resolved
to drown them all; preserving, however, eight live specimens to repeople
the world. How the Devil must have laughed again! He knew that Noah
and his family possessed the seeds of original sin, which they would
assuredly transmit to their children, and thus prolong the corruption
through all time. Short-sighted as ever, Jehovah refrained from
completing the devastation, after which he might have started afresh. So
sure was the Devil's grip on God's creation that, a few centuries after
the Flood, there were not found ten righteous men in the whole city of
Sodom, and no doubt other cities were almost as bad.

According to the Bible, the Devil's long spell of rest was broken in
the reign of King David, the man after God's own heart, but a very great
scoundrel nevertheless. The Second Book of Samuel (xxiv., 1) tells us
that "Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he
moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." Now the
First Book of Chronicles (xxi, 1) in relating the same incident says,
"And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel"
Who shall reconcile this discrepancy? Was it God, was it Satan, or was
it both? Imagine David with the celestial and infernal powers whispering
the same counsel into either ear! A Scotch minister once told us that
this difficulty was only apparent. The Devil, said he, exercises only
a delegated power, and acts only by the express or tacit permission of
God; so that it matters not which is said to have provoked David. Yes,
but what of the consequences? Because the king, despite all protests,
took a census of his people, the Lord sent a destroying angel, who slew
by pestilence seventy thousand of them. Where, in the whole history of
religion, shall we find a viler sample of divine injustice?

Besides, if the Devil acts in all cases only by God's permission, the
latter is responsible for all the former's wrongdoing. The principal,
and not the agent, must bear the guilt. And this suggests a curious
problem. Readers of "Robinson Crusoe" will remember that when Man Friday
was undergoing a course of theological instruction, he puzzled
his master by asking why God did not convert the Devil. To his
unsophisticated mind it was plain that the conversion of the Devil would
annihilate sin. Robinson Crusoe changed the subject to avoid looking
foolish, but Man Friday's question remains in full force. Why does not
God convert the Devil? T