Excerpt from The Devil: A Lecture A little while ago I delivered a lecture on Super stition, in which, among other things, I said that the Christian world could not deny the existence of the Devil; that the Devil was really the keystone of the arch, and that to take him away was to destroy the entire system. A great many clergymen answered or criticised this statement. Some of these ministers avowed their belief in the existence of his Satanic Majesty, while others actually denied his existence but some, without stating their ovvn position, said that others believed, not in the existence of a personal devil, but in the personification Of evil, and that all references to the Devil in the Scrip tures could be explained on the hypothesis that the Devil thus alluded to was simply a personification of (evil. When I read these answers I thought of this line from Heine: Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ. Now, the questions are, first, whether the Devil does really exist; second, whether the sacred Scriptures teach the existence Of the Devil and of unclean spirits and, third, whether this belief in devils is a necessary part of what is known as orthodox Christianity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
