the Devil) dragged from the seclusion of theological repose, and brought face to face with the modern world, which has certainly of late somewhat neglected his claims to real sovereignty. To-day I shall try to lay before you information of a character which will help you to make up your minds about the personality of the Devil; and I shall also not disguise from you my own opinions upon this question.

38. I may as well tell you at once the nature of my opinions. I think then it would be very difficult to establish the existence of one particular Arch-Fiend, the king of devils; but it seems to me quite rational and quite believable that there should be bad influences connected with personality or directed by intelligence, not only in the present visible world, but also in other worlds; and I don't see any impossibility in such bad influences connected with personality out of the flesh, conversing with, and to some extent influencing the brains of human beings, that is, of spirits still in the flesh. Modern science shows us the wonderful nature of the forces which surround us here; how that

light itself exercises all the mighty influences of dynamic power, the force of which can be easily measured.

How strange and subtile are the vibrations of heat-rays, capable of going through brick walls; or rays of light, capable of passing through glass, and being variously decomposed. How strange and unexplained is their chemical action. Think of electricity, and its curious connection with nerve-force, of which it may be only one subtile modification. Some such agency as that, being controlled and directed by external intelligence, may be used as an instrument for setting up brain waves and creating in the mind impulses and thoughts. For every thought demands a certain vibration in the brain control that, and you control the thought. A message can be flashed by electricity, as well as spoken or sent through the post; and the wires of the brain can be pulled by a subtile vibration addressed to the ear through the air, or to the eye through light, or directly to the brain molecules sensitive to electric action.

39. Most of you believe, I suppose, in the

survival of your own spirits, and when you say so you mean the exercise of personality under conditions not like these present ones, conditions not now known or understood, but hereafter to be realised. Yet you believe in the survival of your own personality. Well, there is no reason why you should not believe that when you pass away from this sphere you may find borderland conditions through which you may you may influence those who have not passed away, since personality at least constitutes something common to both spheres, and is presumably independent of the body as commonly understood; and if you are a bad spirit you may be able to be attracted towards those that are bad, and influence them for bad. You are then their devil. And if you are a good spirit when you pass away, you may be able to be attracted to those who are on a similar moral plane, or who need you sympathetically, and you through sympathy will act upon them for good, and then you will be their good angel.

Such a speculation is recognised in the words of the Prayer Book: "O God, who hast constituted the services of angels and mer in a wonderful order."

40. But whether you think devils and angels are departed human beings, or spirits intelligent but not human, or whether you deny altogether the possibility of spirits affecting the brains of mortals (except when spirits are human beings clothed in flesh), most of you who believe in God believe that He is a Spirit, and that He does visit the spirits of men through their brains. That is the assumption of every religion. But how does He do it? There must be an agency. The spirit in its present state is not reached except through its physical organ, the brain; vibrations are set up there, somehow, by what we call the Holy Spirit. That Holy Spirit must use some force. And there you open the door, you stumble upon the rationale of Divine communion; you have the belief which makes the utilisation of subtile physical forces altogether reasonable, and if such are used by a Divine spirit there is no reason why they should not be used (even as we use them) by spirits less divine, human or angelic; it matters not, and we know not.

41. So much by way of general preface, and now for the information which will enable

you to come to a conclusion about the personality of the Devil, on the ground of what is to be found in the Bible.

The story of Eve and the serpent has generally been supposed to refer to the story of the first woman tempted by the Devil; but there is nothing in the narrative itself to lead you to suppose that the serpent is the Devil. We have brought the Devil into a great many parts of the Old Testament where he has really no place. He abounds in the last book of the New Testament, and we have taken that old serpent the Devil, and read him into Genesis the first book of the Old Testament. I place the book of Revelation this morning quite outside the controversy, chiefly because it is so late, and so symbolical and figurative that it will not serve to establish any point of dogmatic theology. I shall have to treat the Revelation separately, on another occasion. I leave it on one side for the present, and

I

say that all we know about the serpent who tempted Eve from Genesis is that he was a serpent, and that he is said to have spoken to the woman, to have tempted her, and to have been condemned to go on his belly in conse