such supernatural powers as he could confer. Such was the "spirit of divination " possessed by the damsel who followed Paul and Silas; the "familiar spirits" that enabled Simon Magus, Elymas, and others, to practise sorcery; and the awful entering-in of Satan himself into Judas Iscariot, who went and completed his tremendous bargain under that devilish influence. Among the many descriptions of demoniacal cruelty inflicted on the poor creatures who were brought to our Lord or to his apostles, we may notice the daughter of the Syro