They possessed no knowledge of fire. And then you must not only strip their bodies of all the surroundings of comfort: you must also strip their minds of knowledge, and picture them in the midst of a world of which they knew almost nothing. Hunger gnawed at their vitals, the cold chilled and destroyed them, the thunder scared, and the lightning smote them; the earthquake, the storm, and the darkness all seemed bent on their destruction. Invisible diseases attacked them, and mysterious death snatched away one after another. They knew nothing of natural laws, or of how a generally beneficent force might, because of their ignorance or disobedience, work them incidental injury. So they, using the best powers of reason they possessed, argued that all these things were their enemies. And as they had no idea of power apart from that possessed by persons like themselves, they attributed personality and individual life to all the forces about them. Winter and night and storm and lightning and disease, to their thought, became superhuman beings, or gods. And since the results of their action were evil, so far as they could see, they concluded they must be malicious gods, inclined not to help, but to hurt them. The sun and the light and the blue sky were kindly and good gods. For not knowing, as we know to-day, that all these apparently evil forces were the result of the sun, they gave him credit only for the pleasant effects of light and warmth which they could see him produce. But the good gods of light and comfort were afar off in the sky; while the bad gods of cold and darkness and hunger and

death were right about them. Thus the first religion was one almost exclusively of fear. They worshipped these gods, not because they loved them, but in the hope that, by gifts and prayers and honors, they might gain their favor, or induce them to be less cruel. Here, then, is the germ-idea of the devil. He was born of the logic that argued that suffering and death must be the work of a wicked being. It was not one devil, or bad god, but a thousand; for every thing that seemed to possess independent power was personified.

In the Hindoo religion, though almost every thing was deified, so that there were millions of gods, they yet took one step ahead of the philosophic thought of primitive man. They generalized the forces of the universe under three grand gods, - Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer. The latter, who may be called the Hindoo devil, was figured with a rope for strangling evil-doers, a necklace of skulls, and earrings of serpents. All evils were of his doing. And, as very significant of the fact that popular worship concerns itself much more about escaping evil than it does in getting good, Siva is the most worshipped of all the Hindoo gods. The idea seems to be to buy escape from his evil power.

Zoroaster, the religious teacher of Persia, took one step more in advance. His religion was based in a shadowy kind of monotheism; but practically the universe was divided between two gods, a bad and a good one, who were supposed to be in everlasting antagonism. Ahura-Mazda was the god of light and good, while

Ahriman was the god of darkness and evil. They were engaged in a world-wide conflict very much as, during the middle ages, Christ and the devil were supposed to be. But, unlike the Christian teaching, it was believed that sometime Ahura-Mazda would triumph even to the utter destruction of all evil, and the redemption of Ahriman himself.

It is worth your while to notice, in passing, how the gods of an old religion become the devils in a new. When a new and better god got the supremacy, it was not supposed that the other gods were dead: they were simply conquered and kept in subjection. In this condition they kept up a chronic rebellion, and did all they could to injure their conqueror and his kingdom. Thus the devils of Zoroaster were the gods of the older Hindoo religion. This is indicated in the very word "devil.” Deva, from which the word "devil" is derived, once meant the good gods. The same use remains to-day; for divine" is only the old word deva in its modern dress. So "devil" and "divine are two words coming from the same root. The same is true of the Latin deus and our English "deity." In like manner the old Pagan gods became the devils of early and mediæval Christianity; except when some infallible pope put one of them into the calendar by mistake, and made him a saint.

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In the classic religions of Greece and Rome, there was no devil; for the gods were bad enough to get along without one. The deities of Olympus were simply human, except as to power and life; and they helped or hurt

humanity, as all tyrants do, according to freak or favoritism, or as moved by gifts or honors.

We must now turn to the Old and New Testaments, and trace the genesis of the devil here. There is no hint, for ages after, that the serpent in Eden was the devil, or that he had any thing to do with him. Jehovah, at first, as being the one God, the Creator of all things, is regarded as the author of both good and evil, dark and light. In Isaiah he is represented as boldly assuming the whole responsibility to himself: "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I, Jehovah, do all these things." (Isa. xlv. 7.) This, of course, could not be true if evil originated with the devil. In other places, the agency of the devil appears springing up, and dividing the evil work of the world with Jehovah. When David committed the supposed crime of taking a census of his people, it is said in one place that Jehovah tempted him to do it, and in another place that Satan did it. The belief here is divided, and begins to waver. The first time that Satan appears clearly outlined is in the book of Job. But he is not at all the Satan of theology, outcast from heaven, the king of hell, and the ravager of the earth. He is a member of the heavenly court, a sort of prosecuting attorney for Jehovah, who goes forth only on the divine permission, and to execute the divine will. But after the Jewish captivity, and the national contact with Persian life and thought, the Zoroastrian Ahriman comes bodily into Jewish theology, and the devil is full

born.

To account for the existence of evil at the dawn of creation, the devil must be made older than the world; and hence arose the legend of a rebellion in heaven, and the casting-out of Satan and his followers, a third part of all the angels. To avenge himself for his celestial defeat, he turns his malice against the new creation and the new being, man, who was to take the place in heaven from which he had been cast out. Then arose the idea that the old serpent was only Satan in disguise; and that, through the tempting and fall of man, the devil “brought death into the world, and all our woe." The devil was thus supposed to have become the conqueror, lord, and rightful owner of the world. This was his kingdom. So ingrained did this thought become that even in the Church Prayer-Book to-day the organized Church is God's kingdom, and the world is Satan's; and becoming a Christian is "renouncing" loyalty to "the world, the flesh, and the devil," and taking Christ as king. So perfectly was it believed that Satan had come into ownership of earth and man, that the early doctrine of the work of Christ was shaped by it. Jesus made a bargain with Satan, by which he surrendered himself into his hands as a ransom for the deliverance of humanity; and as Christ had been his rival in heaven, he was willing to accept the purchase. But Christ, being divine, was able to outwit the devil, cheat him out of possession of himself, and save humanity into the bargain. Such were the early Christian ideas of God and Jesus and Satan. You can judge how worthy they are of our respect.