THE WRITER has a very warm friend (by correspondence) on the mission field whose experience throws a flood of light upon the subject of this chapter.  We think it best to withhold his name and field.  He says there was a time when to him the biblical Satan was a joke.  Then God in His great mercy permitted an awful trial to come into this man's life.  He had been a Christian worker for many years, and had seen some fruit.  But, when the people he wanted to help poisoned his precious little child, this poor man was devoured as by a thousand demons.  Although saved, he was so completely defeated by a double-mindedness, that he could not possibly withstand the foe.  His universe was shattered.  With his back to the wall, he fought a losing battle.  He had been living in "the natural." He was now called upon to go the second 'le, to love his enemies and to be thankful for the things that hurt him worse than death.  But he could only cry: "What I would I do not." He says, "God knows the tears I wept.  A desperate hope that would not die, a secret conviction that my Redeemer would somehow see me out of it all, kept me from utter despair and suicide, which Satan more than once whispered to me.  But it was all for my good.  God was preparing me for a full-orbed view of Calvary.  I remembered that even one of the apostles had to be sifted like wheat by this same cruel monster, before he was in a position to really help his brethren.  My spiritual weapons in the face of these demon forces were as a toy pistol before a great battleship.  Further-more to my utter dismay, I found that my own carnality and selfishness had given the ground they held to these monsters of hell.  I myself had invited them in.  I must get rid of 'self' that was as clear as the noonday sun.  Else there could be no hope of final victory.  These powers of darkness (demons are as real to me now as God Himself) which were oppressing me to the point of despair, were standing on the very ground which secret selfishness had conceded to them.  How was I to get rid of this self-life, which had so long been standing out against Christ and making a way for the enemy to come in like a flood.  It was then that God focused all my being upon the Cross of Christ, and opened up to me its wondrous meaning.  The moment I took the place which all along God was assign-ing me; namely, a consent to die with Christ and to consign to my Redeemer's tomb my old life, the old man,--a new day dawned." It was then "the hosts of hellish spirits were driven from the field of battle and utterly routed."

In the first place it is evident from this man's experience that a believer knows little of the devil or his working, knows little of his mighty external enemy, until the "civil war" with self has been won.  In Ephesians 6 Paul introduces the believer's fight with the enemy "against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places."

Here is an aggressive warfare against mighty, but unseen foes, in the heavenlies.  Into such a warfare the worldly and the self-centered cannot enter.  However, in chapters one and three, Paul has prepared the believer for just such a warfare.  In Ephesians 1 he shows us our place in the heavenlies seated in Christ far above this present evil world.  In Ephesians 3 he shows us how we may be so strengthened with might by God's Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith.  Note the order--we "in Christ" up there; then Christ "in us" down here.  When Christ thus supplants self, terminates the civil war, and enables me to say, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20. A.S.V.), then I am ready to face the foe and, like a Christian soldier, driver souls "out of-the mouth of the lion." But to repeat, the believer has first of all to be delivered from the worId (through being seated with Christ in the heavenlies, Eph. 1), and then delivered from the power of the flesh (through an experimental indwelling of Christ in his heart, Eph. 3), before he is ready to face the devil in open combat.  As long as the believer lives for the world or the flesh, small harm he can do the devil.  Until he thus becomes Christ's warrior, he is "easy meat" for the devil.

A great Bible teacher, who we fear had gone "soft," was expressing a syrupy sympathy for certain preachers who seemed to be so "tormented by the devil," as he put it.  After he had so fully expressed this sentiment we could not but say, "But brother, why give place to the devil?" This teacher insisted, however, that all the blame lay at the door of the devil. Since that day we have often been inclined to ask: "Which devil do you mean?" William Law says, "Self is not only the seat and habitation, but the very life of sin; the works of the devil are