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No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy
page 22 of 42 (52%)



IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL?


No man hath seen the person of good or of evil. Each is greater than the
corporeality we behold.

"He cast out _devils_." This record shows that the term devil is generic,
being used in the plural number. From this it follows that there is more
than one devil. That Jesus cast several persons out of another person, is
not stated, and is impossible. Hence the passage must refer to the _evils_
which were cast out.

Jesus defined devil as a mortal who is full of evil. "Have I not chosen you
twelve, and one of you _is a devil_?" His definition of evil indicated his
ability to cast it out. An incorrect concept of the nature of evil hinders
the destruction of evil. To conceive of God as resembling--in personality,
or form--the personality that Jesus condemned as devilish, is fraught with
spiritual danger. Evil can neither grasp the prerogative of God nor make
evil omnipotent and omnipresent.

Jesus said to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan;" but he to whom our Lord
gave the keys of the kingdom could not have been wholly evil, and therefore
was not a _devil_, after the accepted definition. Out of the Magdalen,
Jesus cast seven devils; but not one person was named among them. According
to Crabtre, these devils were the diseases Jesus cast out.

The most eminent divines, in Europe and America, concede that the
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