The belief in a good and evil influence has existed from the earliest ages, in every nation having a religion. The Egyptians had their _Typho_, the Assyrians their _Ti-a-mat_ (the Serpent), the Hebrews their _Beelzebub_, or _Prince of Flies_,[1] and the Scandinavians their _Loki_. And many religions teach that the evil influence has a stronger hold upon mankind than the good influence--so great, indeed, as to nullify it in a large degree. Christianity especially teaches this: ‘Enter ye by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it.’ This doctrine of the great power of the Devil, or evil influence over man, is preached from every pulpit, under every form of Christianity, throughout the world; and although at the present time it is only confined to the greater _moral_ power of the Devil over man, at an earlier period it was an article of belief that he was able to exercise a greater _physical_ power. This was coincident with a belief in his personality; and it is only in modern times that that personality takes an alluring form. In the olden days the Devil was always depicted as ugly and repulsive as the artist could represent him, and yet he could have learned a great deal from the modern Chinese and Japanese. The ‘great God Pan,’ although he was dead, was resuscitated in order to furnish a type for ‘the Prince of Darkness’; and, accordingly, he was portrayed with horns, tail and cloven feet, making him an animal, according to a _mot_ attributed to Cuvier, ‘graminivorous, and decidedly ruminant’; while, to complete his classical _ensemble_, he was invested with the forked sceptre of Pluto, only supplemented with another tine. [Illustration] The British artist thus depicted him, but occasionally he drew him as a ‘fearful wild fowl’ of a totally different type--yet always as hideous as his imagination could conceive, or his pencil execute. [Illustration] [Illustration] That the Devil could show himself to man, in a tangible form, was, for many centuries, an article of firm belief, but, when it came to be argued out logically, it was difficult of proof. The only evidence that could be adduced which could carry conviction was from the Bible, which, of course, was taken as the _ipsissima verba_ of God, and, on that, the old writers based all their proof. One of the most lucid of them, Gyfford or Gifford, writing in the sixteenth century, evidently feels this difficulty. Trying to prove that ‘Diuels can appeare in a bodily shape, and use speeche and conference with men,’ he says:[2]