Nor is it just to suppose, as many good people do to their inexpressible but useless alarm, that every individual is under his constant power, or every moment exposed to his incessant attacks. This would be to assign him a degree of omnipresence wholly incompatible with his nature and the economy of providence. Like other evil beings he _walketh about_. His movements may be more rapid as a spirit, and his capacities more extended and certainly his malignity more violent, than those of other wicked beings; still he is hut a creature--he has his appointed sphere of exertion--his capacities are finite--and he is observed by the unsleeping eye of God. He may prowl around the sheepfold of Christ, but the guard is too strong for him; and if he seize, or attempt the feeblest of the flock, Omnipotence will ultimately rescue the prey from the hand of the terrible. 2. Let us realize with holy satisfaction the _destruction of Satanic power_. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." The apostle John, in his Revelation, describes "the devil" as "cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever." In conceiving of the destruction of this hateful dominion, we may realize it as _certain_. Although the issue of the war between good and evil, Christ and Belial, heaven and hell, be deferred to a distant age, it is not doubtful or precarious. It is ever present in the eye of God, and forms a part of that irresistible destiny which infernal power cannot avert. There is no escape from the chains of darkness which Omnipotence will finally rivet on; and this irreversible doom of fallen spirits is essential to the final arrangements of that wonderful period, which will develope "the consummation of all things." It is the glory of the religion of Christ, that none of its promises or plans are precarious. The hopes of Christians cannot be lost in the crush of nature or the wreck of the world; and the condemnation of impenitent sinners and of Satan cannot be averted by any mistake of evidence, by any confusion, of multitude, or by any unevenness of balance in the scales of justice in the day of judgment. The destruction of Satan and his power may be considered as _gradual_ in the mode of its accomplishment. The whole system of revealed truth, from the period of the first prediction, points to this predestined end; and the whole scheme of Providence, including the rise and fall of empires, the work of Christ, and all the events of time through successive generations, respects this mighty and this marvellous result--a result connected so essentially with the glory of God, the honour of Christ, and the felicity of a redeemed universe.