philosophers studied the history of the progressive mind of man. In none of the earlier sacred books could they find a devil—a being specially and solely malignant—a creature of unalloyed wickedness. Everything then in religion was figurative. Clouds were described as flocks of swans, and the lightning was classed as a fiery serpent. Those shapes were conceived of simply as powers and forces. Each was half god, and the other half the reverse—sometimes afflicting and sometimes benefiting man. The reason why there was no devil in the early books was because none was needed then. The gods considered themselves as being equal to any emergency that might arise in the way of wickedness. [Laughter.] But when the happy family of gods and goddesses was broken up, they split into two factions—the deities and the demons—both being then regarded as forces of alternate good and evil. It was held that the demons—fallen angels—were not wicked in their natures, but were impelled to do evil from an unappeasable hunger, even as the shark follows its prey to satisfy what naturalists call an insatiable appetite. The superstitious, to appease them, offered gifts, which led to the early sacrifices, such as whole burnt offerings and matters of that description. To the ancients the deities expressed all that was pleasant, the demons all that was unpleasant. The former represented sunshine, the latter sunstroke. The first mentioned represented serene skies, the demons represented the thunder and the lightning, the sirocco [strong, hot Sahara winds] and the tornado. Primitive man found himself begirt

by the obstacles of nature, and it was only when his mind became more developed, and when he armed himself to eve with such difficulties, that his mind became clearer on the subject of the supernatural. Finally, after many ages, he succeeded in reducing all those obstacles which crowded on his infancy into one grand whole of unpleasantness, namely, the devil. This was the sum and substance of man’s early idea of natural obstacles. For generations man won a precarious livelihood from the hard bosom of nature. He looked around and saw all creation about him hungry. There seemed to be a spirit of hunger abroad. The birds and fishes appeared to be so scanty, man came to the conclusion that there were invisible and voracious beings abroad, who wanted everything for themselves, and devoured everything within their reach. Thus the dragon and the ghoul—the earliest painted forms of the demons—had both immensely-developed mouths, showing the idea of intense voracity. The vampire was chiefly a Slavonic superstition, but it extended into Germany, and in some districts of Prussia a corpse is never buried without plenty of food in the coffin so that it may not arise to prey upon the living. This idea had even reached the enlightened sources of America. Not long ago a Mr. William Rose, in Rhode Island, had the body of his daughter dug up and her heart cut out, so that the might drink the blood of the living members of the family. This was considered a specific in family consumption. In fact, the homely name hobgoblin—of British origin—simply signified a ghost that gobbled.