3F 1543 H9 Copy 1 ALL ABOUT DEVILS; ',s ; -OR- AnInqU iry as to Whether Mo = ^ r -- AND OTHER GREAT REFORMS COME FROM SATANIC MAJESTY AND HIS SUBORDI- NATES IN THE KINGDOM OF Darkness. B Y WOSES HULU B , T HE QUESTION SETTLED," "THE CONTRAST BE- AUTHOR OE THE QUM I _ SpiiU TUAI.ISM." "WHICH, TWEE , E-NGEL^ALttM AN . lTHATTB K RI B« QDES - SPXRITUALISM OR CHR! TIAN> ^ _ ^^ ^ BOS," "THE GENERAL JUDGMENT, „ . ,,„„ -the Irrepressible Conflict, Your Life, ihe -_ wCHRI9T WHOANDWHATIS DECAY OF INSTITUTIONS," DIE CHRIST, „„.„ ERAL .„„■« WORKS ON SPIRITUALISM AND GENERAL it?" And other wokk^ r:zr. — war db heaven — &beka removed to EARTH. — THE DEVIL CAPTURES GOD'S MIRACLE TOOLS AND SETS UP BUS1NESS. I now ask. are these the spirits of devils working miracle- Should you take the classical ide:. — :be spirits of the dead, and drop the idea of miracles and simply say they were the spir- :ead performing marvelous feats. I would not object; for that is just what they are. That Spiritualists preach; that their opponents deny. The opponents of Spiritualism treat the word devils, here as though these devils were the legitimate de- scendants of L and, in handling the subject I shall be compelled to handle it with reference to that idea of the re: With thai question we will Be form the acquaintance of his Satanic Majesty and a few of his descendants; let us find out who made 18 ORIGIN OF DEVILS. 19 him, and when, and for what purpose — in short, let us "give the devil his due." To accomplish this, we may go directly or indi- rectly back to some of the mythologies; we may strain our mythology through Christianity, or we may hand it out pure and unadulterated from con- tamination by passing under the hands of the John Milton's and the Ellen G. White's of Christianity. A MINISTER ON THE DEVIL. Rev. J. H. Waggoner, once one of the brightest lights in the personal devil firmament, presented the matter, in his "Nature and Tendency of Mod- ern Spiritualism," as follows: "As before said, we do not believe that God evei created a devil or a wicked man. But men exist, with the power and will to do evil. k God made man up- right,' but he became wicked by his own will and ac- tions; and so of the devil. We hold that the only rea- sonable view is that of the Scriptures; that God creates intelligences, giving them power and freedom to act, without which they could form no character at all; and holds them accountable for the exercise of that power in the actions performed, and vindicates justice by bringing them to judgment. There are expressions in Ezek. xxviii, which can refer to no other being than the devil, by which we learn that he was created a 'cov- ering cherub,' perfect and beautiful. But he fell be- cause of pride. When Moses made the sanctuary, he was directed to make cherubim and place them on the mercy-seat over the ark, their wings overshadowing the mercy-seat. Heb. ix:5. The Lord promised to meet with them 'between the two cherubim.' Ex. xxv:22. As all this was a shadow and example of heavenly things, a vi-ible representation of the sanctuary and true tabernacle in Heaven, which the Lord pitched, and 20 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. not man, (Heb. viii:l-5; see also Ezek., chapters i-x,) we here learn the exalted position occupied, and conse- quently the great power possessed, by a covering cher- ub. In Ezek. xxviii, the prince of Tyrus is declared to be a man ; the king of Tyrus was a covering cherub. This may well be applied to Satan, who is 'the prince of this world,' and who makes use of wicked earthly powers to accomplish his purposes; he was afterward represented by the Roman pow^ r, (Rev. xii), as it was then his special instrument of wickedness. He who is wise and strong to do good, will, of course, be wise and strong to do evil if he turns his powers in that di- rection. And as the cherubim in Heaven possess far more power than men, so if they fall, their power will be greater to do evil, in the same proportion. On this point we think it sufficient to add that the Scriptures affirm that angels have fallen; that there was more than human power exerted through the magicians of Egypt; and Satan is said to work miracles, 'with power, and signs, and lying wonders'." Here man was made "upright" and the devil a "covering cherub;" but man has fallen, fallen, down, down, down, down, lower and still lower, until he has reached his present state of degrada- tion, with prospects — nay, with prophecies that his tendency is still downward; and the devil, once a "covering cherub," — one of the brightest, tallest, grandest angels God made, has fallen as much be- low man as he was created above man; and this devil still retains his power to work miracles, and by this power to hasten man down still farther, while the Gods and Christs and angels, yes, and even the ministers and prophets of the church have given up the miracle business altogether, and de- livered all the tools into the hands of the hosts of ORIGIN OF DEVILS. 21 darkness and of evil ! Surely this is a dark pict- ure, for God, Christ and his church! and there is no road open for poor, fallen and still descending humanity, but the "wide gate," and the "broad way, that leads to destruction." What a pity that God could not for a short time have the devil's power, or the devil could not have God's goodness, what a different world this would have been! STORY OF THE ORIGIN OF DEVILS. To comprehend the whole in one short story, all, or about all, who believe in a devil believe that he was made the grandest and "most noble Roman of them all." He was the finest specimen of — what shall I say — humanity or divinity? among all of God's offspring. God thought so much of him that he took him into his particular confidence — made him Secretary of State, as it were. In this God made no mistake, for everything went off well under Lucifer's administration. When the books were wanted for examination they were always on hand, ready to be examined; and they were always posted and correct. There were then no defalca- tions in heaven — no flights to Canada — there was no boodle — there were no heavenly boodlers — no Cronin murder cases — no jury bribing. In fact, there was nothing to mar, nothing to make afraid ! But . for some reason a meeting was called of the heavenly cabinet and very important business trans- 22 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. acted, probably nothing less than the creation of the planet on which we exist, which, it must be con- ceded, was important to us, and Satan, by some oversight, was not called to that meeting. Whether he was slighted on purpose, or whether it was an accident is not quite clear. But, be that as it may, Satan took umbrage; he felt that it was hardly a fair deal to make him responsible for all the busi- ness transacted in heaven and then to go on and transact the most important business without con- sulting him. He probably hinted his disaffection to a few of his most intimate friends, some of whom were not very good at keeping a secret. The result was, the news of a little misunder- standing between Satan and God, got into the hands of the reporters and became so public that God sent to the devil, and told him that if he chose to tender his portfolio, his resignation would be ac- cepted. But the devil determined not to resign under a cloud; he would wait until matters settled somewhat. God then peremptorily demanded his resignation, but Satan, feeling that "possession was nine points inlaw," obstinately refused; whereupon God commissioned Michael to go and take posses- sion of the devil's books and office, at no matter what cost. But the devil had one-third of heaven armed and equipped for battle. John, in the Apoc- alypse, parodied heathen mythology as follows. ORIGIN OF DEVILS. 23 WAR IX HEAVEN. "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his an- gels fonght against the dragon; and the dragon fonght and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great drag- on was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. * * * Therefore rejoice ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea; for the devil is come down unto you having great wrath because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." Rev. xii:7-12. Happy had it been for the inhabitants of earth if the Gods and devils had either settled their quarrel or continued their "war in heaven;" but it seems that when the devils were cast out they were not conquered — the battle did not end. The only change was the removal of the arena from heaven to earth. Here the battle has been going on ever since. This seems to me hardly fair. If the Gods and devils must light; if they can't'be induced to re- form, let them keep their fight on the original bat- tle-ground. Somehow they got tired of that and moved the arena from heaven to earth; and now, whatever the Gods and devils may think about it, the ministers persist in urging us into the battle- field. They call for us to volunteer and enlist in the Lord's army, and tell us, if we do not we will surely be drafted into the devil's army — right, we must. 24 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. As 1 know but little about this God and devil quarrel, and as I am not alighting man, I prefer to remain neutral and let those who know more about the matter light it out. If I must fight, I propose to go into something of an investigation of the matter and cast my lot with the army which is in the right. In this battle God has all the time had one ad- vantage of the devil; it was not an honest advan- tage except on the ground that in war, as in love, everything is honorable. That is, whenever the devil got God into a tight place God would work himself out through a miracle. But now it seems that the devil has taken this last string out of the hands of the Omnipotent One. God has gone out of the miracle business entirely and the devil has picked up the tools where God laid them down and is now using them in the manufacture of spiritual- istic miracles, for "they are the spirits of devils ,, working miracles. CHAPTER IV. A FEW MYTHOLOGICAL DEVILS AND HELLS. A MINISTEE ON FALLEN ANGELS. — WHAT AND WHEKE IS HELL ? — IS THE BIBLE THE WORX OF DEVILS? — TAETAEUS, WHERE IS IT? — A THREE-STORY WORLD. — BRUNO UPSETS HEAVEN AND HELL. — GEOGRAPHY OF THE LAND OF THE NILE. HOW PHENOMENA PRODUCED THE RELIGION OF EGYPT. — ORIGIN OF THE CROSS. — GODS CARRYING THE SUN. — HOW A NAUGHTY GOD GOT INTO TARTARUS. — TY- PHON AND TYPHOID FEVER. In one of my debates with Rev. Miles Grant, of Boston, he used, as nearly as I can remember, the following language: "I will save my friend the trouble of presenting fur- ther proof that the spiritual phenomena occur, by ad- mitting them all. That they occur there can be no doubt. Indeed, we not only have indisputable testimo- ny that they do occur, but we have testimony of the Bible that they shall occur. But they are not produced by the spirits of the dead. 'The dead know not any- thing.' They are 'spirits of devils working miracles' — fallen angels which kept not their first estate — wicked spirits in high places. Peter says, l God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell.' These fallen angels, cast down to hell are the ones who pro- duce the phenomena of Spiritualism." When I met him with the thought that that would involve the idea of a hell of fire and brim- 25 26 ALL ABOUT DEVILS- stone, a tiling which he denied, his reply was, in substance, as follows: "No, there are three words in the Greek Testament rendered ht 11; one is Hades, which signifies the place or the state of the dead. Another is Gehenna, which was a valley just south of Jerusalem, where a fire was kept continually burning to cremate the filth of the city; and the other was Tartarus or Tartarosus, which sig- nifies earth's lower atmosphere, or the atmosphere im- mediately surrounding the earth. This is the word oc- curring in 2 Peter ii:14, where the angels are cast down to hell, and this is the only place where the word occur is in the Bible. Paul refers to the same thing in Eph. vi:12, where he speaks of 'spiritual wickedness in high places,' or wicked spirits in the atmosphere." » Those who have read Mr. Grant's writings, or heard him preach, will testify that I have not mis- represented him. Now for the reply, If this gentleman, and those of his way of think- ing, are correct, only fallen angels get into hell; but as bell means earth's atmosphere, only fallen angels get into earth's atmosphere! Jesus says: "I could pray to my father and he would send me more than twelve legions of angels," but as angels could not have approached Jesus without getting into hell, that is, into earth's atmosphere, the angels sent by his father could have been none other than fallen angels. When Jesus prayed there appeared an an- gel unto him, strengthening him. But as this an- gel came en rapport with earth's atmosphere, in or- der to reach Jesus, he must have been a devil! Stephen says: "The law was given by the dis- A FEW MYTHOLOGICAL DEVILS AND HELLS. 27 position of angels." But as none but fallen angels get into eartli's atmosphere, the angels who gave the law must have been devils. Thus.the Bible, as well as Spiritualism, is proved to be of demoniacal origin. But the theory is wrong; hell — tartarus — does not signify earth's atmosphere, but a lake of sup- posed fire and brimstone. To find its origin we will be compelled to look up SOME OF TILE PRE-HISTORIC MTTHOLOOIES. All these things can be traced back to Egypt, probably no further. There our gods and devils, and, in fact, all our religious beliefs were born. Religions, gods, devils and hells were born of certain phenomena in nature. The old religions do not fit our knowledge to-day. The thing called religion was fitted to a flat world — an earth that had corners and ends. The fact is, before the dis- coveries of science, when we had no other guide than religion, the universe w T as a THREE- STORY AFFAIR. We commenced our existence here, on the second story; if we did pretty well, when we got through \vith this story God opened the windows of heaven and took us up through the window to his apart- ment in the thi rd story. If we were naughty here, the devil, who was only another god, opened the trap- 28 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. door and took us into the sub-cellar to his apart- ments. That his apartments were filled with lire could be proved by the volcanoes belching out fire and smoke. Any minister, in former times, could point to God and heaven; all he had to do was to point up. He was equally as successful in pointing to the devil and hell ; all he had to do was to point downward. Since Giordano Bruno demonstrated the rotundi- ty and the revolution of the earth, the church can- not be quite so certain about the exact location of either place. A minister preaching in America and a missionary preaching in China at the same time, in pointing to heaven would point in opposite directions; and in pointing to hell would point at each other. The result is they are all at sea about the location of either of these places, and had they "the wings of a dove" so that they could u fly away and be at rest,' 1 they would be as likely to light in Pluto's dominions as in the other place. The wisest men now do not know which way "up" and "down" are. No wonder the church burned Bruno at the stake. He knocked the bottom out of an orthodox hell, and, at the same time, knocked the particular heaven of these good people into pi. THEOLOGY AND MYTHOLOGY. As chemistry grew out of alchemy, and astron- A FEW MYTHOLOGICAL DEVILS AND HELLS. 29 omy grew out of astrology, so theology grew out of mythology. Our theological ideas can all be traced back to the early mythologies in the valley of the Nile. A little knowledge of geography would do no harm ; in fact, it might assist in understanding this subject. Egypt is a long strip of country, some places very narrow and some places wider, lying on either side of the river Nile, extending from Alex- andria on the Mediterranean, at the mouth of the Nile, up to Ipsamboul, near one thousand miles south of Alexandria. The Nile beween these two places is without a tributary. Not a river, creek or rivulet enters it for over one thousand miles. Formerly, it very seldom, or perhaps never, rained in Egypt. Since the Suez Canal has been completed from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean, occasional showers pass up and down the canal. It can be proven that the Nile, for not less than seventy-five thousand years, has annually overflowed the banks and inundated nearly or quite all of Egypt. The river has made its record depositing its layer of debris topping it off with the red mud of Nubia, for over one hundred thousand years. Now go back as far as mythology will carry us and you will learn that the Nile came up every year, and that without rain or any other visible 32 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. from east to west, when tie got to the western end of his journey he unloaded it into tartarus, hell, and it floated back through the stream to the place where it started from. In the night Phaeton had driven back, and the next morning he again loaded up the red-hot sun and started on another trip; this he continued to do until he was discharged and an- other god by the name of Typhon or Typho, was given the job. This Typhon, was a young, wild, erratic god, utterly incapable of taking old trusted Phaeton's place; but. like many others, he was al ways wanting to perform the impossible; so he teased his father to let him drive the horses which pulled the sun. One day he did some wonderful act, which caused his father to swear by the god Osiris, who sleeps in Phile, that he would grant Typhon any request he might ask. Typhon, upon hearing this, renewed his request to drive Phaeton's horses. The sun was accordingly loaded into the carriage and Typhon was mounted on the seat and the lines put in- to his hands; he had not driven far when the horses made the discovery that they did not have their old driver, whereupon they made a dash for earth, and brought the sun so near that they came near burn- ing it up. Probably this dreadful calamity would have happeued, had not Jupiter at this time been in Vulcan's shop forging thunderbolts. He saw A FEW MYTHOLOGICAL DEVILS AND HELLS. 33 what was going on and picked np a handful of these bolts and hurled them through Typhon, killing him. He then took the lines and attended to the moving of the sun himself until the rotundity of the earth and its gravitation were discovered. When Typhon was killed he was put into tartarus, that portion of it which was located in Lake A ver- mis, I think. The exact location of Lake A vermis, and Surbonus and other mythological places, are like Sodom and Gomorrah, hard to determine. But they were somewhere in what was once the valley of the Nile. These lakes had neither outlet nor inlet. The water came in by the overflow of the Nile and passed out by evaporation. Decaying vegetation in the region of these lakes gave the smell of brimstone, and the rolling of the waves in the light of the moon caused the lake to look like a huge lake of fire. Huge phosphoric in- sects flying over the lakes looked like balls of fire, or sparks from the lake. A slow fever, generated by the poisonous miasma arising from the lake, was supposed to be an inflic- tion from the god Typhon, confined in the bottom of that lake; hence it is to this day called typhus or typhoid fever. This god grew and increased in strength so that it was dangerous to keep him where he was, al- though he was supposed to be thoroughly secured, 8 34 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. so they set a couple of mountains down on him to hold him down; and for thousands of years when these cods — for there were manv of them confined there for various reasons — grew restive in their chains and tried to break out of their prison, Vesu- vius and Etna belched out tire and smoke. Here, readers, is as far as I have been able to trace the origin of your devils and hells — here tartarus was born. And when Peter referred to tartarus he referred to this story of heathen mythology. Now, having pursued this matter as far as space will permit, I will close this chapter, and open one on the works of devils. CHAPTER V. THE DEVIL AS A REFORMER. THE CHURCH AND THE DEVIL. — WHERE THE FACTS USED CAN BE FOUND. — DEVILS IN JOHN AND JESUS. — DEVILS IN RE- FORMERS. — GILES COREY. — DEVILS IN FOLKS, WINDMILLS AND STEAMBOATS. — THE DEVIL AND DEATH IN THE SAW- MILL. — GALILEO AND THE DEVIL.— CHURCH ARGUMENTS. — A CHURCH REVIEW'S APOLOGY. — THE PRINTING-PRESS. — JENNER. — THE DEVIL IN GEOLOGY. — HUGH MILLER'S TRAGIC DEATH. — THE DEVIL AS AN ABOLITIONIST. — WILL SUCCEED AS A SPIRITUALIST. If the church has been a proper judge there has never been a reformer in the world who has not in some way been connected with the devil. The church has always claimed the same authority to judge for the world it now claims; it was, in past ages, thought to be more nearly infallible than it is to-day. Hell has. been the grand store-house of re- forms and the rendezvous of reformers. Reference to a few of the most common historical facts will prove this. References to many of the facts used in this chapter, are, at present writing, quite out of my reach. I am writing this on a train which carries me farther every moment from my books; but if 35 36 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. the reader will get a book called "The Healing of the Nations," and read the introduction, written by Senator Talmage, he will find many of them; if he can procure a monthly magazine called "The Examiner," published by Edward C. Towne, in Chicago, I think in 1868, he will there find a paper translated from the French, which gives many more facts than are here presented. For other sources of information consult Lecky, Buckle, Draper and the Encyclopedias. THE DEVIL IN JOHN AND JESUS. John the Baptist and Jesus were both accused of being in league with the devil. Of John they said: "Behold he hath a devil." They said of Je- sus: ''Thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil." They said: "He casteth not out devils but by Beel- zebub, the prince of devils." To those who were led away by his doctrines, they said: "Why hear ye him, he hath a devil?" Thus, according to the concensus of the popular church of their day John and Jesus each had some mysterious connection with the devil. But the church to-day will acknowledge that, devil or no dev- il, John and Jesus were in the right and the church in the wrong; and whatever their practice may be, they will profess to be followers of those accused of being under the influence of devils rather than to THE DEVIL AS A REFORMER. 37 be the legitimate descendants of their accusers. If the church is infallible John and Jesus did their work by the power of devils ; but if the church made a mistake then I will consider that it is liable to - err, and will look as often as twice before I shall conclude that the devil is in Spiritualism, on the mere ipse dixit of pulpit ignoramuses. THE DEVIL IN THE DARK AGES. Lack of space and a legitimate want of patience on the part of many of my busy readers will prevent me from retrospectively traveling through the Dark Ages, or. I could show you that every reformer was the devil's especial vicegerent, during all that time. I remember of reading in Edward C. Towne's "Ex- aminer," a scrap of history translated from the French, stating that Jive thousand children under the age of five years, were put to death by the Catholic church for being emissaries of the devil. If a child manifested any precocity in any particular direction it was supposed the devil was operating through the child as he did through the snake in the garden, and the child was put to death. Giles Corey, of Salem witchcraft fame, on two occasions manifested wonderful feats of physical strength; this was proof to Cotton Mather, Sir Mat- thew Hale and others that he was a wizzard, possess- ed of the devil, and he was pressed to death. 38 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. When the common flesh fork was invented it was bitterly denounced by the clergy. One minis- ter warned his audience that God would resent the indignity of refusing to take their meat in their fingers by palsying the hand that took up one of these infernal inventions of the devil. Church his- tory was called into requisition to prove that God had always in the past resented similar insults. When an old Scotchman invented the fanning- mill — a machine to separate chaff from wheat — an old Scotch lady, by advice of her pastor, took her son Coody away from the man. The charge brought against the man was that he was irreverently trying to raise the devil's wind. The advice given by the clergy was, when you want to separate wheat and chaff, get down on your knees and humbly ask God to send you a good dispensation of air. If you have not the humility to pray for wind, at least have the patience to wait for it. Raising the dev- il's, wind was a presumption not to be tolerated. The wind-mill, however, was perfected; and con- trary to church prophecies, it worked; and contrary to church prophecies, God did not manifest signs of displeasure. Presbyterians even ate of the bread, made of the wheat which had been separated from the chaff by the devil's wind. The church could not tolerate such impiety as that; these persons were promptly excommunicated, and delivered over THE DEVIL AS A REFORMER. 39 to the tender mercies of his Satanic Majesty. The devil was right, and the church wrong in the case of the fork and wind-mill. How is it elsewhere? When Robert Fulton invented the steamboat, the church everywhere prophesied against it; it would not work; or, if it did, it was an insult to Almighty God, and the work of the devil to run a boat against God's wind and tide. One English clergyman, in preaching against Robert Fulton and his steamboat, proposed to eat the first steam- boat and everybody and everything on board, that ever ventured into British waters. Boats have gone there, and to-day England owns more of them than all the world besides, but who ever heard of this Englishman performing his vow. THE DEVIL IN THE SAW -MILL. The next stronghold of the devil was in Germany; the former method of sawing lumber was to put a log upon a scaffolding, and one man take his posi- tion under the log and another on top; one pulled the saw down and the other pulled it up. The thought occurred to one man that a little mountain stream nearby could be utilized to turn a flutter- wheel, a crank could be fixed to the wheel, a shaft to the crank and a saw to the shaft, and thus a great amount of manual labor could be saved. He went to work and built his mill and was put to death for it. 40 ALL ABOUT DEVILS. God bad said: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread ;" but this was a labor-saving ma- chine; man did not half sweat sitting with his arms folded and watching the water saw his lumber. This invention if not rebuked, would be followed by other labor-saving inventions, and thus God Al- mighty Vcurse would be thwarted. The man who invented it did it by the aid of the devil and was put to death. A NINETEENTH CENTURY FOSSIL. This reminds me of an occurrence in Cincinnati in the autumn of 1869. A Baptist minister an- nounced in the Saturday papers that he would preach on the oil speculation, on Sunday night. In the course of his sermon he gave as one evidence that the devil was in the oil business, the fact that God had prophesied that the "elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and all that is therein shall be burned up." He then told his hearers that God had wisely deposited coal in certain places in the earth, with which to burn it; but coal being rather hard to kindle, God had wisely deposited millions upon millions of barrels of crude oil in the vicinity of his coal deposits to serve as kindling- wood, to set the coal on fire. The culmination was: Now, the devil has set the infidels to tapping God's oil can, so that when the time comes to burn the world, it won't burn worth a d . THE DEVTL AS A REFORMER. 41 This minister was born three hundred yenrs too late; he was a fifteenth century man. I treat all such men as I would any other fossil. When, in the sixteenth century, Galileo came to the conclusion that the earth was round, and was one of numerous worlds, many of which were prob- ably inhabited, he was denounced as being in league w T ith the devil; not only by the Catholic Church, but by Martin Luther himself. The arguments used against Galileo were stated seriatim as follows : 1. *'It casts suspicion on the doctrine of Incarnation. 2. It upsets the whole foundation of Theology. 3. If the earth is only one among many planets, then other planets must be inhabited, and if so, all men did not descend from Adam, or Noah." The above and other similar arguments were quite sufficient to prove to Catholics and Protestants alike that Galileo was in partnership with the devil. Andrew D. White, to whom I am indebted for many of the facts in this chapter, says: "When Galileo had discovered the four satellites of Jupiter, the whole thing was denounced as impossible and impious. It was argued that the Bible clearly showed, by all applicable types, that there could be only seven planets; that this was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of the Apocalypse, by the seven branched candlesticks of the tabernacle, and by the seven churches of Asia. * * * Mathematical and other reasonings were met by the words of Scripture. * * * It was declared that Galileo's doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua; by the declaration that the foundations of the earth are 42 ALL ABOUT THE DEVIL. fixed so firm that they cannot be moved; and that the sun runneth about from one end of heaven to the oth- er." While Luther, in Protestant Wittenberg, was preaching against Galileo, the Dominican Father at Rome, Caccini, was issuing his invectives from Rome. He preached on the text, "Why stand ye gazing up into heaven ?" In that sermon, White says : "He insisted that geometry is of the devil; and that mathematicians should be banished, as the author of all heresies." Mr. White proceeds as follows: "For the final assault, the park of heavy artillery was at last wheeled into place. You see it in all the scien- tific battle-fields. It consists of general denunciation. * * * It was brought to bear on Galileo with this declaration. The opinion of the earth's motion, is, of all heresies, the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous. The immobility of the earth is thrice sa- cred, The argument against the immortality of the soul, the creator, the incarnation, etc., should be toler- ated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves." Galileo urged his accusers to look through his tele- scope and be convinced, but they refused. One Calvius declared that the devil had enabled Galileo to invent an instrument to distort man's vision and make things appear as they were not. Poor Galileo was imprisoned and abused almost beyond, description for his heresy, and finally com- pelled to get down on his knees before church au- thority and say: THE DEVIL AS A REFORMER. 43 "I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a pris- oner, and on my knees, and before your eminences, having before my eyes the holy gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse and detest the heresy of the movement of the earth." The devil, Galileo and science were right; God, the Bible and the church were wrong, as usual. Now, who is to blame for this conflict? On this point, u The Dublin Review'' says: "But it may be well doubted whether the church did oppose scientific truth. What retarded it was the cir- c amstance that God thought fit to express many texts of Scripture in words which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion. But it is God who did th is, not the church ; and, moreover, since he thought tit to so act as to retard the progress of truth, it would be little to her discredit, even if she followed his exam- ple." What a confession ! God, the Bible and the church all against the truth; and only the devil and a poor old man to advocate it. But the devil and Galileo succeeded. Well may the poet say: "Keep, Galileo, to thy thought, And nerve thy soul to bear; They may gloat o'er the senseless words they wring From the pangs of thy despair; They vei 1 their eyes but they cannot hide The sun's meridian glow; The heel of a priest may tread thee down, And a tyrant work thee woe ; But never a truth has been destroyed; They may curse it and call it a crime, And pervert, and betray, or slander and slay Its teachers for a time. But the sunshine, aye, shall light the sky As round and round we run, And the truth shall ever come uppermost, And justice shall be done." 44 ALL ABOUT DE7ILS. PRINTING -PRESS. JENNER. GEOLOGY. The printing-press was once the work of the dev- il. A Catholic priest prophesied that if this thing went on the vulgar [common] people would demand that the Bible be printed and somebody would print it; it would thus become a vulgar book, and people would lose their respect for it. In this lie was partially, if not wholly, correct. The sacredness of Bibles and the frightfulness of devils each vanish as people get on more intimate terms with them. When Thomas Jenner accidentia discovered that vaccination took the deadly sting out of small pox, he was denounced in long printed statements as hav- ing formed a partnership with the devil to turn man back to the genus qaadrumane. It was even as- serted where vaccination was not known, that horns were sprouting on the heads of vaccinated children. Hundreds of stories were published as silly as any told about Spiritualism, to prove vaccination was of the devil. But in this, as in other instances, the devil was in the right and the church in the wrong. GEOLOGY AND THE DEVIL. I remember well the beginning of the controversy on geology. The clergy, led by Moses Stew T art and other prominent New England pulpiteers, de- nounced geology as the devil's religion, and geolo- gists as agents of his Satanic Majesty. I remera- THE DEVIL AS A REFORMER. 45 ber, when, as a child, I was afraid to meet a geolo- gist; geologists were all of the devil, and geology was the devil's Bible. After awhile. Prof. Agassiz became a geologist ; then it began to grow a little more respectable. Later, Hugh Miller, a Scotch stone-cutter and a Christian, became a geologist and produced two books. "Foot-prints of the Creator," and "Old Eed Sand- stone," were, in the estimation of the church, des- tined to convert and baptize geology. Miller's works were heralded to the world as the great an- tidote to "Infidel geology." They satisfied nearly every Christian except their author. He wrote again ana again. Finally he was to bring out his biography and in that was to forever settle the ques- tion as to geology; this work was to exorcise the demons from geology. But Mr. Miller was not to finish his book. If you could have seen him and read his thoughts one dark November night in 1855, you would have found him wrestling with himself. His Bible was telling him one story and stalactites, stalagmites, conglomerates and fossils were telling him another. What was he . to do? Harmonize them be could not. He knew the "sermons in stones" were true; he had been listening to them and interpreting them for. many years; they had never lied to him. He could not make them agree with the story he 46 ALL ABOUT THE DEVIL. read in Genesis. Finally, in despair at not be- ing able to make the Bible and geology harmo- nize, he picked up a pistol and sent a ball through his heart. He sent himself to the country where these questions are settled, because he could not harmonize God's and the devil's Bibles. He knew geology was true, and if the devil was the author he was the author of truth. Oh, Christian, I bring the bleeding corpse of this man and throw it at your feet, and hurl the charge upon you that you have bathed your hands in the blood of this man. You,io forcing him to attempt what no man can do, drove him to fill a suicide's grave. To-day, geology is not of the devil. Prof. Dawson, one of the greatest Christians in the world, is the greatest geologist in the world. THE DEVIL IN ABOLITIONISM. The next you hear of the devil is, he is in the antislavery movement. As a boy, I was often warned by the ministers that the devil was in the abolition movement. God and the Bible were in favor of slavery; the devil was trying to overthrow God's precious law, by repealing the clause which says, "Cursed be Caanan," etc. Every church in Christendom denounced the abolitionists, and r