Ephesians 2:2 Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air… In the first place we have to consider THE VERY SINGULAR TITLE GIVEN TO SATAN, "the prince of the power of the air"; and, in the second place, THE AGENCY ASCRIBED TO HIM, as "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." Now, we know it to have been a prevalent opinion among the Jews that fallen angels had their residence in the air, filling the medium that obtains between the earth and the firmament. We can hardly say whence this opinion was derived, nor by what sufficient reason it can be supported. But it would seem from the text that St. Paul favoured the opinion, and it might have been almost said that he had given to it the sanction of his authority. It is, however, of but little importance that we determine where fallen spirits have their habitation; and perhaps, the title, "The prince of the power of the air," is not so much intended to define the residence of Satan, as to give information as to the nature of his dominion. We mean it is probable that the expression does not mark that the devil dwells in the air — though that also may be true — but rather what he has at his disposal, the power of the air, so that he can employ this element in his operations on mankind. And we know of no reason whatsoever why the power of the devil should be regarded as confined to what we are wont to call spiritual agency, so as never to be employed in the production of physical evil — why the souls, and not the bodies, of men should be considered as the objects of his attack. Indeed, forasmuch as the soul is the nobler part of man — the more precious and dignified — it would be strange if this alone were exposed to his attacks, and the body were altogether exempt. Indeed, if it could even be supposed that, engaged in attempting the destruction of our immortal part, the devil would care nothing for our mortal — knowing it already doomed to death, and therefore, not worthy of his malice — yet, when we remember how the mind may be acted on through the body, and how difficult, and almost impossible, it is to turn the thoughts on solemn and deep inquiries when there is great suffering of the flesh, you would conclude it probable that the body, as well as the soul, would be assaulted and harassed by Satan and his angels. And this is no philosophical supposition, but rather one which may be abundantly supported by the pages of the Bible. It is certain, from the representation of Scripture, that Satan has much to do with inflicting diseases upon the body. The woman that had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together — what said Christ to her, when the ruler of the synagogue was indignant at her being made straight on the Sabbath day? "Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this band on the Sabbath day?" The disease, you observe, is expressly referred to Satan, throughout its long continuance, "whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years." We know not, again, what the thorn in the flesh was which St. Paul suffered, but the expression makes it probable that it was some acute bodily pain or distemper; and the apostle distinctly refers to it as "a messenger from Satan sent to buffet him." You will all remember the case of Job. In the Book of Psalms, moreover, when David is describing how God brought a terrible plague on the disobedient Israelites, what does he say? He declares that "He sent evil angels amongst them." We seem quite justified, I think, in inferring, from these intimations, that Satan is greatly concerned with bringing on men corporeal maladies; and if this be once allowed, we may enter into the meaning of the title, "The prince of the power of the air." We are accustomed then, as it would seem, with thorough accuracy, to refer to certain states of the air as producing certain diseases of the body. Without being precisely able to trace the connection, or investigate the cause, we consider that the atmosphere is frequently impregnated with the seeds of sickness, so that we may be said to inhale death whilst inhaling what is essential to life. Is he not, then, to be defined as a prince, because of the many legions which obey his commands; and the prince of the power of the air, because he can assault the persons and property of men through the invisible but tremendous machinery of the atmosphere? We would remind you that whatsoever is visionary and unstable, whatsoever is mere delusion and cheat, this we are accustomed to connect with the air, and so to describe it as aerial, what we find to be unstable or deceitful. Indeed, this has been reduced to a proverb, so that, to accuse a man of building castles in the air, is to accuse him of wasting time in imagining what cannot be realized; and of allowing his fancy so to supersede his judgment, that he plans with no chance of executing, and reckons on what it is almost impossible that he can obtain. The dreams, the phantoms, the meteors, by which many are regulated, or which they pursue — these are all, if we speak metaphorically, full of the air. It is undoubtedly by and through putting a cheat on men that the devil, from the first, has effected their destruction. His endeavour has been, and too often successful, to prevail on them to substitute an imaginary good for the real, a creature for the Creator, and to make, and to mock, their own capacities for happiness, by seeking it in the finite and the perishable. And if there be any truth in this account of the process — so to speak — through which Satan carries on his attacks upon men, it is hardly possible not to allow the appropriateness of the title, "The prince of the power of the air." If it be by what we may call a series of optical deceptions that he acts on our race, distorting one thing, magnifying another, and throwing false colouring on a third, is he not proceeding so as to avail himself of those strange properties of the air, whence spring such a phenomenon as that of the Egyptian mirage — the weary traveller being cheated with the appearance of the blue waters, with a lake on whose margin the green trees are waving, but finding, as he approaches, that there is only the hot sand, and not a drop of moisture with which to cool his tongue. If, again, it be by crowding the field with forms of gorgeous thrones and splendid pageantry, which sweep before the mind, as they beckon it onward to disappointment — if it be thus that Satan retains, undisturbed, his dominion over thousands, what can he be so truly said to employ, as the power of the air — wielding those brilliant meteors, which have seemed to pass to and fro, as though ranging from cloud to cloud, causing those strange illusions which have startled the peasant, and made him think the deep glen into which he was entering tenanted by shadowy and mysterious beings. In short, if all the forms by which Satan enrolls and deceives mankind be unsubstantial — if the ambitious, the voluptuary, and the avaricious, be all and each pursuing a beckoning shadow — if the whole apparatus by which the world is lulled into slumber, or roused to self-destruction, be made up of the mere imagery of happiness, can any description be more apposite than that which represents the devil as lord of that element in which floats the mote, through which glides the spectre, and out of which can be formed nothing we can grasp, though it may be the vehicle of a thousand deceptions arranged into beautiful array? Yea, if the devil be empowered thus to employ the fleeting, and specious, and transient — is there not an extraordinary appropriateness in the title of the text — is he not most fitly characterized as "The prince of the power of the air." But it is time that we pass from considering the title which St. Paul gives to Satan, to examine the account subjoined of the agency of this spirit. Having called the devil "the prince of the power of the air," the apostle proceeds to speak of him as "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." We do not at all doubt that these words are applicable to our own days, as well as to earlier, though, at the same time, it would appear that St. Paul designed to represent Satan as just then peculiarly energetic. You observe, he says, "the spirit that (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: |
    |