e breadth of the way." There was another print of the enemy
which made no slight impression upon me. It was the frontispiece of an
old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady,
(who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind
enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the
fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent
declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the
lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith
commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly,
without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs
were worn off to the knees! The rude wood-cut represented the demon
fiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in
"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels." He would have answered very
well to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.

To this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil we
are doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and
possession. Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of
evil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,--the antagonism of
good. Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselves
constrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which are
always associated with undefined power and the ability to harm. "The
Devil," says an old writer, "is a dignity, though his glory be somewhat
faded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly."

The evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created and
existent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion.
The gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a divided
sovereignty of the universe. The Divine Teacher, it is true, in
discoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and
which was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He
nowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute
power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom
are all things. Pure himself, He can create nothing impure. Evil,
therefore, has no eternity in the past. The fact of its present actual
existence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand
the secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord
become the means to