In his interesting volume on Elizabethan demonology Mr. Spalding urges that “the empire of the supernatural must obviously be most extended where civilization is the least advanced,” and he gives three reasons for the belief in devils—1. “The apparent incapacity of the majority of mankind to accept a purely monotheistic creed.” 2. “The division of spirits into hostile camps, good and evil.” 3. “The tendency of all theological systems to absorb into themselves the deities extraneous to themselves, not as gods, but as inferior or even evil spirits.” Even if I were a theist I should refuse to see in God a being omniscient and omnipotent, who puts us into this world without our volition, leaves us to struggle through it unequally pitted against an almost omnipotent and super-subtle Devil; and who, if we fail, finally drops us out of this world into Hell-fire, where a legion of inferior devils finds constant and never-ending employment in inventing fresh tortures for us; our crime being, that we have not succeeded where success was rendered impossible. No high thinkings are developed by the doctrine of Devils and damnation. If a potent faith, it degrades to imbecility alike the teacher and the taught, by its abhorrent mercilessness; and if mere form instead of a faith, then is the Devil doctrine a misleading sham. WERE ADAM AND EVE OUR FIRST PARENTS? THIS question, Were Adam and Eve our first parents? is indeed one of vital importance. A negative answer is a denial of the whole Christian scheme. The Christian theory is that Adam, the common father of the whole human race, sinned, and by his sin dragged down all his posterity to a state from which redemption was needed, and that Jesus is, and was, the Redeemer, by whom all mankind are, and were, saved from the consequences of the fall of Adam. If Adam therefore be not the first man, if it is not to Adam the various races of mankind are indebted for their origin, then the whole hypothesis of fall and redemption fails.