BOOK 11.
Effect of
Cliristian
teaching.
powerful as the righteous being with whom he is at war. This abso^vte partition of the universe between two contending principles was the very groundwork of Iranian belief; but the idea was one which could not fail to strike root in any congenial soil. To a certain extent it found such a soil in the mind of the Jewish people, who had become familiar, by whatever means, with the notion of a being whose office it was to tempt or try the children of men. The Satan who discharges this duty is, however, one of the sons of God ; and in the book of Job there is no indication of any essential antagonism between them. The position of Satan in this narrative is indeed in strict accordance with the Hebrew philosophy which regarded God as the author both of good and evil, as the being who hardened Pharaoh's heart and authorised the lying spirit to go forth and prevail among the prophets of Ahab. But when a portion of the Jewish people was brought into contact with the fully developed system of Persian dualism, the victory of the Iranian theology seemed complete. Henceforth the notion of two hierarchies, the one heavenly, the other diabolical, took possession of their minds ; and Satan, who ruled over the powers of darkness and exercised a wide dominion as prince of the air, was confined to a level lower than that of Ahriman, only because he had once stood among the most brilliant angels in the courts of heaven. At this level he remained a fallen creature ruling over hosts of malignant demons who did his will among mankind, plaguing them with sorrow, disease, and madness, until the convictions of the first Christian societies magnified him into proportions if possible more overpowering than those of the Iranian enemy of Ormuzd. The Jew chiefly, if not wholly, from the conviction which led him to regard God as the author both of good and evil, drew no sharp distinction between mind and matter as existing in irreconcilable antagonism ; and since as a nation they can scarcely be said to the last to have attained to any definite ideas either of the fact or the conditions of a life continued after death, Satan could with them obviously have no definite dominion beyond the bounds of our present existence. He could torture the bodies, afflict the souls, or darken the minds of men ; but of his everlasting reign over countless multitudes ruined by his subtle wiles we find no very definite notion.
But Christianity, while it rested on a distinct assurance of personal immortality altogether stronger than any to which the most fervent of the Hebrew prophets had ever attained, took root among nations who had filled all the world with gods or demons, each with his own special sphere and ofiice. These deities the Christian teachers dethroned; but far from attempting to destroy them, they were careful to insist
