That Mr. Adams was ambitious, there can be no question; and none, that he was an ardent lover of his country,-a pure patriot. He imbibed lessons of patriotism from his father; and the stirring events of his childhood made ineffaceable impressions upon his soul. "In 1775," said he, in a speech at Pittsfield, "the minute-men from a hundred towns in the province were marching at a moment's warning to the scene of opening war. Many of them called at my father's house at Quincy, and received the hospitality of John Adams. All were lodged in the house which the house would contain; others in the barns, and wherever they could find a place. There were then in my father's kitchen some dozen or two of pewter spoons; and I well recollect going into the kitchen and seeing some of the men engaged in running those spoons into bullets for the use of the troops! Do you wonder that a boy of seven years of age who witnessed this scene should be a patriot?" But, as we have seen, and as he evinced through his whole career, Mr. Adams was not, in the technical sense of the word, a safe politician. He was not to be relied on as a party man. He was a Federalist, when in his judgment the Federalists were in the right; but he sustained the measures of the Republicans when he believed their tendency to be for the welfare of the country. He cared not for the name Whig, or Democrat; he was now the one, now the other, and sometimes a little of both. Hence it is easy to account for the torrents of abuse which were poured upon him by shallow-brained politicians, who were unable to comprehend the motives which actuated him, and who could see only through party spectacles. He was a close student almost to the end of his life. He made himself master of the French, German, and Italian languages ;—in neither of which was there an author of merit with whose writings he was unacquainted. While in Europe, he prepared for the press a poetical translation of Wieland's Oberon; the publication of which was superseded by that of Sotheby. His account of a tour through Silesia, made in the year 1800, originally published in a Philadelphia periodical, was reprinted in London, translated into German and French, and has been widely circulated on the Continent. In 1832 he published a poem entitled "Dermot M'Morrogh, or the Conquest of Ireland;" of which, it is said, two additional cantos are among his manuscripts. It will be as well to let them remain unprinted. His fame depends not upon his poetry. Although some of his minor pieces evince considerable skill at versifying, the larger poem, above referred to, hardly soars above mediocrity. A sonnet, inscribed to the sun-dial at Washington, is probably as favourable a specimen as we can give of his poetic powers:— "Thou silent herald of time's silent flight! Say, couldst thou speak, what warning voice were thine? In day's broad glare, and when the noontide bright They bid us seize the moments as they pass- Nor lose one sand of life's revolving glass- By virtuous deeds to give eternity to time.” Finally, we have no hesitation in saying that John Quincy Adams was a good man;-not orthodox, when measured by the creeds of churches deemed evangelical, but still a good man. He feared God, and aimed to keep his commandments. He loved the Bible, and made it his daily study,-his monitor and guide. Nowhere is reverence for the Scriptures more strongly inculcated than in his "Letters to his Son," published since his decease; and in the life of no other statesman with which we are familiar, are more beautifully exemplified the practical graces of Christianity. Happily for us, it is not ours to decide with how much of what we deem erroneous opinion true piety may co-exist; or how far the head may be wrong when the heart is right. The Master has given us the standard: we want no other; nay, it is most presumptuous arrogance to seek another, By their fruits ye shall know them. ART. III-ON THE DEMONIACS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. THE sacred writers treat of the existence of an invisible world just as they treat of the existence of God. Both are assumed as undeniably true, while there is not the shadow of an attempt to demonstrate, by argument, the certainty of either. Indeed, the two ideas are inseparable. For no man, who admits a God, can, without absurdity, not to say contradiction, deny the existence of the invisible world: God himself is an invisible being; he must, therefore, though omnipotent, eminently be an inhabitant of that world. And as God, who is unseen, really exists, how can it be denied that other spiritual, and, consequently, invisible beings, also exist? Hence, we shall always find the reason of man, in those states of society in which sufficient light and culture have been shed upon the human mind to enable it to put forth its full strength in the prosecution of mental and moral inquiries, to accord its assent to the four following connected truths, which are all equally assumed in Divine revelation: the Divine existence; the invisible world; spiritual beings; and the immortality of the soul. They are all to be regarded as great and essential first truths, without the admission of which no system of religion worthy the name can possibly exist. One of these this article proposes to consider at some length. To revelation alone must we look for information respecting the state, character, and employment of the spiritual beings with which the invisible world is peopled. On these points human reason utters no trustworthy response. They are not only questions which Divine revelation alone can answer, but which it has answered,with a fulness and distinctness which ought to satisfy every inquirer whose object is to arrive at the truth for devout and practical purposes, and not for those of debate or speculation. With this desire, let us inquire into the testimony of revelation as to those fallen and malignant beings whose existence is disclosed especially in the New Testament. Of the existence of an order of beings called devils, there is the same evidence in Divine revelation as of those called angels. And the character of the former is as clearly presented as that of the latter. This is so obvious, that the existence of evil spirits is never denied by those who profess to believe the Bible divinely inspired, except when the system, professedly drawn from that volume, and for which its suffrage is claimed, absolutely demands such denial for its own existence and completion. Thus, it is laid down as a principle by the oppugners of eternal punishment, that such is the Divine benevolence, as infallibly to secure the final happiness of all God's creatures. Now grant the real existence of fallen spirits, and you must admit that there is no intimation of their redemption, and that their endless punishment is in more than one place explicitly declared. While these two considerations press upon the advocate of no eternal punishment, his shortest method to relieve his system is to deny the existence of fallen spirits altogether. And though the system is not hereby relieved of the abundant Seriptural proofs of the future and eternal punishment of all who die unregenerate; yet it is relieved in so far as the existing connexion between the final condition of those malignant fallen spirits who remain unredeemed, and that of those unregenerate men, who, though redeemed, still die unsaved, is concerned. It is somewhat strange that the advocates of this system have not as yet seen fit to assume that all rebel spirits will yet be restored to the Divine favour, and once more be brought under fealty to their offended Sovereign. Of this, the Bible furnishes as good assurance as it does that those unregenerate men who die in that state will be restored from the depths of perdition to the favour of God. But perhaps it remains for some future hand to add this modification to the already frequent revisions of the system. Let us next glance at the fact of the sin and fall of those once holy and happy beings, more generally known in Scripture as the devil and his angels. We say the fact of their sin and fall; for what more than this is clearly revealed? And it is a maxim of most extensive application, that what is not clearly revealed is not revealed at all. Revelation discloses facts. It does not discover by dark hints and dubious intimations, leaving to the curiosity and ingenuity of men to pry into and decipher them, and supply deficiencies as best they can. Revelation, it is true, is sometimes full and sometimes limited. But even then it is still clear; that is, obviously full or obviously limited: and one or the other, as Divine wisdom saw most promotive of the eternal interests of man. Indeed, what essentially pertains to him, both as to time and eternity, is given in full disclosure; what pertains to other created intelligences is limited,—disclosed, not for the indulgence of a speculative curiosity, but for a foundation of an unwavering faith. More than is requisite for this would not promote our happiness, or contribute to direct our practice. The sum of what is revealed as to the sin and fall of those malignant spirits, is compressed in the sacred record within a very narrow compass, and all in two passages, namely, 2 Peter ii, 4, and Jude 6. Divested of its connectives, the passage in Peter stands thus: "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." Jude 6, thus: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." The fact of the sin of some of the angels is here distinctly asserted. The forfeiture of their former estate or dignity, as the immediate consequence of that sin, is also declared. That God proceeded to positive punishment, is included; together with the fact that they are held in durance until human probation shall be consummated, when they shall be judged, their misery be enhanced in degree, and remain eternal in duration. At least this is clearly implied. The clause, left their own habitation, indicates that they transcended the rank or sphere assigned them; for the term should doubtless be taken in a moral, not in a physical or local sense. What a summary view of these few awful facts! It is all fact. Nothing which can with propriety be called circumstance is included. That they were in a state of probation may be regarded as highly probable, and as almost a necessary inference; but without a fuller revelation, more than hypothesis it cannot be. How long they had stood, or what was the era of their defection, or how duration in eternity is computed, it were idle to conjecture. That it may have been at some point far anterior to the birth-song of time, in the dateless cycles of eternity, cannot be denied. What relation they originally held to each other, as to paramount and inferior dominion, and whether one or more were principal, and the rest accessory in their treason, the inspired apostles inform us not. as to the fact of there being chief and subordinate among the fallen, the deficiency here is supplied elsewhere in the New Testament. A little attention to the import of the terms employed to designate this class of beings will enable us to determine several facts not otherwise explained. For example, the term devil, Diáßoλoç, from the verb diaßáλλw, to dart or strike through, accuse, calumniate, &c., implies calumniator, traducer, false accuser. As an appellative of a class or species, this term is frequently applied figuratively to human beings, when it is the design to predicate of them the characteristics etymologically indicated by the term. In this figurative sense the word is used in both numbers. In the plural, however, it occurs only thrice in the New Testament; namely, in the following passages in Paul's Epistles: "Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers," un diaßóλove, 1 Tim. iii, 11. Those who shall come in the last times are described as being "without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers," diáẞohol, 2 Timothy iii, 3. The other instance is Titus ii, 3, where Paul directs that the aged women "be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers,” μὴ διαβόλους. But διάβολος is never found in the plural when employed as a proper name of the arch apostate. Another term commonly applied to the head and leader of fallen spirits in the Scriptures is Satan, Hebrew, ; Greek, Latavās, an adversary. This word occurs in the New Testament between thirty and forty times, and always in the singular. The word dragon, Spákov, (probably from dépкoμaι, I see,) which literally means a large kind of serpent, so called from his sharp sight, is also a designation of the prince of fallen angels. This word occurs in the New Testament a dozen or more times, but nowhere except in the Apocalypse. It is important to observe with regard to diáßoλos and doákwv, that when they are used as proper names of the chief |
