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CSEC ON-LINE REFERENCE LIBRARY |
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MARY BAKER EDDY
The meaning of the term "devil" needs yet to be learned. Its definition as an individual is too limited and contradictory. When the Scripture is understood, the spiritual signification of its terms will be understood, and will contradict the interpretations that the senses give them; and these terms will be found to include the inspired meaning. It could not have been a person that our great Master cast out of another person; therefore the devil herein referred to was an impersonal evil, or whatever worketh ill. In this case it was the evil of dumbness, an error of material sense, cast out by the spiritual truth of being; namely, that speech belongs to Mind instead of matter, and the wrong power, or the lost sense, must yield to the right sense, and exist in Mind. In the Hebrew, "devil" is denominated Abaddon; in the Greek, Apollyon, serpent, liar, the god of this world, etc. The apostle Paul refers to this personality of evil as "the god of this world;" and then defines this god as "dishonesty, craftiness, handling the word of God deceitfully." The Hebrew embodies the term "devil" in another term, serpent,—which the senses are supposed to take in,—and then defines this serpent as "more subtle than all the beasts of the field." Subsequently, the ancients changed the meaning of the term, to their sense, and then the serpent became a symbol of wisdom. The Scripture in John, sixth chapter and seventieth verse, refers to a wicked man as the devil: "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" According to the Scripture, if devil is an individuality, there is more than one devil. In Mark, ninth chapter and thirty-eighth verse, it reads: "Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name." Here is an assertion indicating the existence of more than one devil; and by omitting the first letter, the name of his satanic majesty is found to be evils, apparent wrong traits, that Christ, Truth, casts out. By no possible interpretation can this passage mean several individuals cast out of another individual no bigger than themselves. The term, being here employed in its plural number, destroys all consistent supposition of the existence of one personal devil. Again, our text refers to the devil as dumb; but the original devil was a great talker, and was supposed to have outtalked even Truth, and carried the question with Eve. Also, the original texts define him as an "accuser," a "calumniator," which would be impossible if he were speechless. These two opposite characters ascribed to him could only be possible as evil beliefs, as different phases of sin or disease made manifest. Let us obey St. Paul's injunction to reject fables, and accept the Scriptures in their broader, more spiritual and practical sense. When we speak of a good man, we do not mean that man is God because the Hebrew term for Deity was "good," and vice versa; so, when referring to a liar, we mean not that he is a personal devil, because the original text defines devil as a "liar." It is of infinite importance to man's spiritual progress, and to his demonstration of Truth in casting out error,—sickness, sin, disease, and death, in all their forms,—that the terms and nature of Deity and devil be understood.
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