Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil’s work. Was there a conflagration in the town? By looking closely you might see a demon blowing upon the flame. Pestilence and storm he attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the mediæval exaggerations of Satan’s power. It was then supposed that men might make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at the price of final perdition (see Goethe’s Faust). Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during our Savior’s ministry, in order that Christ’s power might be demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought “_to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil_” (_Heb. 2:14)_ and “_having despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it_,” _i. e._, in the Cross (_Col. 2:15_). _1 John 3:8_—“_To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil._” Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord, 24—“Satan’s power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God’s providence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness.” Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 136—“Having neither fixed principle in himself nor connection with the source of order outside, Satan has not prophetic ability. He can appeal to chance, but he cannot foresee. So Goethe’s Mephistopheles insolently boasts that he can lead Faust astray: ‘What will you bet? There’s still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give Gently upon _my_ road to train him!’ And in _Job 1:11; 2:5_, Satan wagers: ‘_He will renounce thee to thy face._’ ” William Ashmore: “Is Satan omnipresent? No, but he is very spry. Is he bound? Yes, but with a rather loose rope.” In the Persian story, God scattered seed. The devil buried it, and sent the rain to rot it. But soon it sprang up, and the wilderness blossomed as the rose. II. Objections to the Doctrine of Angels. 1. To the doctrine of angels in general. It is objected: (_a_) That it is opposed to the modern scientific view of the world, as a system of definite forces and laws.—We reply that, whatever truth there may be in this modern view, it does not exclude the play of divine or human free agency. It does not, therefore, exclude the possibility of angelic agency. Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 332—“It is easier to believe in angels than in ether; in God rather than atoms; and in the history of his kingdom as a divine self-revelation rather than in the physicist’s or the biologist’s purely mechanical process of evolution.”