“The devil,” said Mr. Merton, “can go only the length of his chain, and that chain is much shorter than it was in old heathen times. He can do only what he is permitted, and it is very possible that what he is now doing will turn out to his signal discomfiture. It will give a serious blow to the materialism and Sadducism of the age, lead men to believe in the reality of the spirit-world, and when that is done, they will have made one step towards believing in Christ. The age is so infirm as to deny the existence of the devil; and even becoming able to believe once more in the reality of his Satanic majesty, will be a symptom, slight though it may be, of convalescence.” “We,” remarked the Judge, “are no Sadducees. We believe in both angel and spirit, in good angels and bad angels.” “That is something,” said Mr. Merton; “and, if you open your hearts, and keep them open to the light, you may in time believe more, and escape the meshes in which Satan has now entangled you. Your great mistake is in supposing that these good and bad angels are departed souls. I do not say that departed souls may not revisit the earth; they have done so, and they may continue to do so, but the human soul never becomes an angel or a demon. It is all very well to say of a departed dear one, he or she is an angel in heaven, but taken literally, it is never true. In the resurrection, our Lord says the just are like the angels of God, in the respect that they are neither male nor female, and neither marry nor are given in marriage, but he does not say that they are angels; and the Scriptures distinguish between the company of the angels and the spirits of just men made perfect. Men were created a little lower than the angels, and they are of a different order. The demons or devils are not wicked souls separated from their bodies, and wandering on this or the other side of the dark-flowing Acheron, but the angels who kept not their first estate, and were cast out of heaven. “These fallen angels, under their chief, Lucifer or Satan, carry on their rebellion against God by seeking to seduce men from their allegiance to their rightful sovereign. They can and do invade men, because they are superior to men, and are malicious enough to do it. But the good angels never do it, for they work not by violence, but by moral, persuasive, peaceful, and gentle influences; and human souls cannot do it, for the _strong_ keepeth the house till a _stronger_ comes and binds him. Nothing remains then, my dear Judge, but to regard these spirit-manifestations, in so far as real, as the invasions of Satan, as produced, not by good angels or departed souls, but by the fallen angels, called demons by the Gentiles, and therefore, all these mysterious phenomena, in so far as they are not produced by natural agencies, as sheer deviltry. This is the only conclusion to which I, as a Christian philosopher, can come respecting them.” CHAPTER XXI.