Note 55 — Chapter II · BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

But the personal appearance of the devil is the great stumbling-block in the present narrative. If, it is said, there be a personal devil, he cannot take a visible form; and if that were possible, he would hardly demean himself as he is represented to have done in the gospels. It is with the existence of the devil as with that of angels—even the believers in a revelation are perplexed by it, because the idea did not spring up among the recipients of revelation, but was transplanted by them, during exile, from a profane soil.55 Moreover, to those who have not quite shut out the lights of the present age, the existence of a devil is become in the highest degree doubtful.