fter sunset, and Jesus lying down hungry, cold and wet,
and rising in the morning with damp clothes to renew the discussion.

Soon after Jesus went into the country of the Gergesenes, where he met
two fierce men possessed with devils whom he determined to exorcise, The
devils (for _the_ Devil had grown numerous by then), not liking to be
turned adrift on the world, without home or shelter, besought Jesus
to let them enter the bodies of an herd of swine feeding by. This he
graciously permitted. The devils left the men and entered the swine;
whereupon the poor pigs, experiencing a novel sensation, never having
had devils inside them before, "ran violently down a steep place into
the sea, and perished in the waters." Whether the devils were drowned
with the pigs this veracious history saith not. But the pigs themselves
were not paid for. Jesus wrought the miracle at other people's expense.
And the inhabitants of that part took precisely this view of the case.
For "the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they
besought him that he would depart out of their coasts." No doubt they
reflected that if he remained working miracles of that kind, at the end
of a week not a single pig would be left alive in the district. Entering
in Genesis, the Devil appropriately makes his exit in Revelation. The
twelfth chapter of that holy nightmare describes him as "a great red
dragon, having seven heads, and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his
heads; and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did
cast them to the earth." What a tail! The writer's ideas of size were
very chaotic. Bringing a third part of the stars of heaven to this
earth, is much like trying to lodge a few thousand cannon-balls on the
surface of a bullet.

Finally the Devil is to be "bound for a thousand years" in hell. Let us
hope the chain will be strong; for if it should break, the pit has no
bottom, and the Devil would go right through, coming out on the other
side to renew his old tricks.

Such is the Romance of the Bible Devil. Was ever a more ludicrous story
palmed off on a credulous world? The very clergy are growing ashamed
of it. But there it is, inextricably interwoven with the rest of the
"sacred" narrative, so that no skill can remove it without destroying
the whole fabric. The Devil has been the Church's best friend, but he
is doomed, and as their fraternal bond cannot be broken, he will drag it
down to irretrievable perdi