The sins of devils

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"Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord." Proverbs 16:5

There are sins which men commit, that devils cannot. Unbelief, infidelity, and atheism, are not sins of devils—for they believe and tremble, and feel too much of the wrath of God to doubt His threatening or deny His existence.

The love of money is a sin from which they are exempt—for gold and silver are confined to earth, and the men who live on it. The lusts of the flesh in all their bearings—whether gluttony, drunkenness, or sensuality, belong only to those who inhabit tabernacles of clay. But pride, malignity, falsehood, enmity, murder, deceitfulness, and all those sins of which spirits are capable in these crimes—devils as much exceed men as an angelic nature exceeds in depth, power, and capacity a human one.

The eye of man sees, for the most part, only the grosser offences against morality—it takes little or no cognisance of internal sins. Thus a man may be admired as a pattern of consistency, because free from the outbreaks of fleshly and more human sins—while his heart, as open to God's heart-searching eye, may be full of pride, malignity, enmity, and murder—the sins of devils.

Such were the scribes and pharisees of old—models of correctness outwardly—but fiends of malice inwardly. So fearful were these 'holy men' of outward defilement, that they would not enter into Pilate's judgment-hall—when at the same moment their hearts were plotting the greatest crime that earth ever witnessed—the crucifixion of the Son of God!