WHEN one recalls the part which the belief of evil has played in the tragedy of mortal experience, and the universal longing to escape the suffering which always attends its reign, it is not difficult to accept the statement that in the course of human history more sacrifices have probably been made and more prayers offered to the devil than to God. Devotion to rites that are cruelly painful and oppressive, as well as degrading, to the end that some malicious spirit may be propitiated, some dreaded event be escaped from, characterizes practically all so-called heathen religions, and the traveler may still come upon concrete evidences, in many lands, of an enthronement of a belief in the power of evil which is too sadly pitiful to be either described or forgotten.
Indeed, the history of the religions of primitive races is largely a history of terror-begetting superstitions, many of which are still the life-governing beliefs of a great part of our race. One cannot have read the statements of Livingstone, Stanley, and other explorers, respecting the religious thought of the millions of interior Africa, or made himself familiar with the universal regard for dragons, "the evil spirits of the air," loyalty to which explains in part the Boxer rebellion, and kindred racial impulses in the east, without realizing something of the vastness of the sway of that demonolatry which may be said to constitute and perpetuate every form of mortal enslavement, and from which Christian Science, the demonstrable understanding of Christ, Truth, will save and is saving mankind. Furthermore, when we come to apprehend in Christian Science that the vertebral fact of all paganism is a belief in the reality and power of evil, we perceive that demonolatry is not a far-away or unfamiliar affair, but very much a part of our self-satisfied modern civilization. It not only characterizes all material philosophy, but it still permeates most theological teaching and religious thought.
It is true that ministers no longer contend for the gruesome embodiments of evil which figured so prominently in the faith of their fathers. Moreover, they have always declared for God's ultimate supremacy in the struggle for which, according to theological dicta, He has made such ample provision, and this recognition of the final sovereignty of good over evil certainly marks an advance over that acceptance of the perpetuity of indecisive contest which has characterized many pagan beliefs: nevertheless Christian people still retain the essence of demonolatry, and bow down to evil, in so far as they assert the reality and omnipresence of a power apart from God. The concept has indeed grown less spectacular and frightening, but not less seductive.
