EVIL SPIRITS. 361 



were not regarded with disfavor, the augur, the haruspex, and the 

 keeper of the sibyl's books being considered as part of the regular 

 state life of Greece and Rome. 



With the advent of Christianity, however, there came a great 

 change. In the matter which we are considering, as in many an- 

 other, old things had passed away and all things had become new. 

 Before very long after the death of Jesus the Christians were 

 filled with a sense of the awful presence — in fact, the omnipres- 

 ence — of Satan, which colored their every thought and act. This, 

 added to the idea of eternal punishment — a fate reserved for all 

 those about them who were not of the new faith — gave to the early 

 Christians an intensely realistic sense of evil and an eager readi- 

 ness to believe in agents of evil of a supernatural order. To their 

 minds the world about them, with its imperial government and 

 especially its non-Christian church ritual, was simply a great 

 object-lesson of Satan's unbridled sway. Everywhere they saw 

 the finger of Beelzebub, the prince of devils. These facts, or 

 rather supposed facts, together with various philosophical sys- 

 tems, such as the system of Plato and that of the Gnostics, made 

 the early Christians believe the earth, the sea, the very air, to be 

 full of evil spirits, the emissaries and agents of Satan. Some of 

 these were the spirits which had rebelled against God and had 

 been hurled "sheer o'er the crystal battlements of heaven." 

 Others were spirits which had gone hither and thither, deluding 

 man in the antediluvian world. Others were heathen deities — 

 Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and so on — all of whom, whether they were 

 of good or of evil report among the Greeks or Romans, were equal- 

 ly evil spirits to the Christians. The spirits who, by these Greeks 

 or Romans, were worshiped under the names of departed heroes — 

 heroes who had achieved so many acts of splendid and philan- 

 thropic heroism — these were to the Christians not the real spirits 

 of the dead, but merely devils who had answered the name and 

 assumed the honors of the dead. No relation of life was free from 

 this scourge of evil spirits; they even became the husbands or 

 wives of the Christians themselves. Like the locusts of Pharaoh 

 of old, they were over all the land. It is very hard for us now to 

 imagine what all this means — it seems so laughable, these trans- 

 formations and artifices and disguises to which the spirits resort- 

 ed to do their master's bidding ! But to these Christians of the 

 second and succeeding centuries it was all stern reality — a matter 

 of eternal life and death. 



Now, what followed from all this ? Simply that no truce was 

 to be kept with, no mercy shown to, the sorcerer or magician ; he 

 it was who could send forth and summon back these spirits ; he 

 it was whom they must obey. He was worse, far worse, then, 

 than the evil spirits, for the latter only followed the instincts of 



