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MALIGN SPIRITUAL INFLUENCES.

SUNDAY EVENING, NOV. 29, 1868.

"BE sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist steadfast in the faith."-1 PETER V. 8, 9.

A LION ranges for his prey. Although the strongest of beasts, he is sly, and brings cunning to the help of strength. He lies in wait, he changes his place, going about, and beating up, as it were, for his prey. He watches the pool where men and beasts go for water. He lies near frequented paths, and is ready at dusk, or in some unexpected moment, to leap forth upon his victim, and beat him down by strength whom he hath caught by guile. Then it is too late, when his blow hath fallen; for who shall lift himself against the lion? Therefore he is to be avoided, or detected and discovered, and resisted with open fight, from which he shrinks and runs away. Therefore it is otherwhere said, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

Man's soul carries in it the elements of all good, and of all evilfor every faculty has its good and its evil side; its temperate and its excessive use; and there is no outward evil in the world which is not made so by something which represents it in man. There is no evil under the general designation of sin, which has not its origin within. The soul of man lies open, like the Atlantic coast, to all the influences which beat in from the broad ocean. Whatever thing is good, whatever thing true, whatever thing beautiful, whatever there is noble in the realm and universe of God, is wafted in toward him. And there is in man a susceptibility to elements of an opposite nature. Whatever there is evil, whatever there is selfish or cruel or base, in all the realm of God's universe, is wafted in toward him, and may

LESSON: Psalm, XXIII. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection): Nos. 769, 865, 384.

beat upon him as a wave upon the shore. There is that in man which answers to whatever is base, corrupt, selfish, lustful, wicked, in the outward world.

This is itself a sufficient reason for forethought and for vigilance. But the sacred Scripture declares that there is a power of temptation in evil spirits. If that is not taught in the Word of God, nothing is taught. If it be not taught that there is a master spirit of evil, and that there be minor spirits many, then it is not taught that there is a master Spirit of good which we call God, and angels many. And any interpretation which wrenches this truth out of the Bible, does not wrench the truth so much as it does the Bible, which it utterly destroys. For a like interpretation would take out of it any thing and every thing, and destroy all confidence in it as a book of direction, as a book for guidance.

I know that it is not in later days so much in fashion to speak of Satan as once it was; and I think it more than likely that hitherto there has been a kind of frequency and a sort of use made of the term which was not wise, and that over-action has in some sense produced a reaction. But that is no reason why there should not be a wise employment of this truth. If it it be true that as, on the one hand, man is susceptible to divine and beatific influences, so, on the other hand, he is susceptible to malign and malicious influences, then there is no knowledge which a man can so ill afford to lay aside as that. No navigator can afford to be ignorant of any rock that lies in his way, nor of any quicksand that obstructs his course. No soldier can afford to be ignorant of any real peril that lies before him, or on either flank. And certainly, no navigator across the sea of life, no soldier that is resisting the powers of evil in the world, can afford to have great and permanent perils, and be ignorant of them, or disbelieve them.

Whatever else may be said about the Bible, I am sure no man can deny that it is the best book to guide men toward practical virtue and true holiness that ever has appeared in the world. Whatever may be the disputes about its origin, whatever may be the controversies and the doubts upon the various theories of inspiration, as a practical book, as a light to a man's feet and a lamp to his path, it has proved itself to be, and can by investigation be shown to be, the wisest book to follow that is known.

Now, if the Word of God, as the light of the other world is revealed and falls upon its pages, lays more and more emphasis upon the fact that man, in this mortal state, is surrounded by a sphere filled with spirits that are perpetually tempting him to evil, it is not wise for us to cast it, with a sneer of skepticism, out of our belief, and out of our head.

It

I know that there are many who disbelieve in spirit-agency. is inconsistent with their conception of a benevolent God, that he should permit a devil to exist. I wonder what such people do with their eyes. I wonder what they have been living about, and in, and for. Did you ever think that on every side there are just exactly that kind of spirits in the flesh which you disbelieve to exist out of the flesh, and that it is not, in point of fact, inconsistent with the existence of a benevolent God, in whom you believe, that there should be men who do, or attempt to do, all that which is ascribed to the great master Spirit of evil? Are there not men whom you may see on every corner almost, that will deliberately, and for the sake of a pitiful pelf, lead men to drink up their property, to destroy their reputation, to utterly ruin their households, yea, and, at last, yield up their loathsome lives? Are not men going through this process? and are not pearls dissolved in liquor before their eyes every day? And God spares them, and lets others come when they die; and the world is never without them. Look upon these men who live by the destruction of their fellow-men, and who may be said in some sense to drink blood for their sustenance-look upon them, and say, if you can, "I do not believe a benevolent God would permit a devil to exist; it is inconsistent with divine benevolence!" What will you do with those facts? Look upon men that lie in wait all along the ports of our country. If there be one creature that might be supposed to touch with pity the heart of the most obdurate, it is the seasick, weary, overspent emigrant, who has left his home and all his associations behind him-his country and his life, as it were-and is cast upon a new shore, and comes needing whatever there may be of kindness and forbearance and gentleness; and yet there are men who set their traps for that game! As there are hunters for the beaver and fur-bearing animals, so all along our ports there are hunters for these miserable, pitiful, suffering emigrants. They skin them alive, and they eat them bodily! and they do it knowing that they turn them out into pain, into suffering, into untold agonies. Women are plunged almost of necessity into the very cauldron of men's lusts, and men are driven to be paupers and to become criminals; and these men, confederated, lurk and lie in wait to destroy and devour; and you look on that scene, and know it to be existing, and know that it is being enacted in wholesale and in retail, and do not believe that a benevolent God could let a devil live! Why, society is knee-deep with men who have no other function in life but to destroy their fellow-men. There is a large class, an army of men, the whole power of whose brain is directed to wasting substance, to perverting principle, to destroying good habits. They study men's weaknesses as robbers study the weak point of a house where they would commit

burglary. Men there are who are trained to wickedness, who are professionally wicked, who are scoundrels scientifically. And so they live; and so society is perpetually gnawed and ratted with these very men. And men say they do not believe a benevolent God would ever let a devil live. They say, "It is not consistent with his attributes." Oh! be ashamed of yourself, if you have ever reasoned so! Never hang out your own folly again on such reasoning as that. If there is a devil incorporeal, if there is a mighty spirit that does mischief and loves mischief, it is only the same thing in the spirit-world that you see in the bodily world, that you know to exist, whose mischiefs are manifold, intricate, continuous, wide-spread, self-propagating, and about which there can be no contradiction. God suffers these things here; and where is the presumption that he does not, for reasons which we do not know, but which will seem infinitely wise, doubtless, when we shall know them, permit spirits of evil elsewhere?

Human life is thus beset on either hand. It stands midway between the two great gulf-streams of the universe, one bearing in from the Equator all good, and the other flowing from the Poles all chill and cold. There is this vast circulation in the spirit ocean, as well as in the natural ocean.

If, then, you take the word of God to be really a practical guide, I am sure you can not but give heed to those alarum sounds-the long-roll, as you might say-that ever and anon wake you in the night to tell you that the enemy are coming, to bid you beware, and to put on the whole armor of God, and to stand; and having done all, to stand and wait.

Let us inquire a little into the nature of this influence. We have already, this morning,* spoken of influences for good; of inspiration; of what the divine Spirit does; of some of the respects in which the divine Spirit of all good acts upon the minds of men. We take the converse, to-night, which, instead of being inspiration, is usually called temptation.

Temptation holds a parallel and analogic course with inspiration. It is simply a stimulus, coming from wherever it may, applied to a faculty, or to classes of faculties, in the human mind-faculties of which men have, or should have, might have, full control. Temptation never works out any thing. It merely gives impulse, suggestion, stimulus. If any evil is wrought out through you, you work it out wholly and absolutely. As we showed this morning, no virtue is wrought out by the divine mind, and then deposited in the human soul. No conception is pictorially drawn, and then slid into the knowledge-chamber of the human mind already formed. The divine influence simply vivifies and impels the natural organism, by which

*See "Plymouth Pulpit," No. 12.

God governs, and on which government stands. And so precisely is it with the converse, with the opposite. Malign influence is simply suggestive, stimulative. It merely impels. And if, being impelled, men do evil, as when, being impelled, they do right, the right or the wrong is their own act, for which they are responsible. For, although they were pushed to it, tempted to it, they had plenary power to do it or not to do it.

No man, therefore, is carried away under temptation, or by temptation. Many men carry themselves away. No man is overborne by temptation in any literal sense, although figuratively the language is employed properly enough. Temptation does not destroy selfcontrol. It may intensify its difficulty, but it does not invalidate plenary power. The strength of the temptation lies wholly in the faculty which it tempts. If the feeling is weak in you, temptation will always be weak. If the feeling is strong in you, temptation will always be strong. Temptation goes with the strongest faculties. A man that is very benevolent is tempted to be wasteful and indiscriminate in the use of his means; but a very stingy man is never tempted to be a spendthrift. A man of strong nature toward anger, is tempted to be angry; but a man that is perfectly cold, and cautious, and self-possessed-the devil does not waste ammunition on him to make him angry! If he be cold and pulseless in his nature, then he is tempted to wickedness that lies over in that direction-to the negatives, which are gigantic and mighty. For men that do not do any good are sinners, just as the North Pole is a sinner, which has no summer; which is mighty in chilliness; which is ice; which is winter. Temptations go along turnpikes in the human soul. Where broad passions are, where broad tracks of power lie, where men will go if they are only pushed-that is where temptations ply. As I have said, they run with the strongest faculties, with the strongest appetites, with the strongest passions, with the strongest habits.

This truth is of such practical importance and scope, that I shall emphasize, more than I otherwise should, the conditions of mind. which make temptations by evil natures fatal and dangerous.

Every right and good tendency of the soul draws to itself food for goodness. Goodness attracts goodness. Goodness sees goodness in human life. Goodness is likely to take hold on goodness. A man that is benevolent sees wonderful indications of divine benevolence in nature, and wonderful indications of divine benevolence in society, and the quality and beauty of benevolence in his fellow-men. A man that is himself full of benevolence, going out and walking through the day, comes back at night, and marvels that there is so much gold streaked through the rock of human life. He finds what he carries. He is susceptible