Meantime, pausing for one moment to glance at the hypothesis of the fathers, we confess ourselves to be scandalized by its unnecessary plunge into the ignoble. Many sincere Christian believers have doubted altogether of any evil spirits, as existences, warranted by Scripture, that is, as beings whose principle was evil ["evil, be thou my good:" P. L.]; others, again, believing in the possibility that spiritual beings had been (in ways unintelligible to us) seduced from their state of perfection by temptations analogous to those which had seduced man, acquiesced in the notion of spirits tainted with evil, but not therefore (any more than man himself) essentially or causelessly malignant. Now, it is well known, and, amongst others, Eichhorn _(Einletung in das alte Testament) has noticed the fact, which will be obvious, on a little reflection, to any even unlearned student of the Scriptures who can throw his memory back through a real familiarity with those records, that the Jews derived their obstinate notions of fiends and demoniacal possessions (as accounting even for bodily affections) entirely from their Chaldean captivity. Not before that great event in Jewish history, and, therefore, in consequence of that event, were the Jews inoculated with this Babylonian, Persian, and Median superstition. Now, if Eichhorn and others are right, it follows that the elder Scriptures, as they ascend more and more into the purer atmosphere of untainted Hebrew creeds, ought to exhibit an increasing freedom from all these modes of demoniacal agency. And accordingly so we find it. Messengers of God are often concerned in the early records of Moses; but it is not until we come down to Post-Mosaical records, Job, for example (though that book is doubtful as to its chronology), and the chronicles of the Jewish kings (_Judaic or Israelitish)_, that we first find any allusion to malignant spirits. As against Eichhorn, however, though readily conceding that the agency is not often recognized, we would beg leave to notice, that there is a three-fold agency of evil, relatively to man, ascribed to certain spirits in the elder Scriptures, namely: 1, of _misleading_ (as in the case of the Israelitish king seduced into a fatal battle by a falsehood originating with a spiritual being); 2, of _temptation_; 3, of calumnious _accusation_ directed against absent parties. It is not absolutely an untenable hypothesis, that these functions of malignity to man, as at first sight they appear, may be in fact reconcilable with the general functions of a being not malignant, and not evil in any sense, but simply obedient to superior commands: for none of us supposes, of course, that a "destroying angel" must be an evil spirit, though sometimes appearing in a dreadful relation of hostility to _all_ parties (as in the case of David's punishment). But, waiving all these speculations, one thing is apparent, that the negative allowance, the toleration granted to these later Jewish modes of belief by our Saviour, can no more be urged as arguing any positive sanction to such existences (to _demons_ in the bad sense), than his toleration of Jewish errors and conceits in questions of science. Once for all, it was no purpose of his mission to expose errors in matters of pure curiosity, and in speculations _not_ moral, but exclusively intellectual. And, besides the ordinary argument for rejecting such topics of teaching, as not necessarily belonging to any known purpose of the Christian revelation (which argument is merely negative, and still leaves it open to have regarded such communications as a possible _extra_ condescension, as a _lucro ponatur_, not absolutely to have been expected, but if granted as all the more meritorious in Christianity), we privately are aware of an argument, far more rigorous and coërcive, which will place this question upon quite another basis. This argument, which, in a proper situation, and with ampler disposable space, we shall expose in its strength, will show that it was not that neutral possibility which men have supposed, for the founder of our faith to have granted light, casually or indirectly, upon questions of curiosity. One sole revelation was made by Him, as to the nature of the intercourse and the relations in another world; but _that_ was for the purpose of forestalling a vile, unspiritual notion, already current amongst the childish Jews, and sure to propagate itself even to our own days, unless an utter _averruncatio_ were applied to it. This was its purpose, and not any purpose of gratification to unhallowed curiosity; we speak of the question about the reversionary rights of marriage in a future state.