unnecessary, since Baptism, translating us into the kingdom of God's dear Son, did in itself remove us from the power of the prince of darkness. Nor did the primitive Church doubt this; still she retained the practice, and thereby attested her conviction that it did serve some further ends. Although not a sacrament, and therefore no direct means of grace, the exorcism was a vivid practical recognition of the state of bondage to Satan, out of which we were delivered. It impressed upon men's minds, far more powerfully than any words can do, the fearful penalty of their natural corruption, the power of the "prince of this world," his unceasing enmity against his delivered captives and slaves, and the great peril of again falling under his dominion. As often as a new member was brought over into Christ's fold, it set before men's eyes the greatness of our deliverance, the might and yet powerlessness of our enemy, the danger of being again led captive by him. It could not have been foreseen that men's sense of all these would be weakened by our omission of this rite; and yet this has unquestionably contributed much to the present unbelief in the Scripture statements of a personal unseen enemy of men's souls, and the indifference with which they view, or hear of, his visible agents and servants, and the fearlessness with which they allow themselves to sink gradually into his grasp, as if they could again free themselves from it when they would. It has also fortified the present self-deification of man, whereby, as he virtually makes himself his own god, so he would make himself his own only enemy. And so the very recognition of man's natural corruption or infirmity becomes a source of pride, in that he thereby escapes from recognizing what he would yet more abhor—the humiliation of acknowledging that he is not his own master, but that if not engaged in the free active service of God, he is in a state of bondage—not to his own passions simply, but to a master more powerful, and as yet more wicked, than himself, whom, unless God frees him, he must obey, here and for ever. Against this scriptural statement man's pride revolts. It would have been impugned doubtless by unbelief, even had the rite of exorcism been retained (as it has in Germany and Denmark); and so will every doctrine: but it would not so easily have been forgotten, which is the far greater evil. It has doubtless been a device of Satan, to persuade men that this expulsion of himself was unnecessary; he has thereby secured a more undisputed possession. Whether the rite can again be restored in our Church, without greater evil, God only knoweth; or whether it be not irrevocably forfeited; but this is certain, that, until it be restored, we shall have much more occasion to warn our flocks of the devices and power of him against whom they have to contend.
The rite is retained in the several branches of the Eastern Church, as in the Lutheran portion of the Western, Denmark and Norway, as well as Germany; so that herein we have needlessly forsaken the
