“Alas! you seem not to have reflected that the devil, when he would seduce, can disguise himself as an angel of light. Human nature is terribly corrupt, and yet the great mass of mankind ordinarily are incapable of choosing evil, for the reason that it is evil. Evil must be presented to them in the guise of good, or they will not choose it The devil knows this, and knows the weak side of every one, and he adapts his temptations accordingly. The weak side of our age is a morbid sentimentality, a sickly philanthropy, and the devil tempts us now by appealing to our dominant weakness. He comes to us as a philanthropist, and his mouth full of fine sentiments, and he proposes only what we are already prepared to approve. Were he to come as the devil _in propria persona_, and tell us precisely who and what he is, there are very few who would not say, ‘Get behind me, Satan.’ Nothing better serves his purpose than to have us deny his existence; to ascribe his influence to imagination, hallucination, to natural causes or influences, or in fine, to good spirits, for then he throws us off our guard, and can operate without being easily detected. Never was an age more under his influence than our own, and yet they who pass for its lights and chiefs have reached that last infirmity of unbelief, the denial of the existence of the devil. Possessed persons are insane, epileptic, or lunatic persons, and the wonderful phenomena they exhibit are produced by an electric, magnetic, or odic fluid, and are to be explained on natural principles, and such as cannot be so explained, are boldly denied, however well attested, or ascribed to jugglery, knavery, or collusion. The marvellous answers of the ancient oracles are ascribed to knavery, as if the whole world had lost their senses, and could not detect a cheat practised before their very eyes, and so bunglingly, that we who live two thousand or three thousand years after, ignorant of all the circumstances of the case, can detect it, and explain how it was done, without the slightest difficulty. The devil laughs at this. He would have it so. Your natural explanations will hereafter create a suspicion that you are little better than natural fools. But go your way. I see by your incredulous smile that the devil has you fast in his grip. I have done my duty. My garments are clean of your blood; and hereafter, when you are feeling the gnawings of that worm which never dies, and the burning of that fire which is never quenched, say not, that no one had forewarned you.”