properly decline to waste time upon the consideration of talk, no
better accredited than forecastle "yarns," about such monsters of the
deep. And if the interests of ordinary veracity dictate this course,
in relation to a matter of so little consequence as this, what must be
our obligations in respect of the treatment of a question which is
fundamental alike for science and for ethics? For not only does our
general theory of the universe and of the nature of the order which
pervades it, hang upon the answer; but the rules of practical life
must be deeply affected by it.

The belief in a demonic world is inculcated throughout the Gospels and
the rest of the books of the New Testament; it pervades the whole
patristic literature; it colours the theory and the practice of every
Christian church down to modern times. Indeed, I doubt if, even now,
there is any church which, officially, departs from such a fundamental
doctrine of primitive Christianity as the existence, in addition to
the Cosmos with which natural knowledge is conversant, of a world of
spirits; that is to say, of intelligent agents, not subject to the
physical or mental limitations of humanity, but nevertheless competent
to interfere, to an undefined extent, with the ordinary course of both
physical and mental phenomena.

More especially is this conception fundamental for the authors of the
Gospels. Without the belief that the present world, and particularly
that part of it which is constituted by human society, has been given
over, since the Fall, to the influence of wicked and malignant
spiritual beings, governed and directed by a supreme devil--the moral
antithesis and enemy of the supreme God--their theory of salvation by
the Messiah falls to pieces. "To this end was the Son of God
manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil."[3]