Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1869-04-28
(From the Troy Tlmes I

fFrom the Troy Times
His "Satanic Majesty" has had
many titles. The Egyptians called
him Typilon +; the Greeks, Titan the
Persians, Ohromaze. The Scotch
have given him several names, as
'Auld Clootie,n which is supposed
| TO ailude to his eIo0en feet. They al
so call him the "A uld Ane ithe Old
One); and still another Scottish ap-
pellation for him is "Auid Hornie,n ~
which is based sn the popular BELIEF
that his Satanic Majesty is supplied
with horns. According to a lsarped
German theologian there are A 435
$50 devils. The usual German ex-
pletive is "ten thousand tuyfels. y
but this calculation renders it used
up exclamation. Our ancestors
firmly believed that it was possible
for u person Ia he possessed by dew
IL. For thousands of years, indeed,
humanity has held this creed, or this
superstition nor i'm the face Of the
many instances of demoniacal pos
session recorded in the Scriptures,
can we refuse without impiety to
credit the stories Of men, women and
children who have had devils which
have been miraculouslycast out. The
good men who translated the Bible
into the English tongue were the
contemporaries of the witch finders.
The King to whom they dedicated
their grand labor had himself writ
ten ponderous treatise against
witch-craft. They came from their
task, their brains heated by Oriental
imagery, and unable, perhaps, to
draw nice distinctions between lofty
allegory and naked fact, to detect
the supernatural in every relation of
social life, and to find devils every
where. The old fiend of the Medi:e-
val legends-the Gothic devil with
horns and hOOfs, saucer eyes and a
tail-was resuscitated in the bright
morning of the Protestant Keforma-
ton. FrOmthe accession of James un-
til the end of the reign of the Second
Charles, "the State Trials'' TEEN
with records of deviltry Let a wo-
| man be old and ugly and cross-grain-
ed, and especially rheumatic, and
stralghtway commerce with farlil-
lar fiend was imputed to her. Many
such miserable old crOnes, who had
been scOurged, ducked and pelted
nearly to deaths door, were iain to
a3oid further torture before they
reached the stake, to confess they
had colleagued with the devil, .in
the likeness of a black man, about a
foot and half high" In France, at
the same period, the nuns of London
We're possessed by a devil in the
shape of = tomcat, speaking tol era
ble Latin. In Sweden the children
| We're plagued with the Evil ont who
was regularly exercised out of lshole
troops Of urchins every Sunday
morning at the church door by
| means of a birch rod. And the dew
il even crossed the Atlantic, and
caught hold of people in Virginia,
and the Washerwnmen and cooks of
Salem and other parts of New Eng
land.
The imagination of the Chinese
has invented no fewer than tex dew
lis and helis. One presides over a
hell stuck full OF knives another an
iron tank filled with boiling water
third is 4 hell of ice /; in another the
punishment is pulling out the
Tongues of those who tell lies an
other hell of poisonous serpeuts in
| another the victim is drawn into
| pieces /; another hell of blackness
and in praying they say: MAY | not
| fall into the hell of swords :" or into
this or that place of torment.