So PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



and the most important among the heavenly 

 bodies. Knowledge of the active speculations that 

 went on centuries before his time on the Ionian sea- 

 board ; prevision of what secrets men would wrest 

 from the stars centuries hence of neither did he 

 dream. That Homer and Virgil had sung ; that 

 Plato had discoursed ; that Buddha had founded a 

 religion with which his, when Western activity met 

 Eastern passivity, would vainly compete ; these, and 

 aught else that had moved the great world without, 

 were unknown to the Syrian teacher. 



Jesus believed in an arch-fiend, who was permitted 

 by Omnipotence, the Omnipotence against which he 

 had rebelled, to set loose countless numbers of evil 

 spirits to work havoc on men and animals. Jesus 

 also believed in a hell of eternal torment for the wicked ; 

 and in a heaven of unending happiness for the good. 

 There is no surer index of the intellectual stage of 

 any people than the degree in which belief in the 

 supernatural, and especially in the activity of super- 

 natural agents, rules their lives. The lower we 

 descend, the more detailed and familiar is the 

 assumption of knowledge of the behaviour of these 

 agents, and of the nature of the places they come 

 from or haunt Of this, mediaeval speculations on 

 demonology, and modern books of anthropology, 

 supply any number of examples. Here we are 

 concerned only with the momentous fact that belief 

 in demoniacal activity pervades the New Testament 

 from beginning to end, and, therefore, gave the 

 warrant for the unspeakable cruelties with which 

 that belief has stained the annals of Christendom. 

 John Wesley was consistent when he wrote that 



