Of all the errors into which the world has fallen, none is more fatally mischievous than the habit of overlooking the personality, the energy, the power, the watchfulness, the deep cunning of the devil. By a conventional system, no doubt of his own suggesting, he is never to be named but in the act of worshipping God, or that of spiritual instruction. Any other robber and murderer, who was known to be on the watch to attack our houses, would be the subject of free discourse: his habits, his haunts, his usual plans, his successful and his baffled assaults in former cases, would be talked over, and thus a salutary fear would be kept alive, influencing us to bolt and bar, and watch and ward with unfailing vigilance, to avert a surprise. But Satan seems to be a privileged person: we learn, in the nursery, to fancy him a hideous caricature of human nature, with horns, hoof, and a tail, inspiring disgust, and a childish fear that wears off as we advance into youth, leaving an impression rather ludicrous than alarming of the ugly phantom that, nevertheless, continues identified with him of whom we read in the Bible. We then perhaps take up Milton, engrafting his poetical conception upon the original nursery stock, and make a devil half monster, half archangel, invested with the ugliness of the first and the sublimity of the second, but still far removed from the scripture character of that roaring lion who "goeth about seeking whom he may devour." We do not realize his existence, his presence, his devices; and so we often do his work from sheer ignorance or inexcusable thoughtlessness about it.