II The Apologue was to Orientals a favourite vehicle for con- veying moral lessons ; and we have a familiar instance in English Literature of the attraction of allegory. "Would Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress have possessed itself, as it has done, of the hearts of whole sections of the British race, if, shorn of its human characters and its scenery, it had only analysed and depicted the inward conflicts, the mental vicissitudes and religious difficulties of a sorely-tried Christian youth ? ^
IF It is wise not to allow this matter to assume an exaggerated importance. For to suppose such angelic appearances and com- munications as are related in the early chapters of St. Luke to be imaginative outward representations of what were in fact but merely inward communications of the " divine word " to human souls, is both a possible course and one which is quite consistent with accepting the narrative as substantially historical and true. No one who believes in God and His dealings with men, and who accepts the testimony of all the prophets as to " the word of the Lord" coming to them, can doubt the reality of substantive Divine communications to man of a purely inward sort. Such an inward commuincation is recorded in these chapters to have been made to Elisabeth, and the angelic appearances to Joseph, recorded by St. Matthew, are merely inward occurrences, i.e. they are intimations conveyed to his mind in sleep. No one, moreover, ^ Henry Latham. * Ihid.
ST. MARK 43
who knows human nature, can doubt that such inward communica- tions could be easily transformed by the imagination into out- ward forms.^
ii. The Existence of Spieitual Beings.
There can be no a priori objection against the existence of such spiritual beings, good and bad, as angels and devils. Many of us would, say that the phenomena of temptation, as experienced by ourselves, cannot be interpreted without a belief at least in the latter. Above all, our Lord's language certainly reaches the level of positive teaching about good, and still more about bad, spirits. As regards good spirits, not only does His language constantly associate angels with Him- self in the coming and judicial work of the last day, but He talks of them with explicit distinctness as beholding the face of God, as limited in knowledge of the great day, as without sensual natures, as attached to children, ministering to the souls of the dead, attendant upon Himself at His request. As regards evil spirits, He must Himself have related His own temptation to His disciples, in which the personal agency of Satan is vividly presented. He speaks with great simplicity of the devil as disseminating evil and hindering good. He warns Peter of an explicit demand made by him upon the souls of the apostles. He deals with demons with unmistak- able seriousness, emphasis, and frequency. He sees Satan behind moral and physical evil. He looks out upon the antagonism to good which the world presents, and says, "An enemy hath done this." He recognises the approach of evil spirits in the trial of the Passion. But He knows that the power of the forces of evil is really overthrown and their doom certain.
The present writer, then, does not see how doubt about the existence and action of good and bad spirits is compatible with a real faith in Jesus Christ as the absolutely trustworthy teacher. There is nothing contrary to reason in such a belief. That it should have been associated with a vast amount of superstition and credulity is no more an argument against its
^ Bishop Gore.
44 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
validity than against religion as a whole. No one can deny that, in our Lord's case, the teaching which He gave about spirits is guarded from superstition by His teaching about God and human responsibility.^
1 Evil thoughts come to us which are alien from all our convictions and all our sympathies. There is nothing to account for them in our external circumstances or in the laws of our intellectual life. We abhor them and repel them, but they are pressed upon us with cruel persistency. They come to us at times when their presence is most hateful ; they cross and trouble the current of devotion; they gather like thick clouds between our souls and God, and suddenly darken the glory of the Divine righteousness and love. We are sometimes pursued and harassed by doubts which we have deliberately confronted, examined, and concluded to be absolutely destitute of force, doubts about the very existence of God, or about the authority of Christ, or about the reality of our own redemption. Sometimes the assaults take another form. Evil fires which we thought we had quenched are suddenly rekindled by unseen hands ; we have to renew the fight with forms of moral and spiritual evil which we thought we had completely destroyed.^
iil The Personality of the Tempter.
The assertion of the existence of a Tempter at all, of a personal Wicked One, of the devil, this, as is well known, is a stumblingblock to many. Not urging here the extent to which the veracity of Christ Himself is pledged to the fact, I will content myself with observing that it is not by Scriptural arguments alone that it is supported. There is a dark, mysterious element in man's life and history which nothing else can explain. We can only too easily understand the too strong attractions of the objects of sense on a being who is sensuous as well as spiritual ; the allowing of that lower nature, which should have been the ruled, to reverse the true relation, and to become the ruler. We can understand only too easily man's yielding, even his losing, of himself in the region of sense. But there is a mystery far more terrible than this, a phenomenon unintelhgible except upon one assumption. All who shrink from looking down into the abysmal depths