our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better
enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to
believe that these persons were no other than the evil demons who
ruled in Ashdod and Assyria. Such is their perseverance in evil--such
their busy industry, which keeps a thousand authors (which is but
another name for priests and prophets) constantly at work to frame
cunning falsehoods and curious devices, and winning fancies, which
when printed and made into books, turn the heads of the young and
unwary, and blind the soul to the wrath which is to come."

The uplifted hands of the widow Cooper still attested her wonder.

"Lord save us!" she exclaimed, "I should not think it strange
if Sister Thackeray had some of these very books. Do ask, Brother
Cross, when you go to see her. She speaks much of books, and I see
her reading them whenever I look in at the back window."

John Cross did not seem to give any heed to the remark of the old
woman. There was a theological point involved in one of the remarks of
Alfred Stevens which he evidently regarded as of the first importance.

"What you say, Alfred Stevens, is very new and very strange to me,
and I should think from what I already know of the evil which is
sometimes put in printed books, that there was indeed a spirit of
malice at work in this way, to help the progress and the conquests
of Satan among our blind and feeble race. But I am not prepared to
believe that God has left it to Satan to devise so fearful a scheme
for prosecuting his evil designs as that of making the demons
of Ashdod and Assyria take the names of mortal men, while teeming
to follow mortal occupations. It would be fearful tidings for our