To be near unto God - pagina 557

hesitate to dismiss this whole matter of Satan's influences,

part

and

parcel,

from

their

Gospel.

And

with respect to this it is evident again, that every such effort aims not at forming the mind and thought after the Gospel, but at moulding the Gospel after their own world of thought. With respect to this they who, while more faithful to the Gospel do not deny but forget the real workings of Satan, are not free from guilt. Or is it not extremely rare, that in spoken or written address, in psychology or in revelations of the inner life, the Evil One is reckoned with as a real factor? It should be carefully observed, that like a thief, Satan is most pleased when his presence and his work are not noticed. In circles where his existence is denied or ridiculed, his hands are altogether free to murder souls according to his liking. But that he can be so strangely forgotten

by those who Gospel, offers

are more inclined to believe the him the finest chances to poison

souls.

We may

in

this

be sure that in all this denial and forgetting of the actual existence of Satan, a trick of Satan himself operates. When the mighty spirit of Christ moved the waves of the sea of life in Palestine, Satan did not succeed with this for a moment, and Jesus compelled him to show himself. But now he succeeds in keeping himself in hiding, and unseen and unnoticed, from the ambush, to inw^ork his character, and consequently with better effect. all

How the working of Satan proceeds is not revealed unto us in its particulars. We only know 553

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