incorrect concept of the nature of evil hinders the destruction of evil. To conceive of God as resembling — in personality, or form — the personality that Jesus condemned as devilish, is fraught with spiritual danger. Evil can neither grasp the prerogative of God nor make evil omnipotent and omnipresent.
Jesus said to Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan;” but he to whom our Lord gave the keys of the kingdom could not have been wholly evil, and therefore was not a devil, after the accepted definition. Out of the Magdalen, Jesus cast seven devils; but not one person was named among them. According to Crabtree, these devils were the diseases Jesus cast out.
The most eminent divines, in Europe and America, concede that the Scriptures have both a literal and a moral meaning. Which of the two is the more important to gain, — the literal or the moral sense of the word devil, — in order to cast out this devil? Evil is a quality, not an individual.
As mortals, we need to discern the claims of evil, and to fight these claims, not as realities, but as illusions; but Deity can have no such warfare against Himself. Knowledge of a man's physical personality is not sufficient to inform us as to the amount of good or evil he possesses. Hence we cannot understand God or man, through the person of either. God is All-in-all; but He is definite and individual, the omnipresent and omniscient Mind; and man's individuality is God's own image and likeness, —
