An old woman sitting by the fire at night--a storm raging without--hears the mournful sough of the wind. To her it becomes a voice. Her imagination is touched, and the voice seems to utter words. Out of these words she constructs a message or a warning from the unseen world. If the words are good, she has heard an angel; if they are threatening and malicious, she has heard a devil. She tells this to her children and they believe. They say that mother's religion is good enough for them. A girl suffering from hysteria falls into a trance--has visions of the infernal world. The priest sprinkles holy water on her pallid face, saying: "She hath a devil." A man utters a terrible cry; falls to the ground; foam and blood issue from his mouth; his limbs are convulsed. The spectators say: "This is the Devil's work." Through all the ages people have mistaken dreams and visions of fear for realities. To them the insane were inspired; epileptics were possessed by devils; apoplexy was the work of an unclean spirit. For many centuries people believed that they had actually seen the malicious phantoms of the night, and so thorough was this belief--so vivid--that they made pictures of them. They knew how they looked. They drew and chiseled their hoofs, their horns--all their malicious deformities. Now, I admit that all these monsters were naturally produced. The people believed that hell was their native land; that the Devil was a king, and that lie and his imps waged war against the children of men. Curiously enough some of these devils were made out of degraded gods, and, naturally enough, many devils were made out of the gods of other nations. So that frequently the gods of one people were the devils of another. In nature there are opposing forces. Some of the forces work for what man calls good; some for what he calls evil. Back of these forces our ancestors put will, intelligence and design. They could not believe that the good and evil came from the same being. So back of the good they put God; back of the evil, the Devil. II. THE ATLAS OF CHRISTIANITY IS THE DEVIL. The religion known as "Christianity" was invented by God himself to repair in part the wreck and ruin that had resulted from the Devil's work. Take the Devil from the scheme of salvation--from the atonement--from the dogma of eternal pain--and the foundation is gone. The Devil is the keystone of the arch. He inflicted the wounds that Christ came to heal. He corrupted the human race. The question now is: Does the Old Testament teach the existence of the Devil? If the Old Testament teaches anything, it does teach the existence of the Devil, of Satan, of the Serpent, of the enemy of God and man, the deceiver of men and women.