159. Satan On His Travels

Satan On His Travels

Job_1:7 : ’93And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’94

In 1648 was printed the largest book ever published, namely, two huge volumes of near five thousand pages in small type, the author Joseph Caryl. It was a commentary on this book of Job. When it took a year for the journey from England to India, the son of the author of this commentary started for India, leaving his father writing on his book, and was gone for years, and when he came back to England, still found his father writing on it. I never saw the commentary, but I do not wonder at its size, because there is no end to the interest of the book of Job. I am not surprised that Goethe, the unbeliever, took from this wonderful book the opening of his drama ’93Faust,’94 and the Mephistopheles of the great German was only the Satan of Job. It seems that one day in heaven God was on his throne, and angels and messengers came to report on their different missions. I suppose one angel said: ’93I was out among the stars and I saw one of them burn down.’94 Another angel I imagine said: ’93I was off on a stellar excursion, and was present at the birth of a new world.’94 Another angel I think said: ’93I was journeying five thousand million miles in the wilderness of immensity, and saw a meteor run down a planet.’94 Another angel: ’93I was off and helped at the inauguration of a new race of beings, amid the mountains and valleys of a mighty world in the southeast part of the heavens.’94 But while these good and great spirits were making their reports, a ghastly, grizzly, hideous monster from some miry, sulphurous, filthy world, came into the palace without wiping his feet, and God asked him where and how he had been occupying himself, and this greatest scoundrel of the universe made reply with blazing effrontery, and instead of acknowledging any of the mischief he had been doing, said he had been an earthly pedestrian, and had lived a sort of circumambulatory, peripatetic life. ’93And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’94

This monster of my text has a great variety of names. You know that notorious villains are apt to take a variety of names. Arraigned in Paris for burglary, a man will give one name; arraigned in San Francisco for arson he will give another name; imprisoned at Montreal for murder he will give another. So this creature of my text has many names. He is called in sacred and profane literature Abaddon, Apollyon, Ahrimanes, Zaniel, Asmodeus the revenging devil, Beelzebub the sovereign of devils, Lucifer the brilliant devil, Diabolus the despairing devil, Mammon the money devil, Pluto the fiery devil, Baal the military devil, Meresin the plaguing devil. He is called the father of lies, and has for his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all falsehoods, deceptions, frauds, swindles, slanders, backbitings, and subterfuges. All men of good sense, whether enlightened by the Bible or in heathendom, have noticed that there are baleful and maleficent influences abroad, that have not their origin in the human race, and demonology is certain as angelology. The sword of Paracelsus was thought to have had a demon in the hilt, and there is now a demon in every sword-hilt. The ancients supposed the air was filled with sylphs and satyrs and sirens and gnomes and vampires and salamanders and undines and hobgoblins. The Talmud says that Adam’92s first wife was Lilith, and that their children were all devils. Two or three hundred years ago, a demonographer gave the names of ambassadors of evil which he thought Satan sent to different countries: Mammon, ambassador to England; Belphegor, ambassador to France; Martinet, ambassador to Switzerland; Rimmon, ambassador to Russia; Thannia, ambassador to Spain; Hutgin, ambassador to Italy, and that there was a princess of devils by the name of Proserpine. But that which was mere guesswork of mythology or superstition has been made clear by divine revelation. We find that there is somewhere a monarch of all wickedness. He has a throne of power, and courtiers and armies and navies and machinery of evil, as vast as the round world. He is the supervisor of all mischief, and what he cannot do himself he delegates others to do, and as each one of our race is supposed to have a guardian good angel, I have no doubt that every human being has a besieging, malignant spirit nagging his footsteps, and trying to make him think wrong and act wrong, an especial devil, a devil of fraud or a devil of avarice or a devil of uncleanness or a devil of poor health, and as in my text the spirits are represented as reporting to the Lord, so I have no doubt the evil spirits report to Satan, who is the enemy of the whole human race, who has a celerity that makes flight around the world a matter of a second, and who marshals on his side the forces volcanic, atmospheric, epidemic, geologic, oceanic, and cyclonic. ’93And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’94

Satan began his attack on this world long before Adam and Eve were created. While I believe the Bible record that the world was fitted up for man’92s residence in one week, I believe also the geological record that the world was previously for hundreds of thousands of years going through great changes. The lumber for the house that was to be built in a week for our first parents may have been hauled to the spot a million years before. This Prince of the Power of the Air has been trying for all that million years to demolish and use up this world. The record is on the rocks. He tried to drown the earth with universal waters. He tried to burn it up with universal fires. Then he tried to freeze it into ruin, and covered it with universal glacier. And for ages he kept this world, before our first parents occupied it, in paroxysms, and convulsions, and the remains of those struggles I have seen, and you have seen in museums, or if with the geologist’92s hammer you have gone down into the stone libraries of the mountains. After the famous Bible week, the world had been fitted into a Paradise for the home of our sinless ancestors, Satan comes into the Garden of Eden, and through the gate of foliage, not upright in posture, but crawls in under the bushes, a snake, and having despoiled our first parents, goes to work to ruin Paradise, and does the work so thoroughly that one who recently visited the site of the ancient garden, between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, says the place is a desert; not a flower can blossom there and the ground so poor that nothing but some date-trees grow there, and the miserable villagers from near-by are not so well covered up with their rags as Adam and Eve were covered up with their innocence. You see the Father of lies for once told the truth when the Lord said unto him: Whence comest thou? and Satan answered and said: ’93From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’94

In my text we have Satan on his travels, and I am going to tell you some of the routes he is apt to take. On his way down from the palace where he reported himself in answer to the question: Whence comest thou? the first range of mischief he may be expected to take is the air. It was not a witticism or a slip of the pen when Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, called Satan the ’93Prince of the power of the air.’94 I think it means that Satan works through conditions of the atmosphere. The west wind is full of angels, the east wind is full of devils. Satan spreads abroad his black wings, and hurricanes and Euroclydons and Caribbean whirlwinds are hatched out. He takes the miasmas that float up from swamps and hatches them into typhoid fevers. He takes the cold blasts and hatches them into pneumonias and rheumatisms and consumptions. Not only has he power in the upper air where highest clouds float but power over the lower air which we breathe; and as we breathe nineteen times a minute and take in three hundred and fifty cubic feet of air in every twenty-four hours, and much of this air affects the arterial circulation, you see what opportunities the Prince of the Air has of contaminating and despoiling and demoralizing a man. Through atmospheric influence he clouds the disposition and rasps the nerves and covers the best of people with religious despondency, as in the case of Edward Payson and William Cowper, and that beloved apostle of evangelism, James W. Alexander. His great delight is to have the air of the churches vitiated, and in that way dulls the preacher and stupefies the people, and sees to it that the atmosphere of not more than one out of a hundred churches is fit to breathe, and whole congregations, Sabbath by Sabbath, are asphyxiated. Yes, he is worthy of the title St. Paul gave him: ’93Prince of the power of the air.’94

Another route he is apt to take is through domestic life. There is no greater sport for him than conjugal quarrel. It does not make any difference how long the marriage ring has been on the finger of the left hand, he will try to pull off the signet. He says to the husband: ’93What a plain wife you have compared with what she once was? Don’92t you see that the color has gone out of her cheek, and there are several wrinkles about her temples, and a sprinkling of frost on her locks? Besides that, you have advanced in intelligence, while she has stood still or gone back. How hard it is that you should be chained to such dulness and imbecility!’94 Then he turns and says to the wife: ’93That man neglects you; you have a right to be jealous. He likes his cigar and his club, and anything and everything better than you. Why not get a divorce? Marriage is only a civil contract anyhow, and not a divine alliance. Let me have that ring. It means nothing, and you might as well give it to me.’94 The ring is handed over to Satan, and he tosses it up and down, like a plaything, over the mouth of perdition, and says: ’93I will hand it back, only let me have it a little while.’94 And he keeps tossing that ring, with all its sacred memories, higher up and farther out, tossing and catching, tossing and catching it until one day you clutch for it, crying: ’93Give me back my ring!’94 but lo, it has dropped into the yawning gulf, and you suddenly find who has been pitching and catching the ring, and you cry out: ’93Whence comest thou?’94 and he answers: ’93From going to and fro in the domestic life of the city, and from walking up and down in it; that is all.’94 There are thousands of marriage relations strained almost to the breaking, and I commend to all men and women who are reckless in the present marriage state that they resume the old-time courtship, and take as much pains to make themselves agreeable as they did five or ten or twenty years ago, before the wedding march announced to the flushed and fluttering crowd that the bride and groom were coming. When you see how many husbands and wives are parted by law, and know of so many who would like to dissolve conjugal partnership, do you not come to the conclusion that Satan is engaged in mighty industries?

Another route that Satan is apt to take in his active travels, is the factories and other establishments where capital sits in the office or counting-room and a good many hands of laborers are busy among wheels and spindles and fabrics. On this visit he will first step into the manufacturer’92s office, and finding the owner and proprietor of the great establishment all alone with his correspondence and his account-books, says to him: ’93You are not making as much money as you ought to. You furnish all the brains. Were it not for your enterprise this establishment would not be in existence. These men and women in your employ are of very common mold. Their appetite is coarser, and they do not need the luxuries you require. Their comfort and happiness are of very little importance. Put them down on the very verge of starvation and take all the profits into your own possession, and if they do not like it tell them to go where they can do better.’94 Having done his work in the count-ing-room, Satan steps right out among the workmen. He says: ’93You work too many hours and you do your work better than it needs to be done. You are serving a bloated bondholder anyhow. He has no right to have any more than you have. Why should he ride and you walk? Why should he have tenderloin steak and you salt pork? Capital is the enemy of labor. Let labor be the sworn foe of capital. Why don’92t you strike and bring him to terms? Wait until he has a large order to fill by contract, and then he cannot help himself. Go altogether, without a moment’92s warning, and tell him you are going to stop. If he has more resources than you know of, and persists in going on and getting new men, give them a volley of brickbats or put a little dynamite in his office and blow him and his factory all up with the same explosion.’94 Look out there on the night sky! Great fire somewhere. What is it? The night is cold and Satan has made a big bonfire of that factory to warm himself by. The capitalist has lost heavily, and the workmen and their families are without bread and clothing. ’93Whence comest thou, Satan?’94 ’93From going to and fro among employers and employees, and from walking up and down among them. Ha! Ha! I was the only one who made anything out of that strike. What a fire and smoke! Ha! Ha! I like smoke.’94

Another route Satan is apt to take in his active travels is through the mercantile establishments. He steps in and says to the clerks: ’93How much salary do you get? Is that all? Why, you can’92t live on that! You have a right to enough for a livelihood. A few quarters out of the money-drawer will never be missed, or here and there is a remnant of goods you could take home without being found out. Or you could change those account-books a little, and you could make that figure eight a nought and that figure five a three, and if you do not feel exactly right about doing that you can some day pay it back, which you can do perfectly easy. Don’92t feel like running the risk? Well, then you can’92t go to the theater and you can’92t go on that round with the boys and you will have to wear that plain coat, whereas you could have your overcoat fur lined and take board at a tip-top place and walk amid plush and tapestries positively Oriental. While you are making up your mind I will just go through the different parts of this great commercial establishment and try every one from the wealthy firm down to the errand boys.’94 The result of that Satanic visit is that one of the partners has drawn so much out of the concern that the whole business is crippled, and a bright and promising boy is sent home to his mother in disgrace, and a young man is in jail for embezzlement. Three lives ruined and three eternities. Whence comest thou, Satan? ’93From going to and fro among mercantile houses, and from walking up and down among them. I like to ruin splendid fellows and blast parental hopes, and of all the liquors that I ever tasted, fill my glass with a brewing of agonizing tears. Come! let us click together the rims of our glasses and drink to the overthrow of the fifty thousand young men I ruined last year! Huzza!’94 Satan would rather have one young man than twenty old ones. If he should win the septuagenarians and the octogenarians, he could do but little harm with them; but he says: ’93Give me a young man, especially if he be bright and generous and social.’94 He sees that young men have, for good or bad, been the mightiest influence in this world. Hernando Cortes conquered Mexico at thirty-two. Gustavus Adolphus became immortal in history so early that he died at thirty-eight. Raphael, the most famous of painters, died at thirty-seven. William Pitt was prime-minister of England at twenty-four. Jesus Christ completed his earthly life at thirty-three. Five years in a young man’92s life are of more power for good or evil than the last fifteen of an old man’92s life. So Satan is especially greedy for young men, and is going to and fro in the earth; he has especial temptation for them.

Another route that Satan on his active travels is apt to take is for the despoiling of souls. It does not pay him merely to destroy the bodies of men and women. Those bodies would soon the be gone anyhow; but great treasures are involved in this Satanic excursion. On this route he meets a man who is aroused by something he has seen in the Bible, and Satan says: ’93Now I can settle all that; the Bible is an imposition; it has been deluding the world for centuries; do not let it delude you. It has no more authority than the Koran of the Mohammedan or the Shaster of the Hindu or the Zenda-Vesta of the Persian.’94 He meets another man who is hastening toward the kingdom of God, and says: ’93Why all this precipitation? Religion is right, but any time within the next ten years will be soon enough for you. A man with a stout chest like yours, and such muscular development, need not be bothering himself about the next world.’94 But Satan says nothing to him about the fact that the professor who gave his whole life to the study of health, and could lift more pounds than any American, died at about forty, and that another learned man, who proved conclusively that if we observed all the laws of health we need never die, expired before he got his book on that subject published. Satan meets another man who has gone through a long course of profligacy and is beginning to pray for forgiveness, and Satan says to the man: ’93You are too late; the Lord will not help such a wretch as you; you might as well brace up and fight your own way through.’94 And so, with a spite and an acuteness and a velocity that have been gaining for six thousand years, he ranges up and down, baffling, disappointing, defeating, afflicting, destroying the human race. Through his own hand, or by delegated infernalism, he has pursued and hurt us all and cursed every heart and every home and every nation and every continent. He has instigated every war; he has rejoiced in every pestilence; he has started every groan; he has pressed out every sigh; he has hurled every shipwreck. Lazarettoes, insane asylums, commercial panics, plagues, destroying angels, continental earthquakes, and worldwide disasters are to him a perfect glee. Can you look upon the Communism and the Mormonism and the Mohammedanism and the wide sweep of drunkenness and fraud and libertinism, the Franco-German war and Crimean war, the North and South United States war, and rivers of blood flowing across continents of misery into oceans of wretchedness, without realizing the power of the Evil One, who reported to the Lord Almighty, and when asked, Whence comest thou? answered: ’93From going to and fro in the earth, and from going up and down in it.’94

But, blessed be God! I may substitute anthem for requiem, and Hallelujah Chorus for the Dead March in Saul. The New Testament says: ’93The Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.’94 It prophesied that an angel would come down from heaven with key and chain and incarcerate and shut up the old dragon. It says that Christ came to ’93destroy him that had the power of death’97that is, the devil.’94 And from the way Christ drove the devil out of those possessed by him until he was glad to hide under the bristles of the swine of Gadara, and from other violent ejectments, we know that there is in existence a power a millionfold mightier than the Diabolic. The old lion of death shall go down under the stroke and roar of the ’93Lion of Judah’92s tribe.’94 My text shows that Satan was compelled to report to the Almighty and give account of himself. When God said to him, ’93Whence comest thou?’94 he was forced to answer. What means that Scripture which says that Christ shall bruise the serpent’92s head? If you have ever killed a snake, the passage ought to be plain to you. You see, this old serpent, the devil, has crawled across the nations, poisoning whole generations and leaving its trail on everything; but after a while it will be cornered, and hissing and writhing in rage, and with crest lifted and forked tongue shot out, it will make final attack on Christ, and Christ will advance upon it, and lifting his omnipotent foot’97that foot strong enough to crush a world’97lifting that foot right over the head of the reptile, will put down his heel with a crushing power that shall leave the monster bleeding and mashed, never to hiss again or bite again or shake his old rattle again. Thank God, he has already received a stunning blow. Hear you not the rumbling of the Christian printing-presses and the whirling of the Gospel chariot wheel? As many souls have been added to the Christian church in the last eighty years as in the previous eighteen centuries, and that is a ratio of increase acclamatory with gladness. The kingdom is coming, and I am so sure of it that I do not propose to fret and worry. I may jump to get on a boat that is going off; but I do not propose to jump for a boat that is coming in. The sharp attacks of infidelity and sin are a good sign that especial blessing is coming in showers over the earth. Flies bite sharp just before rain.

If we do not see the full consummation, our children will see it. In the time of the French Revolution a great procession of boys carried through the street a banner with the inscription: ’93Tremble, tyrants; we shall grow up!’94 Though we may fail to do our duty, there is a rising generation being Gospelized, and coming by the hundreds of thousands from our Sabbath-schools and Christian homes, who might properly have on their banners: ’93Tremble, ye powers of darkness and sin; for we are growing up!’94 We may not amount to much in ourselves, but if we put ourselves in the right place we can do great exploits. Two put under two makes only four; but placed beside two make twenty-two. What you and I most need is power to drive back this Apollyon, this Asmodeus, this Ahrimanes, from our heart and lives. And we can do it, not by our own strength, but by divine power afforded, for here is a passage emblazoned with encouragement which says: ’93Resist the devil and he will flee from you.’94 Remember it is no sin at all to be tempted. The best and mightiest have been tempted. Milton describes a toad squat at the ear of Eve. The sin is in surrendering. Do not feel so secure in yourself as to think you cannot be overthrown. How do you account for the fact that there are so many old men in Sing Sing and Auburn and the other penitentiaries, serving out their protracted sentences for frauds committed in mid-life or advanced age? Although their early life had been good and nothing had been suspected of them until fifty or sixty years of age, the whole land was struck dumb at their forgery or embezzlement. The clock in the steeple of old Trinity Church striking the hours did not remind the recreant Wall-streeter of the passage of time that would soon bring exposure and doom to him. The explanation is that Mephistopheles, Apollyon, Satan, got in his work at that time. The man was not naturally bad. He was as good as any of you are, but Satan, with whole battalions of infernals, swooped upon him unawares.

Look out for the wiles of the devil, not only those of you who are young, but the middle-aged and the old. Outside of God you are not safe a moment. But yield not to disheartenment. If we put our trust in God, our best days are yet to come’97days of victory, days of song, days of heaven’97and the best days of the cause of righteousness in all the earth are yet to come. As the ten thousand men of Xenophon’92s army, when they came to the top of Mount Theches and saw the waters on which they were to sail to their homes, the soldiers with clapping hands and waving banners altogether shouted: ’93The sea, the sea!’94 so we today in our march toward our heavenly home come up to the top of the mountain of holy anticipation, and look off upon oceans of light and oceans of glory and oceans of joy; and, thrilled as we have never been thrilled before, we clap our hands and wave our Gospel ensigns, and cry one to another, and shout up to the responding and re-echoing heavens: ’93The sea, the sea!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage