My trouble, my anxiety, and my alarm increased in proportion as Mr. Merton forced upon me, by his conversations, the full conviction that I had really been dealing with devils, that Satan is really a personal existence, and that I had made a covenant with him, and had acted under his influence. My rationalism had led me to question his personal existence, and to attempt to explain the demonic phenomena without the supposition of his interposition. Denying Satan, I had denied Christ; and being now forced to recognize Satan, I was forced to confess Christ, and all the Christian mysteries. By the same process by which I had explained away the demonic phenomena, I had explained away the miracles and the supernatural character of Christianity. By that same process of reasoning by which Mr. Merton compelled me to admit the false miracles, the lying signs and wonders of Satan, I was forced to admit the true miracles, therefore the Divine commission, and therefore the Divinity of Christ, because Christ claimed to be the Son of God. Here is, I apprehend, the principal source of that difficulty which so many people find in admitting the reality of the demonic phenomena. They cannot admit Satan and his works, without admitting Christ and redemption, purchased with his own blood on the cross,—in a word, without admitting all the Christian mysteries and dogmas,—Christianity itself, and that not as an opinion, not as a speculation, but as the law of God for conscience. Most men have, at least, a dim perception of this fact; and as they do not like to admit Christianity in a Christian sense, they will not suffer themselves to believe that there is any thing Satanic in the dark phenomena of human history. For, whatever may be the professions we hear, whatever the apparent zeal displayed in the cause of a bastard Christianity, our age is an unbelieving age, and hates, I may say, with a perfect hatred, Christ and his Church. The age is blind to the perception of Christian truth, but sharp-sighted to whatever is requisite to prevent that truth from making its way to the heart. It sees very clearly what it must concede, if it accepts Mr. Merton’s doctrine; and therefore, with all its energy and astuteness, it insists on explaining the demonic phenomena on natural principles, or on denying them outright.