The natives of Brazil believe in a bad genius: they call him Aguyan; and they have conjurors who can, they say, divert his wrath. The Indians of Florida and of Louisiana adored the sun, the moon, and the stars. They also believed in an evil spirit named Toïa. The Canadians, and the savage tribes of the Bay of Hudson, revered the sun, the moon, the stars, and the thunder; but they more particularly prayed to the evil spirits. The Esquimaux believe in a god supremely good, whom they call Ukouma, and in another, Ouikan, who is the author of all evils; who causes the tempests, and who capsizes the boats. The savages of the strait of Davis believe in beneficent and malignant spirits. This distinction of two Principles, of a god, and of geniuses or spirits, authors of good and light; and of a god and geniuses, authors of evil and darkness, is immemorial. This opinion has been so universally adopted for the only reason, that those who observed the opposite phenomena of nature could not account for them, and could not reconcile them with the existence of a single cause. As there are good and bad men, they believed that there were good and bad gods, the ones dispensers of good, and the others authors of evil. Such was the universal belief when Jesus Christ came to the world. The Jews themselves, since the captivity of Babylon, generally believed in those two Principles. They went so far as to immolate their own children on the altars of evil deities, in order to appease them. Jesus preached his Gospel, died, and left on earth his apostles with the trust of continuing, among men, his saving mission. As in the writings of the Evangelists the word demon, or devil, was used figuratively, meaning lust, wrong desire, etc., some of the first Christians understood the true sense of these figurative words, and others did not. In the third century the Church of Rome, which had been tending to supremacy over other churches, and which, from policy, to gain more adepts, was compromising with Paganism, understood the word demon, or devil, literally, and preserved the heathen doctrine, which, as she grew, became widely spread, and afterwards an article of faith.