322 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix 



career, cast him out from individuals. Then will 

 Satan and all his devilry, along with the wicked 

 whom they have seduced to their destruction, be 

 hurled into the abyss of unquenchable fire there 

 to endure continual torture, without a hope of 

 winning pardon from the merciful God, their 

 Father ; or of moving the glorified Messiah to one 

 more act of pitiful intercession ; or even of 

 interrupting, by a momentary sympathy with 

 their wretchedness, the harmonious psalmody of 

 their brother angels and men, eternally lapped in 

 bliss unspeakable. 



The straitest Protestant, who refuses to .admit 

 the existence of any source of Divine truth, 

 except the Bible, will not deny that every point 

 of the pneumatological theory here set forth has 

 ample scriptural warranty. The Gospels, the 

 Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse assert the 

 existence of the devil, of his demons and of Hell, 

 as plainly as they do that of God and his angels 

 and Heaven. It is plain that the Messianic and 

 the Satanic conceptions of the writers of these 

 books are the obverse and the reverse of the same 

 intellectual coinage. If we turn from Scripture 

 to the traditions of the Fathers and the confes- 

 sions of the Churches, it will appear that, in this 

 one particular, at any rate, time has brought 

 about no important deviation from primitive 

 belief. From Justin onwards, it may often be a 

 fair question whether God, or the devil, occupies 



