really a race of beings living on their own account as men do, they constituted a hierarchy, and were called Angels.

Among all the vast angelic population, three or four individuals stood pre-eminent and unapproachable. These were the Archangels. Satan was one of these: if not the highest archangel in heaven, he was one of the four highest. After God, he could feel conscious of being the greatest being in the universe. But although the relation between the Deity and the angelic population was so close, that we can only express it by having recourse to the conception of physical nearness, yet, even to the angels the Deity was so shrouded in clouds and mystery, that the highest archangel might proceed on a wrong notion of his character; and, just as human beings do, might believe the Divine omnipotence as a theological proposition, and yet, in going about his enterprises, might not carry a working consciousness of it along with him. There is something in the exercise of power, in the mere feeling of existence, in the stretching out of a limb, in the resisting of an obstacle, in being active in any way, which generates a conviction that our powers are selfcontained, hostile to the recollection of inferiority or accountability. A messenger, employed on his master's business, becomes, in the very act of serving him, forgetful of him. As the feeling of enjoyment in action grows strong, the feeling of a dependent state of being, the feeling of being a messenger, grows weak. Repose and physical weakness are favourable to the recognition of a derived existence; hence the beauty of the feebleness of old age preceding the approach of death. The feebleness of the body weakens the selfsufficient feeling, and disposes to piety. The young man, rejoicing in his strength, cannot believe that his breath is in his nostrils. In some such way the Archangel fell. Rejoicing in his strength, walking colossal through heaven, gigantic in his conceptions, incessant in his working, ever scheming, ever imagining new enterprises, Satan was in his very nature the most active of God's archangels. He was ever doing some great thing, and ever thirsting for some greater thing to do. And, alas! his very wisdom became his folly. His notion of

the Deity was higher and grander than that of any other angel: but, then, he was not a contemplative spirit; and his feeling of derived existence grew weak in the glow and excitement of constant occupation. As the feeling of enjoyment in action grew strong, the feeling of being an angel grew weak. Thus the mere duration of his existence had undermined his strength and prepared him for sin. Although the greatest angel in heaven, nay, just because he was such, he was the readiest to fall.

At last an occasion came. When the intimation was made by the Almighty in the congregation of the angels that he had anointed his only-begotten Son King on the holy hill of Zion, the Archangel frowned and became a rebel; not because he had weighed the enterprise to which he was committing himself, but because he was hurried on by the impetus of an overwrought nature. Even had he weighed the enterprise, and found it wanting, he would have been a rebel nevertheless; he would have rushed into ruin on the wheels of his old impulses. He could not have said to himself, "It is useless to rebel, and I will not ;" and, if he could, what a hypocrite to have stayed in heaven! No, his revolt was the natural issue of the thoughts to which he had accustomed himself; and his crime lay in having acquired a rebellious constitution, in having pursued action too much, and spurned worship and contemplation. Herein lay the difference between him and the other archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael.

Satan in his revolt carried a third part of the angels along with him. He had accustomed many of the angels to his mode of thinking. One of the ways in which he gratified his desire for activity had been that of exerting a moral and intellectual influence over the inferior angels. A few of these he had liked to associate with, discoursing with them, and observing how they drank in his ideas. His chief associate, almost his bosom-companion, had been Beelzebub, a princely angel. Moloch, Belial, Mammon, had likewise been admitted to his confidence. These five had constituted a kind of clique in heaven, giving the word to a whole multitude of inferior

angels, all of them resembling their leader, in being fonder of action than of contemplation. Thus, in addition to the mere hankering after action, there had grown up in Satan's mind a love of power. This feeling of its being a glorious thing to be a leader seems to have had much to do with his voluntary sacrifice of happiness. We conceive it to have been voluntary. Foreseeing ever so much misery would not have prevented such a spirit from rebelling. Having a third of the angels away with him in some dark, howling region, where he might rule over them alone, would have seemed, even if he had foreseen it, infinitely preferable to the puny sovereignty of an Archangel in that world of gold and emerald—“ Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Thus we conceive him to have faced the anticipation of the future. It required little persuasion to gain over the kindred spirit of Beelzebub. These two appear to have conceived the enterprise from the beginning in a different light from that in which they represented it to their followers. Happiness with the inferior spirits was a more important consideration than with such spirits as Satan and Beelzebub; and to have hinted the possibility of losing happiness in the enterprise, would have been to terrify them away. Satan and Beelzebub were losing happiness to gain something which they thought better; to the inferior angels nothing could be mentioned that would appear better. Again, the inferior angels, judging from narrower premises, might indulge in enthusiastic expectations, which the greater knowledge of the leaders would prevent them from entertaining. At all events, the effect of the intercourse with the angels was, that a third of their number joined the standard of Satan. Then began the wars in

heaven related in the sixth book of the

poem.

We have to remark, that Satan's carrying on these wars with the hope of victory is not inconsistent with what we have said, as to the possibility of Satan's not having proceeded on a false calculation. We are apt to imagine these wars as wars between the rebel angels and the armies of God. Now this is true; but it is scarcely the proper idea in the circumstances. How could Satan have hoped for victory in that

F

case? You can only suppose that he did so by lessening his intellect, by making him a mere blundering Fury, and not a keen, far-seeing Intelligence. But in warring with Michael and his followers he was, until the contrary should be proved, warring merely against his fellow-beings of the same heaven, whose strength he knew and feared not. The idea of physical nearness between the Almighty and the angels confuses us here. Satan had heard the threat which had accompanied the proclamation of the Messiah's sovereignty; but it may have been problematical in his mind whether the way in which God would fulfil the threat would be to make Michael conquer him. So he made war against Michael and his angels. At last, when all Heaven was in confusion, the Divine omnipotence interfered. On the third day the Messiah rode forth in his strength to end the wars, and expel the rebel host from heaven. They fled, driven before his thunder. The crystal wall of heaven opened wide, and the two lips, rolling inward, disclosed a spacious gap yawning into the wasteful deep; the reeling angels saw down, and hung back affrighted; but the terror of the Lord was behind them; headlong they threw themselves from the verge of Heaven into the fathomless abyss, eternal wrath burning after them down through the blackness like a hissing fiery funnel.

And now the Almighty determined to create a new kind of world, and to people it with a race of beings different from that already existing; inferior in the meantime to the angels, but with the power of working themselves up into the angelic mode of being. The Messiah, girt with omnipotence, rode out on this creating errand. Heaven opened her everlasting gates, moving on their golden hinges, and the King of Glory, uplifted on the wings of cherubim, rode on and on into Chaos. At last he stayed his fervid wheels and took the golden compasses in his hand. Centering one point where he stood, he turned the other silently and slowly round through the profound obscurity. Thus were the limits of our Universe marked out-that azure region in which the stars were to shine, and the planets were to wheel. On the huge fragment of Chaos thus marked out, the creating spirit

brooded, and the light gushed down. In six days the work of creation was completed. In the centre of the azure universe hung a silvery star. That was the Earth. Thereon in a paradise of trees and flowers walked Adam and Eve, the last and the fairest of all God's creatures.

Meanwhile the rebel host lay rolling in the fiery gulf underneath Chaos. The bottom of Chaos was Hell. Above it was Chaos proper, a thick, black, sweltering element. Above it again was the new experimental world, cut out of it like a mine, and brilliant with stars and galaxies. And high over all, behind the stars and galaxies, was Heaven itself. Satan and his crew lay rolling in Hell, the fiery element underneath Chaos. Chaos lay between them and the new world. Satan was the first to awake out of stupor and realise the whole state of the case; what had occurred, what was to be their future condition of being, and what remained to be attempted. In the first dialogue between him and Beelzebub we see that, even thus early, he had ascertained what his function was to be for the future, and decided in what precise mode of being he could make his existence most pungent and perceptible. "Of this be sure,

To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do evil our sole delight,

As being the contrary to His high will
Whom we resist."

Here the ruined Archangel first strikes out the idea of existing for ever after as the Devil. It is important to observe that his becoming a devil was not the mere inevitable consequence of his being a ruined archangel. Beelzebub, for instance, could see in the future nothing but a prospect of continued suffering, until Satan communicated to him his conception of a way of enjoying action in the midst of suffering. Again, some of the angels appear to have been ruminating the possibility of retrieving their former condition by patient enduring. The gigantic scheme of becoming a devil was Satan's. At first it existed in his mind only as a vague perception, that the way in which he would be most likely to get the worth out of his existence, was to employ himself thenceforward in doing evil. The idea afterwards became more definite. After glancing