We need only look at the outcome of the gentle and lowly Jesus through the exigencies of the church militant to see how potent are such forces. Although lay Christians of ordinary education are accustomed to rationalise their dogmas as well as they can, and dwell on the loving and patient characteristics of Jesus, the horns which were attached to the brow of him who said, 'Love your enemies' by ages of Christian warfare remain still in the Christ of Theology, and they are still depended on to overawe the 'sinner.' In an orthodox family with which I have had some acquaintance, a little boy, who had used naughty expressions of resentment towards a playmate was admonished that he should be more like Christ, 'who never did any harm to his enemies.' 'No,' answered the wrathful child, 'but he's a-going to.' As in Demonology we trace the struggles of man with external obstructions, and the phantasms in which these were reflected until they were understood or surmounted, we have now to consider the forms which report human progression on a higher plane,--that of social, moral, and religious evolution. Creations of a crude Theology, in its attempt to interpret the moral sentiment, the Devils to which we now turn our attention have multiplied as the various interests of mankind have come into relations with their conscience. Every degree of ascent of the moral nature has been marked by innumerable new shadows cast athwart the mind and the life of man. Every new heaven of ideas is followed by a new earth, but ere this conformity of things to thoughts can take place struggles must come and the old demons will be recalled for new service. As time goes on things new grow old; the fresh issues pass away, their battlefields grow cold; then the brood of superstition must flit away to the next field where carrion is found. Foul and repulsive as are these vultures of the mind--organisms of moral sewage--every one of them is a witness to the victories of mankind over the evils they shadow, and to the steady advance of a new earth which supplies them no habitat but the archæologist's page. CHAPTER II. THE SECOND BEST. Respect for the Devil--Primitive atheism--Idealisation--Birth of new gods--New gods diabolised--Compromise between new gods and old--Foreign deities degraded--Their utilisation. A lady residing in Hampshire, England, recently said to a friend of the present writer, both being mothers, 'Do you make your children bow their heads whenever they mention the Devil's name? I do,' she added solemnly,--'I think it's safer.'