However small and insignificant man may appear to be in physical parts and bodily proportions amid the marvelous wonders of creation, and however insignificant in weight, height, and girth, when compared with the cloud-kissed hills or the towering mountains of eternal snows that lift their cones to the cloudless zones, and however light and ponderable he may be, compared to the infinite masses of tangible materialities that compose the universe in which he lives and moves, and of which he is a part, yet he is an ideal and realistic empire within himself. He has not only a realistic and enduring self, but he within himself is a real and ideal empire composed of all those powers and elements and inherent qualities that seem needful to complete the same. As a great steam engine may be built in miniature with its wheels, cogs, pulleys, cylinders, boiler, steam chests, piston rods, and gear, and as such a miniature engine may be as real and as perfect as a great engine which it may represent, so man is as perfect an empire as the little or model engine is an engine. As extension of parts and immensity of materiality have nothing to do with perfection of quality and character, so there need be no real difference in the two engines except in degrees. Indeed, man is a perfect creation in the fundamental facts and constituent elements of his being; and in these respects he is an emanation of the Divine. Humanity is divine, not in its moral purity and perfection, but in its mental capacity and corporal delineations. In everything but moral standing, the mental humanity is made in the image of its Creator. Man's mental humanity is the most real and the most conspicuous, indeed the only real enduring and essential attribute of his being. This mental individuality is in the image of God, the Supreme Mentality, that universal spirituality whose exterior building is the universe. This universe is the temple of God—the empire of the Supreme Mentality. Somewhere in this temple or empire, is the seat of universal government, authority, and power, the central location of one almighty thrilling force that acts upon and centralizes all the forces, energies and activities of all the universe. Gravitation, so called, can be nothing less than the operation of universal mentality in perpetual activity, by whose coercive energy the mindless elements and their infinitely various combinations sustain their harmonious interrelations. Thus God is the life and soul of the universe in the same sense that man's soul is the life and light of his body. In this high metaphysical sense God is the life of the universe, the life of all the worlds, and the light of men. Evidently man is the little God, the microcosm, an image of the macrocosm, which is God's larger universe. I need not dwell upon the indestructibility of human nature. It is as enduring as the ages. The tardy steps of centuries and cycles, the abrasions and indentures of all eternity, will leave the divinely imaged mental humanity fresh and green, forever blooming from its own deathless inherent vitality, because it is the image of God. Man's body is the temple of his soul. It is the splendid super-cosmopolite from the cosmopolitan center, tenting and dwelling for a season on this sub-lunar sphere. Its style and outlines and delineations are from heaven. It is the human form divine from the skies. The body is materialistic, because there is nothing in the universe other than matter of which it may be composed, and, therefore, desolation and decay shall overtake it. Its pillars and columns and towering arches shall fall down, and its stately roof and star-crowned turrets shall be broken and buried, but the image of God—the heavenly Visitant—that dwells within, in all its divine completeness and ethereal brightness, shall remain intact and untarnished amid the wonders of the cycles and the evolutions and transitions of the endless future. Truly man shall live forever. Death is simply a removal from one sphere of being to another, a shuffling off a coarser and earthly coil, and a flight from a lower to a higher, purer and sublimer altitude in another sphere. It is the heavenly mentality abdicating an earthly throne, and reascending to its high place to be in perfect unison with kindred spirits, and vie in the splendors of the ethereal.

I. What is man in his physical constitution?

The psalmist says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” None but God can make man. No angelic fingers nor seraphic handicraft, nor wonderful mechanism, though contrived and manipulated by the skilful touch of angelic operators, can spin into threads and weave in golden looms the warp and woof, and manufacture into grace and beauty the delicate fabric of which man is made. None but God could throw the silver shuttle and bring from the evolving intricate mechanism of nature a mighty product like man. What a wonderful organism is this man empire! In this man empire, there are two hundred and sixty-three bones, five hundred muscles, and three hundred millions of brain cells, about three thousand of which are destroyed every minute. Therefore, every man has a new brain every sixty days. Every man that has lived to be seventy years of age has had, therefore, four hundred and twenty-nine sets of brains. Allowing that the average brain weighs sixty ounces, the man of seventy years would have had two thousand five hundred pounds of the precious thing. Every day there are in each head more than four millions of the brain cells destroyed and replaced by new ones. The alimentary canal is thirty-two feet long. Man has a heart six inches in length and four in diameter, beating seventy times per minute, four thousand two hundred times every hour, one hundred thousand eight hundred times a day, and two billion six hundred millions in three score years and ten. At each beat, two and a half ounces of blood are thrown out of it at the rate of one hundred and seventy-five ounces per minute, six hundred and fifty-six pounds per hour, seven and a half tons a day, lifting it two thousand one hundred and twenty-two feet in the same length of time. We breathe twelve hundred times an hour, using twenty-four gallons of air a day. The breathing surface of the lungs is twenty thousand square inches, equal to the floor space of a room twelve feet square. There are ten millions of silken cables or nerve cords that permeate and ramify the man empire, and center in the brain or the seat of government, making the greatest army of body-guards that ever defended a kingdom or assembled upon the field of battle. The atmospheric pressure upon each square inch of the human body is fourteen pounds, making the weight upon a single human body of medium size forty thousand pounds. There are three thousand five hundred perspiratory pores, one-fourth of an inch long, making a little drainage canal forty miles long. Beyond and beneath all of these there is the great ganglia system of nerve tissues, so fine and minute that the point of a sewing-needle covers a whole system, in which there are thousands of little elastic threads, too fine to be seen except by glasses of the highest magnifying power known to man. Indeed, there are thousands of wonders and marvels in the physical constitution and operations of the human organism that are beyond the power of the mind to comprehend and explain. As God, the Supreme Mentality, presides over the universe, governing all its forces under the reign of law, so man is presided over by the mind, which is the supreme king of the man empire, governing all its parts and forces under the reign of law. As God's mind is everywhere in the universe as an all powerful and infinite activity, so the mind of man is everywhere the infinite activity in the man empire, filling all its parts and ramifications with its own ineffable light and glorious power. The God empire and the man empire are images the one of the other. The first is absolute and infinite in fact and abstract; the second is only absolute and infinite within its prescribed bounds. Both are the same in kind, but different in degrees. Therefore, the mind of man is the reigning king, the monarch and master of the man empire. Hence, man is an empire in miniature, with all the elements and inherent capacities of a kingdom, with its presiding monarch highly exalted upon the throne of the brain. Here lives and rules the mind king from whose dictatorial throne edicts are issued and commands sent forth into all the realms, provinces and the ramifications of the universal dominions. Indeed, man is an empire, having all the realms, provinces and the ramifications of the universal dominions. Indeed, man is an empire, having all the elements, forces and powers of nature in co-operative harmony, with its solids and liquids, and with its flora and fauna. It has lands, skies, seas, brooks, rivers and sparkling rills, that convey life and light and vitality to every part; from its fertile plains and golden fields, the metropolis and seat of empire draws tribute and support. The brain is the throne and seat of government and the mind is monarch. At his command ministers fly, cables hiss, sinews quiver, fluids dash, bones quake and sensations play like electric volts on the strings of the nerves. The mind king has eyes, ears, hands, feet, lips and tongue. He is the real and divine personality, the mind monarch whom God “from old times” has crowned, sceptered and clothed with the royal robe and insignia of state. He has judgment, discretion, tastes, will, choice and sensibility. Around him are his courtiers, diplomats and flaming ministers, hung on threads of gold and cables of silver, ever ready in reverential attitudes to execute his high behests. By these space is blotted out and time annihilated. They fly on wings of thought and dance as it were on the lightning's flame, unifying and binding the states of empire with his arm of glorious power. God's power is absolute, and his government executive, ministerial and dictatorial. “He maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” As the empire of God moves about his throne as the center of attraction, so the man empire moves about the brain as the center of will force, rule and authority. This man empire has reservoirs of blood, lakes of water, rills of oil, and repositories of fluids that make up its gulfs, seas, inlets and bays. It has cables of elastic steel that thread and permeate all its parts, wrapt in silken integuments, and of the finest mould. Over these elastic threads and living cables, fiery dictates and high behests from the throne of the mind king dance and play and preach his will and proclaim his laws upon every hill, through every plain and valley, till every leaflet, rock, and tree, and all the deep gorges and mountain passes are resonant with his voice and filled with his commands. Deep in its seas there are flowing currents and boiling springs, from whose agitated waters come pearls of thought, folios of science, books of wisdom, bringing up from their hidden archives curriculums of study, deeper, vaster, broader and higher than ancient sages, approximating the ken of angels and the wisdom of seraphs. There are mountains of bone, hills of cartilage, ledges of gristle, and ropes of sinew, to give form and beauty, and hold intact the rolling, jostling empire, with its leaping rills, restless seas, agitated gulfs and quaking land. It has a fertile soil of flesh and blood where roses blush and lilies bloom, through which a thousand streamlets flow to perpetuate its virgin days of youth, and crown its high meridian with the flora of light, wisdom, and strength, and its hoary years with a diadem of silvery harvest. This man empire has its winds, storms, cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons and trade-winds, that roar among its caverns, whistle along its dales, hum among its rocks, play on its seas, shout over its hills, and strew its valleys with awful wreckage and direful ruins of uprooted forests. This man empire has its sun, the central luminary, meting its days and years, shining over its hemispheres, continents, seas and islands, giving light and life to its flora and fauna, producing towering trees of knowledge on its mountains of wisdom, from whose sunny peaks the mind king makes the sunbeams his horses and the ethereal currents his chariot wheels. Or through the lofty constellations of judgment, discovery, and golden thought he flies toward God until his wings of flame sets aglow all the widespread areas of air, sea, and land, until the lakes and rivers and island homes are filled with the life of God, the anthem of the ages and the symphonies of the skies, until every granite bone, elastic cord, and nerve cable is filled with heaven, and suffused with songs of seraphs and the melodies of the spheres. In orbital grandeur, around the miniature empire's sun shine the satellites of truth, virtue, will, purpose and the designs of life, while each planetoid of disease—the fragment of broken worlds—“walketh in darkness” through its cities, states and provinces, corrupting its fountains, contaminating its seas, and planting the baleful seeds of death and dissolution along its flowing currents and prolific soils. By flying fragments of broken worlds many upheavals occur. Rivers overflow their banks, seas forsake their ancient beds, volcanoes explode, islands are submerged, mountains quiver on their rocky foundations, isthmuses sink, the land quivers while all its elements groan at the approach of the great catastrophe—death. Yea, by these fragments of broken worlds (diseases) many a joint is dislocated, cables of elastic steel are broken, and silken links of ligaments, sinews of brass, and bones of granite yield amid the general “wreck of matter and the crush of worlds.” But the text says, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him.”

II. What is man in his spiritual or mental nature?

Whence came he? It is said there is nothing great in the world but man, and there is nothing great in man but mind. Indeed mind is the man—the true hidden man that thinks, conceives, judges and forms mental images; measures time and space, calculates in numbers, weighs even the imponderable masses of materialities, comprehends the sublime majesties of the universe, and has the power of will, choice, taste and thought, and indefinite continuity of individual consciousness. Deeply pervading all the attributes of his nature, the faculty of imagination like an angel of flame in splendid trim, with his golden sandals buckled on his feet, is ever ready to sweep the azure floors of the skies, or pierce the illimitable bounds beyond, where planets, stars and suns revolve on their rounds. By this faculty space is blotted out and time annihilated. It is swifter than lightning, faster than electricity and outflies its volts that dance, as it were, on ethereal vibrations. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye this cherub of the airy deep leaps heavenward or hellward, rejoicing in the happiness of the saved, or revolting at the horrors of the lost millions. It sweeps the tracks of lesser stars, pierces the orbits of planets, the belted splendors of Jupiter, the golden rings of Saturn, and visits “Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the South,” and wraps itself in the fiery sheets of the sun. It delights to flee through “The Milky Way” and the gem studded and constellated highways of God. Above stars, planets, suns, in the zoneless seas and unhorizoned spheres where the wings of seraphs battle for decades with the tides, the imagination lingers not, but lifting its fiery eye as system after system recede and sink in the shaded distances of eternal space he seems to cry to all the children of eternity, “On to Alcyon, on to Alcyon,” the greatest system known to man, and which once seemed to be the center of universal power, and the place of the throne of the Most High. Here alone, at the throne of God, this wonderful faculty is foiled and baffled, but still radiant in its glory; and virgin strength. The wings of this mighty visitant can carry thought no farther. Here all ends meet and all explorations end. And here she cries—

In the transitions of eternal wonders, or those spiritual metamorphoses and evolutions that await us in the future, this faculty will dwell with us as the great photographer that never sleeps, but ever pictures upon the expanding canvas of the memory all the images with their exact forms that have ever been presented to the mental man.

III. But what is man in his moral constitution?

Man is a sinner, for the “Scriptures of Truth” declare that “All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Again, “Sin is the transgression of the law.” Not a visionary or arbitrary command, but it is the violation of the law, the high, holy, and eternal law that governs the mental and moral universe. The law here spoken of is the embodiment of those underlying principles by which the universe is governed, and by which it maintains its successive and harmonious relations. By this law all of its elements, physical, and mental, act in concord. Whoever violates this law, or, if you will, these laws, is a sinner, a sinner against God and against all those spiritual beings, or mental individualities that have kept the laws of God, and thereby maintained their perfect estate. But this man empire, like others in which there is sin, is in perpetual throes, discord, and agitation, through all the years of its sublunar existence. Its restless inhabitants, with its rebellious states and provinces, constantly threaten the dissolution and subversion of its earthly domains. They threaten to transplant their interests and move the seat of empire to sublimer realms in those sunny plains of eternal day, where they may vie in the altitudes and majesties that live in their bright abodes. On earth storms arise upon the empire's seas, cyclones move and twist its mountains upon their rocky bases, shake its hills, sweep down its forests, filling its plains and valleys with howling destruction and the broken ruins of his kingdom. This is dying, so-called. As the mind king doffs his crown, lays aside his royal insignia of state, drops the sceptre and abdicates the throne, the silken cables and elastic cords break, the chambers of the king's palace are closed. All his courtiers, diplomats and flaming ministers cease to do his biddings and sink in eternal muteness. The nerve centers with their ten millions of body-guards in decadence die. On come the whirlwinds of death, over the coagulated seas of blood, up the streamlets of oil and channels of fluids. It climbs the vertebrated stairs of the spiral mountain of sinews and the hills of cartilages, crushing the granite of bones and scattering the parts of the magnificent pile. Its sun ceases to shine, its moon is turned to blood and all the stars of his lofty firmament are covered with the thick blackness of the night. The kingdom is demolished and the strength of the empire broken; but “the soul of man, Jehovah's breath,” like an eagle from its cage, soars away on its wings of flame to dwell with God, to live and reign with Jesus, the Christ, “and through eternal ages will shout beyond the skies.”

The text brings before us the two most conspicuous and renowned characters that have ever appeared in the world, acted upon the theatre of life or written their deeds upon the scroll of the ages. The annals of the ancients and the records of the nations cannot produce their equals in the least degree whatever. Indeed they stand out in bold relief of character and incomparable individuality. In their respective relations and natures, they are without a compeer. If all the greatness of mankind that has been displayed in the wisdom of the sages, the sagacity of statesmen, the valor and prowess of heroes, the sweetness of poets, the melodies of bards, were compressed into one great personality, he could not be so great, so wonderful, so matchless in consummate skill, profound wisdom, and exhaustless resources of those principles and things that make up the sum of greatness, as to rival the great characters mentioned in the text. Add to the control of such a personality, the rubies of kings, the diamonds of queens, the scepters of emperors, the gems and gold of princes, the sacerdotal scarlet of popes, the royal splendors of imperial courts, and the wealth of the ages and nations, yet such a character could not be compared to either of the distinguished individuals mentioned in the text. Then give such an individual a thousand years to display all this mighty wealth and dazzling splendor, yet in celebrity and influence, he could not approximate the ideal representatives of the irrepressible conflict—the Son of God and the devil. They both occupy the most exalted, lofty and most conspicuous position in the world, and in their work, influence and relations, they affect every nation, people, tongue and age. Their influence runs parallel with all times, epochs, and dispensations, ramifying all human governments, institutions, orders, fraternities and administrations. They affect the administration of all civil laws and the adjudication of every lawsuit. The one or the other has paved the pathway of every war, feud, conflict and revolution that has swept the zones of human civilizations, and fixed the destiny of men and nations. They affect all events in the world's written and unwritten history; from its incipient civilization and birthday, until in the sable drapery of its solemn requiem, the world shall cease to be aglow with the burning cinders that fly from the two great swords of Beelzebub and the conquering Messiah. Their influence stops not in time, but crosses the dark and trackless sea of death, and, rekindling on the shores of the spiritual world, will continue through all the great millenniums of eternal duration. Heaven and hell, with their crowded intelligences, will feel their potent and lavish influence by which their unnumbered billions of indestructible individualities will be forever swayed. Their imprint of character, for good or for evil, for hell or for heaven, for life or for death, will be made and deeply engraved upon the life and spiritual nature of every man, woman and child that has ever lived, or ever will live. They are not private but public individuals—federal heads—and representatives and embodiments of the two great diversities of the moral universe—good and evil. They are the representatives and heroes of the two great spiritual empires of the world, representing the two great moral ideas of the universe, which are founded upon the immortal principles of right and wrong, and of truth and falsehood, and of life and death. There is an infinite distinctiveness —constitutional, innate and irrevocable—between these two individuals, in their nature, work and the great outcome of their career. This difference is essential, absolute and necessary. Therefore, it is as much impossible to operate them together in harmony upon the same plane so as to produce the same results, as it is to bring the north and south poles together. They are not only antagonistic, but antipodal. Two distinct principles inspire the work of the one, and the efforts of the other. The one is the principle of good and heaven, and the other is the principle of evil and hell, each in battle array, and perpetual conflict. The one is from heaven and the other from hell; one is life, and the other death; one is eternal happiness, the other eternal misery; one is of God and godly, the other is of the devil and devilish; one seeks the good of all, and one the death of all; one dignifies and deifies human nature, the other strips man of his glory, and leaves his prostrate form on the ground—“a splendid palace in ruin.” Ever since sin hath entered into the world, and death by sin, these two great leaders and powers have exhibited themselves in the children of men in all the departments and diversified features of human society. In the courts of kings, in the palace garden, in the halls of justice, on the rostrum, in the realms of legislation, in commerce, field, and store, their prowess is seen. On the battlefield, in prisons and camps of horrid war, in the diplomatic circles, and stealthily along the quiet veins and avenues of thought and learning, all along, and everywhere, these two great majestic powers and principles confront each other and beset humanity round about. Hence, they have made the children of men good or bad, right or wrong, lifting them to heaven, or casting them down to hell. Therefore, whatsoever exists in the moral world, exists under the generic terms of good and of evil. Whatever is good is not evil, and whatever is evil is not good. Good cannot produce evil and evil cannot produce good. Life cannot produce death and death cannot produce life. Out of the depths of falsehood and darkness arise no truth and light, and out of the depths of truth and light come no darkness and no untruth. Darkness flees before approaching light, and falsehood loses hold when truth enters. Both cannot fill the same moral space at the same time, because they are moral spheres, filling the utmost limits of the mighty circles of the moral universe.

But to our conception, good and evil are best known by their effects upon those who follow the one, and pursue the other. If certain actions of moral creatures— whether they be men or angels—render them happy or miserable, we know that those actions are good or evil, and spring from the good or the evil one. The practice of the two principles, in their respective relations and tendencies, always and forever produces and reproduces the same results in every case. They are eternal evolutions, but their evolutions never evolve out of themselves so as to produce something different from themselves. They produce their own likeness and superscription. Heaven is heaven, and hell is hell, a thousand times so in all their intrinsic natures throughout eternal duration. Good redeems her children, washes them clean and white in the blood of the Lamb, and sends them up the shining way to God and gives them the endless felicity of heaven. But evil, hideous, dark, and treacherous, sends her multitudinous squadrons to hell, giving them the misery that hath no end. Every word and work of men and angels, is, therefore, significant. There is a meaning, deep, profound, and far-reaching in every word, thought, and deed that enters the broad realm of being. Our thoughts chisel their forms upon the disc of the soul. Our words are written upon the folds of the heart, and our actions are the pent-up fires that leap out, leaving the dead volcanic cinders within. Like causes produce like effects, and like effects are produced by like causes. For every effect there must be a cause, and the cause is best understood by the results. In the moral world this is a truism. Now, every moral action that takes place among intelligent beings, is actuated by, and receives its momentum from the will and volition. The will is the motive power—the sheet anchor of the soul—that moves and stimulates the actions. Therefore, every moral action must have the consent of the will, otherwise they cannot be moral actions for which men and angels are responsible. All actions, therefore, are good or evil, and must be classified as such. The former lead to heaven, the latter lead to hell. At the end of every man's road stands life or death, hell or heaven, which is the inevitable and final destiny of all the living. When the sundering blade of death shall cut the vital threads of life, the soul—the heaving spirit—emancipated from its house of clay, shall then be transported away and up to God, or away and down to hell, and the day of preparation shall then be closed, when the inexorable fiat of Almighty God shall forever seal the irrevocable life of the one, and the changeless damnation of the other. No man can tell where hell is, but it is, it does exist, and whatever it is, and wherever it is, is a matter of small moment. But we are certain of two things: (1) It is a state and place of punishment. (2) That punishment is eternal in its duration. This arises out of the nature of the case, and the nature of God's government. When the sinner lands in hell, he will then be nearer to God, heaven, and life, than he will ever be again in all the cycles and evolving millenniums of eternity. Every surging wave and fleeing current of rolling years, will thrust him farther and farther out into the mid-ocean of hell's seething and boiling billows. Every turn of the wheel of the centuries will but augment his sins, and enlarge his capacity for transgression and sink him lower and lower.

Man is a progressive being. Progression—eternal progression—characterizes his innate constituency whether in the human body or out of it; whether in a state of bliss or state of misery; whether in earth, heaven or hell, or whether as applied to the three realities of his nature—physical, moral and mental. Change of place or condition cannot change his nature and indestructible selfhood or spiritual identity. Man is man in all the relations and conditions in which he may be placed. The immortal mind, the conscious self, with all the moral sensibilities, are incapable of decay, and therefore, of necessity, he is eternal in conscious duration. It seems, also, a truism, that the functions of the moral and mental man are never in a state of perfect quietism. There is a perpetual unrest, or rather there is rest only in motion, progression, and development. Absolute quietism is incompatible with life, and there can be no such thing as vital energies in absolute quietude. Activity, in a greater or less degree, is the law of all living and is operative in all intelligent beings, whether in a state of bliss or state of woe. The saved will continue in obedience, the lost will continue in sin, since mere punishment has no redeeming qualities, and since obedience has no element of misery. As one wave of the sea produces another, and these produce others indefinitely, so one act of sin produces others through the eternal rounds of the dreadful series of transgressions. One hell will rise above and crowd the burning crest of another, each more dreadful and pressing harder upon the heels of the other, adding force and fury to the mighty avalanche of the fiery flood.

This text, like others, gives us the key to the origin of evil in the world, a question long debated by “the wise and prudent,” and philosophic schools of the ancients. “The devil sinneth from the beginning,” “for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” is the plain declaration of holy writ. Long was the world in darkness on this subject, and many were the vain and absurd theories entertained by the wisest of human kind. They were greatly troubled, puzzled, and bewildered to account for the advent and work of evil in the world. The fertile imagination of the ancient thinker set about to invent theories and invest probabilities with the habiliments of truth, hoping thereby to explain the mystery. Hence, the necessitarians tell us that evil arises out of the nature and constitution of things; and that the Creator himself could not hinder its manifestation in the world. The Manichean theory is that there are two deities, the one good and the other evil; one the author of the body and the other the author of the soul; and that, therefore, the body is evil because it comes from the evil deity, and that the soul is good because it comes from the good deity. How absurd! But this is the result of human wisdom, when it sets at naught the word of God. “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” This positive command, given to Adam by the Creator, placed him, as a free moral agent in a state of probation and trial, clothing him with power to stand, yet liable to fall, because he could not be free as an agent unless it was in his choice to obey or disobey. But he fell. He “kept not” his first estate. By the influence of the devil, he became a sinner, “and brought death into the world and all our woes,” because: “She plucked, she ate,Earth felt the wound,And nature from her seat,Gave signs of woe,That all was lost,”

Thus sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Death, with all his howling furies came in pompous state, drawing the dreadful phalanxes of hell at his chariot wheels. Here then is that long and dreadful reign of the king of hell, called in Genesis, “The seed of the serpent.” The declarations of the Scriptures, his natural character, and his real work in the world, prove that he is a real being, possessing individuality, and identity of personality. He is endowed with all the properties and characteristics that constitute an intelligent being. He is not the principle of evil personified, as some would have it to be, by assigning to it all the qualities and actions of an individual. He is not a mere myth, a fable or fabulous being—the outgrowth of man's fear, or product of human imagination. He is not an allegorical being without body or parts, but he is a great and astute being, mighty in power, skilled in wisdom, profound in knowledge and is thoroughly acquainted with the history of the world and the acts of the nations. In Genesis (3:15) he is the seed of “the serpent,” and the singular personal pronoun is used to describe his personality and unity of being. In Job he is called “Satan,” the adversary, the great enemy of God. He is called “the prince of this world” (John 10:31), “The prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2). He is “a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” He is called “the God of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). He is said to be a “murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of that which is his own: for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44). In Revelation he is the king of hell, for says the Apostle, “And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon” (Rev. 9:1.1). Moses, the venerable lawgiver of Israel was well known by the Devil. He knew also his relation to God and to Israel, and that Israel venerated him above all men living or dead. But Moses died, and was buried in the land of Moab, in a valley over against Beth-peor. Satan knowing that Moses was dead went in search of his body, that if possible, he might devise some plan by which the body might be given to the children of Israel, that they might fall down and worship the lifeless corpse of a great man, as was the custom in Egypt, and thus bring down the wrath of God upon Israel, and nip the plan of salvation in the bud. But God in his goodness, foreseeing what would follow, placed an archangel there to watch over the body, and defend it against the violence and intrigue of hell's greatest legate. This is the work of a character, and the diplomacy of hell.

St. Peter declares that “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” (2 Peter 2:4). Jude substantially declares the same thing, using almost the same words. From these, and similar passages of Scripture, we learn:

1. That the Devil is not a principle personified, but that he is a real substantial and individual character.

2. That he was in a state of happiness and probation —under positive law, well understood by him, and his fellows, or “the angels that sinned” and “kept not their first estate.”

3. That he rebelled, or “sinned” against the laws of God and the government of heaven, and thereby lost his first estate and was cast “down to hell and delivered into chains of darkness,” awaiting the just vengeance of the judgment day of Almighty God.

4. That he is a powerful prince, a mighty king and a great captain with an empire of spiritual darkness of immense proportions, and that he stirs the hearts and minds, and works through and in the children of disobedience.

Let us study his nature, work, and history, its it is written in the history of the world. He is wise, astute, stalwart. Standing up like a spiritual giant of massive proportions, and roaring like a lion when he thirsts for blood, he sounds his clarion voice which, like an electric shock, flashes along all the zones and parallels of the habitable earth, convulsing the nations, and spreading far an intensive discord through all the tribes of men. His footprint and handiwork is seen and felt in every land, state, and age—wherever men live and die. The operations of his hand are simply marvelous—dark deep, intricate, and profound. His devices are multiplex and serpentine. His aim is one. He lives through the ages with illustrious strength and indomitable will that forever spring with elastic and virgin strength which nerves his spirit and inspires his obdurate soul with a fiery zeal that “no langour knows.” Changes in the world of man make no changes with him. Yoking the whirlwinds to his rolling car he traverses the misty deep, plods and plows the surging seas, and as a bold corsair in quest of treasures new and old, he seeks the heathen in his jungle heath island home to pour hell and denser darkness upon his moral and mental day. He throws the somber pall of sin and death high upon the disc of his shield, while his black pinions shade and darken the path and contract the highway of the world's civilizations. As a warrior, he stands at the head and is the dictator of a multitudinous, powerful, and well organized army, epuipped and skilled in all the military tactics of diabolical and spiritual warfare. His soldiers are the bold spirits, the thunder-driven and hell-bred legions from the infernal cave of the damned that kept not their first estate; being goaded on by the hell in their conscience, they are ever ready for the scenes of war and carnage. The weapons of their warfare are mighty, formidable and tried upon the spiritual battle-fields of the nations and ages. Each soldier-devil is armed with barbed spears and swords of adamantine steel whose dreadful play in the air shows that they are in the hands of spirits bold and spirits daring. Their quivers are filled with winged arrows, polished and tempered, and tipped with poison of asps and venom of serpents. Precision and dexterity characterize the engagements of these diabolical archers and sharpshooters of hell. But open war is resorted to only when cunning and intrigue fail. The devil is great in cunning and strategem. Hence the Apostle tells us that “we are not ignorant of his devices.” He stirs the passions, lust and pride, and the baser nature of kings, princes, rulers and potentates, and perpetually foments civil and national strife among the nations of the earth, causing the plowshare of destruction to glide through the flourishing fields of human society, unroofing the temples, of civilizations and flooding their open halls with human gore, and piling high around their fluted columns the broken bones and bleeding bodies of the dead and dying, causing the widow to weep and the orphan to sigh and clamor for bread. Often he seeks his seat in the church of God, throwing discord and confusion among the saints of the Most High. He is not omnipotent, nor omnipresent, but mighty, and is the antipodal force and antagonistic power against Christ, God and humanity. Messiah on the one side and the devil on the other are great leaders and captains. The battle began in the Garden of Eden six thousand years ago. Both have had varying success and defeats upon the arena of the nation and rostrum of the ages. Still the battle rages. Neither has entirely defeated the other, but onward and fiercely rolls the battle cry. But hush! hush!! I hear the silver notes of the golden clarion of Messiah coming with martial tread and haughty tramp. He is “clothed in a vesture dipped in blood.” He rides upon the great white horse of truth and on his head are “many crowns.” By his side hangs a potent double-edged blade of “heavenly temper keen” that never turns back from the blood of the slain. His armies are upon white horses robed in the bright and shilling habiliments of divine purity. Their swords are forged upon the anvil of God in “the house of David,” and made of the best old Jerusalem steel dug out of the mountains of God. Other blades may break or shatter, but these never. Dreadful are the incisions they make in the rank and file of the enemy. “How shall one chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight?” “For the weapons of their warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of the stronghold of the devil.” Christ cannot fail. Hell is great, but heaven is greater. Christ is rich in all the fathomless depths and endless heights of eternal power. He is more than a match for the Devil. “He is the same to-day and yesterday and forever,” and on through the eternal series of great and glorious achievements he repeats his mighty deeds and stupendous acquisitions in the redemption scheme. While this and more is true, yet dark and dreadful were the closing scenes of the world's greatest drama, for it is said in Genesis by the mouth of God, “Thou shalt bruise his heel.” The “Thou” here spoken of is the Devil himself, and the expression comes from the custom of pursuing an enemy so closely that the heels of the fleeing are trod upon by the front part of the foot of the pursuer. This implies that the contest was to be close, fearful and irrepressible, and that Satan would pursue the Son of God even to the gates of death. This is also the turning point in the great and long struggle for the mastery, and the ascending of the one over the other. Here the Son of God must conquer or be conquered. Here he must rise victorious over the power of darkness, or he must fall under shame and defeat. Christ says, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” He felt the dreadful tread of Satan crowding upon “his heels,” while his steps in the Garden of Gethsemane were marked with his own blood, sweat, and tears. He felt the powers of hell surrounding him on every side and hedging in the pathway of the Son of God. Four thousand years of conflict had passed, but now the culminating hour is reached at last. Now is the dreadful hour when his strength and power are tried and hope flickers in the golden sockets of life. Now the Redeemer of the world was to stand off no longer, and from the red mouth of heaven's artillery rain hail and burning thunderbolts upon the hideous head of the demon; but he must meet him face to face, and arm to arm, and measure swords and spears. Ten thousand devils peep up from the bottomless pit and hiss and howl and clamor for the blood of the Son of God. Swift winged messengers pass in rapid transition from earth to hell, and also from earth to heaven, bearing dispatches and news of the dreadful hour and of the culminating scenes of the great and irrepressible conflict. O, dreadful hour, fraught with life or death for the millions of the sin enslaved of Adam's race! The Son of God now falls upon his knees upon the cold ground, while his humanity passes through the fearful ordeal and crucial test and the augmented sorrows of the ages, but amid anguish, pains, sorrows and temptations, he says, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.” The sins of the world were upon him, and for that reason he must be fearfully chastised by the hand of his Father. But he went a little farther, and fell on his face and prayed, saying, “O, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me! nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” This prayer he prayed three times. He begins to sweat blood and bleed at every pore, and his tears thrown up from the depths of an aching heart fell in Gethsemane's Garden. Not only his body, but his soul, the intelligent, the sensitive inner man, was “exceedingly sorrowful even unto death.” How deep was that sorrow, and how painful the situation! He looked up, and behold, Judas with his band of ruffians came with swords and staves, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hand of sinners and taken to the judgment seat of the wicked. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.” Having ascended the hill of sacrificial death, he is nailed to the cross. The rough iron spikes pierce his feet and hands, and he is cruelly transfixed to the rugged wood. Every sinew is stretched, every tendon distended, every joint dislocated, and every nerve cable thrills with pain. Here hangs in agony and blood the Prince of Peace, the incarnate Son of God, the Alpha and the Omega of all creation. But he dies! “It is finished.” But the great tragedy is not yet ended. Another scene is yet to be acted In the world's greatest drama. Joseph of Arimathea deposits the dead body in his new tomb. The disciples scattered and all seemed lost. Nature by her internal throes “gave signs of woe.” Hell laughs and shouts in triumph. Hope seemed fled away. upon the dying zephyrs of the last breath of the expiring Messiah. But on the third day, Messiah calls back and, resumes his ancient power. The bars, bolts, and rock-ribbed jaws of the grave began to swell and heave as if moved by the omnific hand of God. Death and hell heard the rattling chariot wheels of the heavenly legates as they leaped from the heavenly gates and fled to the rescue of the sleeping Jesus. They pour the message of life from God into the dungeon of death, and the Son of God rises from the dead. Heaven laughs, hell is astonished, and, universal humanity is thrilled by the triumphal declaration: “I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forever more, amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”