DECEPTIVE VIEWS OF SATAN.
A GOOD move of the National Bill Posters' Association is the declaration that in the future no placards will be posted which bear pictures purporting to represent Satan. The association's reason for this step is not stated, but one very good reason for it would be that such caricatures are very deceptive. These absurd representations have very much strengthened the deception that there is no such being as Satan—no personal adversary of all that is good. Nothing could better please this arch-deceiver, or conduce more to the success of his seductive schemes. The Scriptures of truth reveal him, under the figure of the king of Tyre, as being "full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty." Furthermore the Lord says of him, "Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee, so that thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till unrighteousness was found in thee." This was before his fall; and it is also said of him, "Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering." See Eze. 28: 13-16. He lost none of his cunning by being cast out of heaven, of which action we are informed by Christ in Luke 10: 17, 18 and Rev. 12: 7-12. Satan knows well how to deceive, and he knows that to carry out his purpose of drawing away men from their allegiance to God he could not succeed by appearing to them as a hideous monster. When he deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden, he chose for a medium the most beautiful and "subtle" of all the earthly creatures, excepting man himself. That the serpent now crawls upon the ground, a loathsome, hated thing is the result of the curse that fell upon it. Gen. 3: 14, 15. Satan has the power to assume different appearances, even to personate individuals, as in the case of Samuel (1 Samuel 28). He is able to appear as "an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11: 14), that his deceptions may appear to men to be righteous. He could not do this in the horrible forms in which he is popularly made to appear. It would be far better if men, women, and children were made to fear to do the will of the adversary in disobeying the commandments of God, than to fear bodily harm from some haunting genius, or some imaginary hideous creature with horns and cloven hoofs and a dragon's tail. The worst harm that Satan can do to any one is in his most beautiful appearance as "an angel of light," disseminating his pernicious doctrines that the law of God is abolished and that men have natural immortality in themselves. G.