If this canon of translation and of criticism be denied, then we affirm there is no value in dictionaries, nor in the acquisition of ancient languages in which any book was written; nor is there any confidence to be placed in any translation of any work, sacred or profane; for they are all made upon the assumption of the truth of this law. We have, then, only to ask, first, for the current signification of the term demon in Judea, at the Christian era; and, in the second place, Did the inspired writers ever give any special definition to it ? We have already found an answer to the first in the Greeks and Jews of the apostolic age--also, in the preceding and subsequent age. We have heard Josephus, Philo, Lucian, Justin, and Lardner, from whose writings and affirmations we are expressly told what the universal acceptation of the term was in Judea and in those times; and in the second place the apostles and our Lord, as already said, use this word in various forms seventy-eight times, and on no occasion give any hint of a special, private, or peculiar interpretation of it; which was not their method when they used a term either not generally understood, or understood in a special sense. Does any one ask the meaning of the word Messiah, prophet, priest, elder, deacon, presbyter, altar, sacrifice, Sabbath, circumcision, &c. ? We refer him to the current signification of these words among the Jews and Greeks of that age. Why then should any one except the term demon from the universal law? Are we not, therefore, sustained by the highest and most authoritative decision of that literary tribunal by whose rules and decrees all works, sacred and profane, are translated from the dead to a living tongue ? We are, then, fully authorized to say, that the demons of the New Testament were the spirits of dead men. 5. But distinct evidence of the historic kind, and rather as confirmatory of our views than of the authority of inspired authors, I adduce as a separate and independent witness, a very explicit and decisive passage from the epistle to the Smyrneans, written by the celebrated Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostle John. He quotes the words of the Lord to Peter, when Peter supposed he saw a spirit or a ghost. But he quotes him thus, "Handle me and see, for I am not a daimon asomaton-a disembodied demon ;"-a spirit without a body. This places the matter above all doubt, that with them of that day a demon and a ghost were equivalent terms. 6. We also deduce an argument from the word *Our Saxon forefathers, of whom we have no good reason to be ashamed were wont to call the spirits of men, especially when separated from their bodies, ghosis. Guest and ghost, with them, if not synonymous, were, at least cousins--german. They regarded the body as the house, and therefore called the spirit the guest; for guest and ghost are two branches from the same root. William Tyndale, the martyr, of excellent memory, in his version of the New Testament, the prototype of that of King James, very judiciously makes the Holy Spirit of the Old Testament the Holy Ghost of the New; because, in his judgment, it was the promised guest of the Christian temple. angel. This word is of Biblical origin, and confined to those countries in which that volume is found. It is not found in all the Greek poets, orators, or historians, so far as known to me. Of that rank of beings to whom Jews and Christians have applied this official title, the Pagan nations seem never to have had the first conception. It is, therefore, certain that they could not use the term demon as a substitute interchangeable with the word angel-as indicative of an intermediate order of intelligent beings above men, and between them and the Divinity. They had neither the name nor the idea of an angel in their mythology. Philo the Jew has, indeed, said that amongst the Jews the word demon and the word angel were sometimes used in interchangeably; and some have thence inferred that lapsed angels were called demons. But this is not a logical inference: for the Jews called the winds, the pestilence, the lightnings of heaven, &c., angels, as indicative of their agency in accomplishing the will of God. In this sense, indeed, a demon might be officially called an angel. But in this sense, demon is to angel as the species to the genus: we can call a demon an angel, but we cannot call an angel a demon-just as we can call every man an animal, but we cannot call every animal a man. But to return to the word angel. It is a Bible term, and not being found in all classic, in all mythologic antiquity, could not enter into the Pagan ideas of a demon. Now, that it is not so used in the Christian Scriptures, is evident for the following rea sons 1. Angels were never said to enter into any one. 2. Angels have no affection for bodies of any sort, either as habitations or vehicles of action. 3. Angels have no predilection for tombs and monuments of the dead. In these three particulars angels and demons stand in full contrast, and are contradistinguished by essentially different characteristics: for 1. Demons have entered into human bodies and into the bodies of inferior creatures. 2. Demons evince a peculiar affection for human bodies, and seem to desire them both as vehicles of action and as places of habitation. 3. Demons also evince a peculiar fondness for their old mortal tenements; hence, we so often read of them carrying the possessed into the grave-yards, the tombs, and sepulchres, where, perchance, their old mortalities lay in ruins. From which facts we argue, as well as from the fact that the Pagans had neither Devil, nor angel, nor Satan, in their heads before the Christian times, that when they, or the Christians, or the Jews, spoke of demons, they could not mean any intermediate rank of spirits, other than the spirits of dead men. Hence, in no instance in holy * The meaning of Mr. C. obviously is that the Pagans knew of no angels which were an order of spirits-their angels were only earthly messengers. writ can we find demon and angel used as convertible terms. Is it not certain then that they are the spirits of dead men ? Statutes, indeed, are ordained and laws promulgated from Mount Sinai in Arabia, from the voice of the Eternal King, against the worship of demons, the consultation of familiar spirits, the practice of necromancy, and all the arts of divination. Hence we affirm that the doctrine of a separate state-of disembodied spirits, or demons-of necromancy and divination, is a thousand years older than Homer or Hesiad, than any Pagan historian, philosopher, or poet whatever. They make but little argumentative gain who assume that demons are lapsed angels rather than human spirits; for who will not admit that it may be more easy for a demon than an angel who has a spiritual body of his own, to work by the machinery of a human body, and to excite the human passions to any favorite course of action! Were this not the fact, they must have tenanted the human body to little purpose, if a perfect stranger to all its rooms and doors could, on its first introduction, move through them as easily as they. "If weak thy faith, why choose the harder side ?" 7. To this we add the testimony of James, who says the demons believe and tremble for their doom. Now, all eminent critics concur that the spirits of wicked men are here intended; and need I add |