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be studiously avoided, when their sole ground is a strained interpretation of a figurative incident.

Finally if now you look back over what I have said of "the Fall of Man," and, studying these details, consider the whole matter in the light of God's dealings in Providence, as declared by universal history, the Bible included, you will not improbably be led to the conclusion, that what is theologically called "man's ruin," is really man's first step out of his animal condition into the ascensional pathway of ceaseless progress.

CHAPTER III.

THE JEWISH ELEMENT AS SEEN IN THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA; ALEXANDRINE DEMONOLOGY; JOSEPHUS; THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT; THE BOOK OF ENOCH; THE TALMUD AND CABBALISTS.

HEBREWISM offered me little, if any, hospitality. Indeed, in one way it waged ruthless war upon me, while in course of time it came to oppose in good earnest the pagan Baal, Moloch and Ashteroth, from whom it had been delivered by the hand of God.

A more auspicious reception was I favoured with by that mixture of Aryan with Shemitic influences which gave birth to Judaism, the immediate forerunner of the Christianity of the Church, as contradistinguished from the Christianity of Christ.

The darker and depravating elements which produced the impure amalgam, I proceed to set before you in one or two brief outlines.

Let me shortly resume what I have said of demonology in connection with the Shemitic spirit. The two stand in mutual

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IS FOUND, IN THE BOOK OF TOBIT.

opposition, so far as first principles are concerned.

Only on the surface of the Old Testament have I left an imprint of myself, and in that imprint you can see the trace of no horns, no cloven feet, no tail. Even in the later literature of the Hebrew nation, which I will term Jewish, I cannot boast of great prominence. And yet here I sowed seed which, under ecclesiastical fostering, brought forth a plentiful crop. The Jewish belief in evil spirits was formed under the influence of Parsism; yet that influence, checked by the resistance offered to it by the Shemitic spirit, produced effects at first not of a very marked nature nor on a very large scale. most that it did was to give a certain consistence to obsolescent traditions derived from paganism that lingered in the popular mind, and to find support in Oriental imaginations, when not tempered and controlled by a severe and spiritual monotheism.

The

Not till you come down after the exile to the Jewish Apocryphal book of TOBIT do you find clear traces of the demonology of the Jews of Palestine and the Jews of Babylonia. A devil, by name Asmodeus, who appears in the Talmud as the divinity of lust, and even as the prince of evil spirits, falling in love with Sarah, daughter of Raguel, a citizen of Ecbatana, kills for his own vile purpose seven young men who successively were to be her husbands (iii. 8, vi. 14). By the advice of the angel Raphael, who has become travelling companion to Tobit's son, the devil is put to flight by the smoke which rises from the liver of a fish placed on burning coal, and hastens to hide himself in the deserts of Upper Egypt, where he is thrown into chains by the angel Raphael. His demoniacal rival being thus disposed of, Tobit takes Sarah to wife, and consummates the marriage without let or hindrance. The power possessed by the devil was given him of God, in order that Sarah's virtue might be tried and established.

Asmodeus (tempter), judging by his name, a Persian by birth, supports the reference of the Biblical doctrine to Baby

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lonia. The same effect ensues from the acquaintance with Mesopotamia manifested in his style by the unknown author of the book, who, if not a native, must have travelled in those lands. Consequently he was acquainted with the Persian demonology. Indeed, he introduced into the writing as much of it as he could make comport with the Jewish monotheism, without going as far as the Mazdean dualism, which in its proper form does not figure in any Jewish composition, and without making me a rival power to that of God.

From the character of the book you are justified in inferring the Magian origin of the Jewish demonology. Taking into account the Persian origin of the name Asmodeus, which rests on the high authority of Reland, we may declare that the Jewish view of myself regarded me as the tempter of human beings. In this unenviable aspect I am symbolized in Genesis, as you are aware, and thus the connection of the Jewish demonology with that of Persia is put beyond a doubt. The union of the two makes an appearance in these words of Tobit's: "Thou madest Adam of the dust of the earth, and gave him Eve for a helper" (Tobit viii. 8; Gen. ii. iii.).

Similar in result is the account which the angel Raphael gives of himself: "I am the angel Raphael" (a beautiful young man (Tobit v. 5), one of the seven who stand before the Lord, "the good angel of God" (Tobit v. 27). "When thou (Tobit's father) didst pray with tears and didst bury the dead, I offered thy prayer to the Lord; and because thou wast acceptable to the Lord, it was necessary that temptation should prove thee." (Comp. Job ii. 3, seq.). "And now the Lord hath sent me to heal thee and to deliver Sarah thy son's wife from the devil. And when they heard these things they were seized with fear and fell prostrate on the ground. And the angel said to them, Fear not; for now that I am with you, I am here by the will of God; bless ye him and sing his praises. I seemed, indeed, to eat and to drink with you; but I use meat and drink which cannot be seen by men. Now then it is time that I return to him that sent me. He

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THE FIRST BOOK OF MACCABEES.

was then taken from their sight and was seen no more. Then they, lying prostrate for three hours, blessed God, and, rising up, told all his wonderful works." (Tobit xii.)

Here you have a curious mixture of Aryan and Shemitic elements. The angel Raphael, though he has a Shemitic name, appears as the chief of the seven angels, which recal the seven Persian Amshaspands, the pure spirits or angels whom Ormuzd created by Honover, his Word. On the other side, Asmodeus, though he has a Persian name, is God's instrument whereby to try Tobit and Sarah, even as Satan was for the trial of the virtue of Job. Moreover, the Shemitic element predominates, for God sends Raphael, and Raphael returns back to God, while Asmodeus is so subordinate to God that Raphael binds him in chains, and so puts a stop to his demoniacal doings. (Comp. Tobit ii. 12.)

The word devil presents itself in the first book of MACCABEES (i. 36), where, speaking of apostate Jews who, rendering aid to Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek assailant and bitter enemy of the nation, took up a position on Mount Zion as a point of assault against brethren who were faithful to the religion of their forefathers, and whom they hoped to seduce and paganize, the author of this apocryphal history declares, "they became a great snare against the sanctuary and an evil devil in Israel." The term employed signifies a misleader. Such is the nature of the act here ascribed to the Hellenized Jews. But in this the only passage found in the Palestinian Apocrypha, it is a devil, and not the devil, that is offered to your reflections. And this devil, while not a hundredth part so black as the devil of the Church, receives his darkest tint from the adjective bad, implying that it was possible to be a devil without at least being so very malignant. This is a point that I have repeatedly drawn your attention to. But how is the term "a bad devil" used here? In a literal sense or figuratively? These apostates were in intention misleaders, seducers in reality, and may well be so characterized, without any reference to any system of demonology

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or any demoniacal category. Different would have been the meaning did the Scripture present the term the devil. Then there might be a reference to the Persian Ahriman in a Judaical form. As it is, the import is so uncertain as to add little, if anything, to what I have already set before you.

The Jewish DEMONOLOGY OF ALEXANDRIA has a more serious character. It is free from the low and vulgar falsities with which that of Palestine is laden. It consists of two essential features. With the Alexandrine Jews, the demons are the false divinities of paganism. Proof of the statement is furnished by the Septuagint or Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Every time that the Old Testament mentions the pagan idols, the Seventy translate the word by the Greek daiμórior, demon. (Ps. xcvi. [xcv. in the LXX.] 5, cvi. [cv.] 37.)

The same view is taken by the Alexandrine author of the second part of the Apocryphal BARUCH. "You have," the writer says to the Israelites whom he reproaches with their idolatry, “sacrificed to demons and not to God." This metamorphosis of the pagan divinities, thus, after the manner of the Persian Dews, turned into devils, arose from the repulsion and hate called forth in the Hellenistic Jews by the offensive idols of Egypt, in the midst of which they lived, and presents another version of "the fall of the angels." The notion, the origin of which is here offered, passed at a later day into the Church, and was patronized by nearly all the fathers.

A conception of a different order, though not less false and injurious, is indicated by the author of the Apocryphal book of WISDOM: "God created man for immortality; he made him in his own image. The envy of the devil introduced into the world death, which has become the universal inheritance. Those who declare themselves on his side experience the cruel effects" (ii. 23-25). This is the first time that you can find allusion to the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve by the serpent, and to its disastrous consequences. But