woman in a French church who was found kneeling before a marble group and was warned by the priest that she was worshipping the figure of Beelzebub. "Never mind," she replied, "it is well enough to have friends on both sides."

Thus, even in civilized lands, we may trace a bond of sympathy with the devil-worshippers of Mesopotamia, who recognize the existence of a supreme being, but give their peculiar reverence to Satan. It is hardly too much to say that, even in the theology of the church, the devil has had a larger share of attention than the Almighty.

When we think of the influence this belief has exercised upon the human mind, of its terrible practical results in human history, we must ask, whence came this hideous conception? What has thrown the shadow of the arch-fiend across the sunlight of the ages?

The idea was the growth of centuries. Vast periods rolled between the primitive notions of mankind upon the existence of demons and the full-grown, fantastic devil of the middle ages. To this last, the Vedic descriptions of Vitria's darkness contributed the hues in which he was painted; Greek and German forest-sprites his goat-like body, cloven hoofs and tail; the Scandinavian Thor his red beard and trident; dwarfs and goblins his red cloak and nodding plumes; the theory of metamorphosis the various forms he took. From

different ages and nations were gathered the elements out of which superstition and ignorance and fear formed the satanic being who reigned supreme in the life and thought of Christendom for more than a thousand years.

I wish to trace the origin and development of the idea of a satanic personality, as it appears in Jewish and Christian thought,-borrowing, as we proceed, side-lights from the demonology of other religions.

The idea of a distinct personality of evil, such as the devil of what is called Christian theology, is not to be found in early Hebrew history. Nothing is known of a mighty opponent of Jehovah who disputes with him the supremacy of his own creation. This is a later development. The cardinal principle of Old Testament theology in its first stages that are recorded is that Jehovah was the author of evil as well as of good. He it was, by the representation, who hardened Pharoah's heart, who ordered bloody massacres, who sent forth lying spirits, who tempted Abraham, who sent an evil spirit to trouble Saul, who deceived some of the prophets and then destroyed them because they uttered false oracles, who says, "I create evil," who asks, "shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?" In the belief of the Jews when they first come distinctly

upon the stage of history, good and evil were the work of one being and that being Jehovah.

There are traces, however, of belief in minor spirits of evil, "the survival probably," says Tulloch, "in the Hebrew consciousness of fragments of an older native faith which deified the powers of evil as well as of good." One of the most interesting studies imaginable is the tracing of survivals of savagery in Jewish and Christian thought. The cross itself is written over in hideous scrawls, with savage ideas of sacrifice to brutal and malignant deities. But this is foreign to my purpose tonight. In Leviticus, the people are warned not to offer sacrifices to devils; and in Deuteronomy they are charged with having violated the command. All this is distinctly savage. Passages in other parts of the Old Testament show that the Hebrews believed more or less in evil spirits who were supposed to dwell in darkness and in waste places. It would appear from the fact that Jehovah sometimes sends forth evil spirits upon his errands, that these dark existences are under his control. But they are all kept in the background. They are apparently insignificant. No one of them stands distinctly forth as a leader and representative. There is no one who even remotely suggests the after prince of darkNot yet has the kingdom of evil come. The origin of such notions as those I have men

ness.

tioned is, doubtless, the same in the savage state of all peoples. When first the existence of the spirit after death is believed, the savage fancies that the soul of his enemy comes back and works mischief,-setting his hut on fire, destroying his cattle, devastating his fields. This is one source of demons. Then the obstacles against which he has to contend in his labors, each has a demon behind it, making toil a burden and a curse. His very hunger and thirst are caused by adverse spirits. Heat and cold, storm, lightning, flood, hail, are inflictions of unseen malign powers. The very animals that devour or annoy are demons in disguise. The devil-worshippers of Travancore declare that the evil power approaches them in the form of a dog,-as Mephistopheles approached Faust. The lion, the tiger, the bear, the serpent are all in the calendar of demons. Every one is familiar with the part played by the cat in demon-lore. This was the favorite form assumed by the devil in all his transactions with witches. (The connection between the cat and the infernal world will not seem arbitrary or impossible to those who have been roused in the "dead waste and middle of the night," by a serenade from the garden fence.) It was a belief of Christian ages that those who died without priestly forgiveness, and unbaptized infants, revisited their former homes in the shape of rats. Then,

too, whatever hindered man's moral progress, his temptations, his evil desires, his base thoughts,— all these proceeded from spirits of darkness.

There is still another factor in demonology, dreams. These are intimately associated with the lower forms of religion. The dream is to the savage a revelation from the world of spirits. The events that flit through his brain have the same reality as do those of his waking hours. He believes that he quits the body and walks among the beings of another world. When his dreams are evil and disturbed, he is in a hostile region carried thither by spirits of harm, against his will. In a volume of the United States exploring expedition, this passage occurs: "Sometimes when the Australians are asleep, Koin makes his appear ance, siezes one of them and carries him off. The person siezed in vain endeavors to cry out, being almost strangled. At daylight, however, he disappears, and the man finds himself conveyed to his own fireside in safety. From this it would appear that the demon is here a sort of personification of nightmare-a visitation to which the natives from their habits of gorging themselves to the utmost when they obtain a supply of food, must be very subject."

These are the sources of that belief in evil spirits which had been so widespread. I said a moment ago, that in the earlier Hebrew history