Human philosophy has an undeveloped God, who unfolds Himself through material modes, wherein the human and divine mingle in the same realm and consciousness.  This is rank infidelity; because by it we lose God’s ways and perpetuate the supposed power and reality of evil ad infinitum.  Christian Science rends this veil in the pantheon of many gods, and reproduces the teachings of Jesus, whose philosophy is incontestable, bears the strain of time, and brings in the glories of eternity; “for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Divine philosophy is demonstrably the true idea of the Christ, wherein Principle heals and saves.  A philosophy which cannot heal the sick has little resemblance to Science, and is, to say the least, like a cloud without rain, “driven about by every wind of doctrine.”  Such philosophy has certainly not touched the hem of the Christ garment.

Leibnitz, Descartes, Fichte, Hegel, Spinoza, Bishop Berkeley, were once clothed with a “brief authority;” but Berkeley ended his metaphysical theory with a treatise on the healing properties of tar-water, and Hegel was an inveterate snuff-taker.  The circumlocution and cold categories of Kant fail to improve the conditions of mortals, morally, spiritually, or physically.  Such miscalled metaphysical systems are reeds shaken by the wind.  Compared with the inspired wisdom and infinite meaning of the Word of Truth, they are as moonbeams to the sun, or as Stygian night to the kindling dawn.

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL?

No man hath seen the person of good or of evil.  Each is greater than the corporeality we behold.

“He cast out devils.”  This record shows that the term devil is generic, being used in the plural number.  From this it follows that there is more than one devil.  That Jesus cast several persons out of another person, is not stated, and is impossible.  Hence the passage must refer to the evils which were cast out.

Jesus defined devil as a mortal who is full of evil.  “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” His definition of evil indicated his ability to cast it out.  An 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 Crabtre, 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.