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tions and aims, and conform to the severe purity of life and thought and feeling which it required of its disciples. From this source, and for these reasons, came many of the corruptions of teaching and doctrine into the early church-some of which remain to this day.

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But we must come to a close. The facts passed in review show clearly enough that the primitive church was not a perfect church, free from all errors of doctrine and all violations of the moral law. How little did these Corinthians take in of that profound truth of the Saviour's utterance, "God is a SPIRIT, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth!" And how far they were from comprehending Paul's doctrine concerning the resurrec tion before he wrote his epistles "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body: God giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him: as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." And what need that those gluttonous and drunken converts should heed his declaration, "they that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." And how painful and shocking to the Christians of this day is the fact that any portion of this Corinthian church could have defendled, and even boasted of the crime of their incestuous companion! And how shocking, too, that they should have had so distorted a view of the nature and intent of the Lord's Supper as to make out of it a half heathen feast, carrying their beastly excesses even unto death. The golden age of the Church is not in the past, but far on in the Future!

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Demons and Demoniacs among the Greeks

I. AMONG the Greeks the doctrine of Demons was taught by all the philosophers and poets in a more or less developed and scientific Aristotle divides intelligent beings into two classes: immortals. embracing gods and demons; and mortals, embracing heroes and men. Plato, who was ambitious of knowing and teaching everything. furnishes us with a very detailed account of the nature, offices and employments of the demons. In the " Banquet,” be says;

Demons are intermediate between God and mortals. Their spe cial business is to convey to the gods the petitions of men, and 20 carry back and interpret their answers and their commands to mer These demons are the source of all prophecy, and of the art of conjuration and sacrificial consecration. The Deity has to direct inter

course with mer

carried on by are many kin

munications of the gods with mortals are whether waking or in dreama Ther or spirits."

He speaks as positively as some of our modern theologians on kindred subjects. We might suppose he was on intimate terms with the gods and demons, and knew all about the matter. He proceeds to inform us that they are clothed with air or vapor, wander through the heavens, and among the stars, and sometimes take up their abode on earth. They foresee coming events, and have power to control them to a certain extent. Every man has a demon given him at his birth, who follows him through life, and at death conducts him to the place appointed, whether of happiness, purification or punishment.

Plutarch taught that there were gradations of character among these demons, accordingly as the divine or sensuous elements prevailed. Where the sensuous predominates, the demons were malicious, with violent passions and tempers, and disposed to mischief and injury. To conciliate these, and avert their destructive influences, was the purpose of many of the rude and noisy forms of the vulgar worship, and of human sacrifices. These malicious spirits delight in suffering, and in blood offerings, the odors of which they sniff up with exceeding satisfaction and delight. They also prompt men to all manner of evil and wickedness, and seek to draw them away from the worship of the gods. They are impure themselves, and excite impulse in man. They are vile and vicious, and seek to bring others. into their own likeness. They diffuse abroad falsehoods and misrepresentations of the character and acts of the gods and of the supremeDeity, and endeavor to establish everywhere the reign of error and wickedness.1

He also testifies that the ancients, (that is, relative to his time, A.D. 80), believed that evil and mischievous demons entertained envy and hatred toward good men, and did what injury they could to them. And Saleucus says, in the preface to his Laws, that these demons probably lead men into sin and wrong, being evil and wicked spirits. Pythagoras, who lived B.C 600, maintained that the region of the air was full of spirits or demons, who caused sickness and diseases. among men and beasts.2

1 Neander's Church History, i. pp, 5-35. The moral element is specially prominent in these statements. It is not only physical injury they seek to do to man; but they aim constantly to corrupt his heart, and lead him into sin, to seduce him from the worship and love of God. This is the peculiar work of the Devil, according to modern mythology; but as the Greeks have no Devil par excellence, they are obliged to employ the Demons in this business.

2 It is curious to note in the history of the world's mental growth and religious development, the points where the extremes of culture and ignorance meet. The culti vated Greek attributes his fever, or palsy, or epilepsy to a demon; the New Zealander,

Porphyry, the great antagonist of Christianity, (A.D. 270) affirmed that there were hurtful and malevolent demons, who inhabited the regions of the air near the earth, and were the authors of all the calamities and troubles which affiict mankind. He says that there is no mischief nor wickedness they are not engaged in; that they make a business of lying and deceiving, and seek in every way to draw men off from the worship of the true gods, and to set themselves up for gods. The chief of these demons is ambitious to be esteemed as the supreme or chief Deity. Some cities, or countries, he says, "found it necessary to appease and humor them by prayers and sacrifices; it being in their power to bestow riches and gifts for the body. And those desiring these things should endavor to avert their wrath and power; otherwise they will vex and trouble them continually."

He states it as a settled fact that these evil spirits "will grow angry and hurt men, if they are neglected, and have not due honor and worship paid them, with prayers, supplications and sacrifices." This will suffice under this head; and now we come to another particular, viz.:

II. The Greeks believed that one class of these demons were departed human spirits, the souls of dead men. The following facts will show this, and will indicate one of the sources from which the Jews derived their notions in regard to the genealogy or nature of demons.

Hesiod, according to Plato, says that whenever a good man dies he becomes a demon. And Plato himself affirms that "all who die valiantly in war become demons, and we ought forever to adore and worship their sepulchres (at their sepulchres ?), as the tombs of demons." who never dreamed of philosophy, and in his ignorance and degradation verges toward the brute, does the same:

"At the door of one of the huts sat a man in an apparently weak and languishing condition. On inquiry it was found that he was a distinguished priest, who had been supposed incurable, and was forsaken by all his friends and left to perish. He had been severely attacked with pleurisy, and the superstitious people supposed that a demon god was eating out his heart!

"The missionaries found him in a most deplorable condition, and with his consent applied a very large blister to his chest, which occasioned the severest pain, and made him lose his senses for a few hours, so that he ran out of the house in the night. However, it was instrumental of curing him; and he told the missionaries after he began to recover, that during those hours of agony, "the bad spirit within was pulling with all its might against the Christian spirit (the blister) without, so that between them both he was almost torn to pieces. The Christian, however, proved the strongest, and in plucking off the plaster fairly dragged the bad spirit out of his breast!" The Cannibals: or A Sketch of New Zealand." p. 34. Boston, 1832.

3 Plutarch and Xenocrates both speak of those Festivals where the people indulge in ravings, and lamentations, and beatings, as intended to avert the wrath of evil and malignant demons, who are pleased with these and the same judgment is passed on human sacrifices.

Pythagoras says the soul, if defiled with vices, becomes an evil demon; but if, having forsaken vice, it retain a solicitous affection for virtues which it practices in this life, it shall become a good demon.

And Philo Byblius says, that the Phenicians and Egyptians, from whom other nations borrowed the custom, counted as the greatest gods those who had proved themselves the greatest benefactors of mankind — and that to these they erected statues and monuments, and dedicated religious festivals." 4

Thus it will be seen that the souls of good men, or great men, became good demons after death, and the souls of bad men became bad demons; and each class followed the natural bent of its character.

III. The next important fact to be noticed is this: The Greeks believed that these departed human spirits or gods sometimes entered into the bodies of the living, and took possession of them; and, if evil, afflicted them in various ways with pains and diseases. There is a curious passage in Herodotus illustrating both this fact and this use of the word "demon."

The Scythians, it seems, reproached or ridiculed the Greeks celebrating the Bacchic rites, saying it was "contrary to reason to suppose that a god would drive men into madness." But soon after their king Scylas was initiated into the mysteries, and was seized with the furor; whereupon one of the disciples went forth and cried out to the Scythians, "You laugh at us because we celebrate the Bacchic ceremonies, and the god (o cós) possesses us; but now this same demon (o daíuor) has taken possession of your king, and he celebrates the rites, and is maddened by the god, ó 0ɛóş.” 5 The terms "demon," possessed," and "madness," strikingly resemble the Jewish phraseology in the New Testament.

Strabo, who lived in the time of the Saviour, calls the goddess Feronia a demon." and declares that those "who were possessed with this spirit could walk barefoot over burning coals." Philostratus, who was also contemporary with our Lord, relates the story of a demon who entered into a young man, and "while possessing him, confessed that he was the spirit of a person who had been slain in battle." Lucian, in his Philopseudes, gives us a view of the subject as it 4 These citations show that" demon does not necessarily imply an evil spirit demon may be good as well as bad. Homer calls his gods demons, and "daimonios" is often equivalent to “godlike." The succeeding quotations confirm this. See also Stanley's Philosophy, p. 428, folio ed., and Farmer on Demoniacs and the Worship of Human Spirits, who has illustrated this point with much learning and research. 5 Cary's Herodotus, iv. 79. The Greek is exactly the same with that of the New Testament.

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stood in the popular belief in his day, A.D. 150. One of the disputants in the dialogue, gives a particular account of a person who had cast out demons, and declares that he had himself witnessed the operation, and seen a demon cast out. "Many others beside you," says another," have met with demons; I have a thousand times seen such things." And, as proof, he says that he and his family had seen a statue so possessed by a demon, as to come down from its pedestal and walk about the house! 6 And then, to convince the unbelieving disputant, Tychiades, Diognetus challenges him to go to Corinth, and he will show him the very house from which he himself had cast out a demon which had disturbed it, and "which was the spirit of a dead man."7

IV. The next thing to be noted is this: It was believed, as the quotation from Lucian shows, that these evil demons could be expelled by certain religious rites and ceremonies. And this superstition was taken advantage of by priests and magicians who derived a considerable revenue by pretending to deliver these diseased persons from the power of the demon, or in other words by casting him out through the power of their charms and incantations. Those afflicted with the "sacred diseases" as they were called, palsy, epilepsy, apoplexy, insanity, and other strange disorders, supposed to be inflicted by the demons possessing them, flocked to these imposters, and paid them liberally to employ their enchantments in driving out the evil spirits.

To such an extent was this carried that Hippocrates, the father of medicine, even as early as B.C. 450, wrote a book on the subject. In this work he shows that these diseases were no more sacred than any others; that is, that demons or evil spirits had nothing to do with them; that they were natural disorders, and subject to the control of medical skill, and could be cured by proper medical treatment. And he declares boldly that all those who were desirous of concealing their ignorance of the real nature of these diseases by declaring them to be “divine" and "sacred," were nothing more than blockheads and charlatans.

In closing it may be well to remark that in Greece, in Egypt and in the East, the possession with demons, and their expulsion, are common 'things even at this day. A writer in the Baptist Christian Review for April, 1860, says:

6 Why not, if tables can be made to walk about, as is affirmed, in these days? Why cannot a statue come down, if a table can go up? What is the essential difference in theory between the demonism of the Greek mythology, and that of modern spiritualism? 7 Existence of a Personal Devil, pp. 37-43.

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