Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The design of love / written by E.B. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
38/610
![death of a sinner ! ”—who came to save, NOT to destroy !— who has opened a door that none can shut; who is un- changed and unchangeable ; and who is ever looking for the prodigal— waiting to save ! Moreover, what if the Bible no-where positively declares the existence of such a being as “Satan” (as commonly understood by that term); the restlessly active opponent of God’s Spirit in general, and the sworn “ deceiver ” and then accuser (where circumstances admit truthfully, otherwise falsely) of that portion of the same Spirit HE lias implanted in MAN?—If even Our Lord’s own statement, 111 saw Satan fall (morally) ‘1 like lightning from the sky!” [See Greek New Testament and Revised Version of Bible] is capable of a better explanation than that which it has borne so long—a construction not peculiar to the Roman Catholic theologians only;—viz., that a being called Satan was once thrown down from the Sky to the Earth ?—What if (bearing in mind that Our Lord was a Jew, and as such a born poet, besides being as Divinity the Great Poietes, or Maker; and how He always taught deep spiritual truths on the pictorial plan of representing ideas as persons) it simply means Temptation's lightning fash ?—Is it not within the experience of all men, that the battle with Temptation is lost or won in a moment; and that the more sudden and sharp the temptation, the more instantaneous is the whole affair, from attack to victory ? What if a careful dissection of the book of “the Revela- tion of Jesus Christ” to John in Patinos, shows that there is no foundation whatever for the commonly accepted ideas of Purgatory, Ilell, Eternal Damnation, and repeated Births and Deaths ?— and that the true “ Satan ” is Man's own spirit [ Jer. xvii. 9] still in rebellion against God, but which will at last become “ one with HIM ” in the great “ re-at-one- ment” of the universe?—What if Our Lord himself adopted this simple theology which reduces all the puzzling problems of life to the one simple formula, that even a child can understand, of “ Father and I?”—and what if, in tracing out the course of “the Design ” under the guidance of His Holy Spirit, the largest possible hope with which it began grew into the grand certainty, as in Our Lord’s own career on Earth it](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24976659_0038.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
