The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-06-26
On Pooling The Devil
BY REV. GEORGE EAvES, D. D.

"a tn CT than in physical exercise. The learned man with trailing reputation, very comets tail of scholarly attri butes, knows in his heart that his de- grees are a sort of paint and powder and cosmetic. There Is much in Ike sp- ing up what our great Gentle evan gelist called "a fair show in the flesh" What else is the use of a lord mayors sh ow, a kings funeral pageant, or a Panama exposition, to cost up into the millions? How We love to make be- lfeve! However in these last days our h lard headed American commerce in the midst of panic insists that there is no panic; that the fear itself was only thought, make believe devil to be treated by make believe no-devii .or- absent treatmentv
 There Is a story from old Japan which tells of fox whose crafty ways made havoc among the families of Hon-1o. a district of eastern Yedo. The fox, be it sald, IS great at bewitching masculine humanity, as the badger Is said to be- witch the fairer sex, and it's favorite mode of attack Is to impersonate a. beau ti1ul woman. Now 1t happened that certain officer of the Shogars court was an expert in witchcraft-w wisdom, so that when this brave man heard of the Hon. Jo fox, he forthwith undertook to cap
 
 much in Hon-jo at eventide, till one night he was rewarded by discovering a fox apparently asleep. Come with me- come with me, dear sisteri' he cried You will catch cold lying here in the open" The fox promptly assumed the form of the gentleman's sister and followed him; then side by side, they entered a great and famous restaurant where a grand supper was ordered. The officer however excused himself for a moment and made off, leaving the supposed lady alone. But the attendants were aghast to find In the room a hugo fox hungrily devour- Ing the last remnants of the feast. Rush. Biff! Smash! Walters and clerk old men and maidens, cooks and scullions made heroic attack on Reynard, who how ever lodged the blows, broke the cups and plates, tipped the rice-tub on the tatami and broke through the ranks of his assailants
 Presently back came the cunning of ficial confident that he had given a sur prise party to the fox as well as to the hotel proprietor, but that of course the fox was conveniently dead by this time. Alas, the supper was eaten, the dishes were broken and generally there was as one may put 1t, the devil to play, and he the man of wisdom, had to pay him with good gold obi.
 The moral of this story Is that those who would dish the devil often break the dish and have to pay damages
 Makers of new religions are the chief opponents of this art, and in the long | run they have to pony up" quite liberal ly. Poor Dr. Dowie and his Zion-building followers greatly insisted on treating make believe sins, such as the eating of oysters and the selling of drugs, with 1 tfn 1F L11ia m the end the central shrine of the cult was opened and there was mud and not make believe mud, either, on the walls and floor. Most of it will cling to Dowie- ism till the day of Judgment.
 It is authoritatively stated by Miss Mill mine that among the earlier disciples Of an unexploded heresy were two young men, one of whom had an ineradicable conviction that the Creator of the uni- verse is person, not a mere abstraction! !! The then budding -priestess and creed-maker whom they followed. in- sisted, however, that this was quite incop- sistent with dscipleship. She bade the other man systematically treat the of fending brain pan by rubbing it, the oper- ator strongly concentrating his own brain upon the formula God is not a person" Unfortunately for the advocates of animal magnetism and suggestive therapeutics,
 
 still clung to his orthodoxy, and was. I believe. never graduated in that school of drugless dope.
 Did the devil guess. I wonder that all that smoke of psychic fire was from the consumption of counterfeit gnostic greenbacks? But in any event what a corpse that was to bury with shampoois- tic ceremony: the personality of God! Then there are the people who put them- selves in hODelesS situations hv dpfeinp ordinary common sense. Having tied hands and feet and set in motion forces over which they can have no control, put all their energy into praying God to avert the inevitable catastrophe. Far be it from me to suggest that He does not stoop to our weakness and imbecility, and sometimes even grant such requests. But when He does 1t has not miracle been wrought, like Peter's brief strut across the waves? I may even say that this de- mand is grossly unjust to the eternal Lord of men. To begin by running in debt to the devil for self-gratification, and then ask God to pay the bill What an inperti- hence! I have seen 1t turn prayer itself to hollow crying. and drive the shallow soul to shallow scepticism and to wandering son hot sand beneath a sky of brass. That is Sa- hara indeed. where the Simeon blows steadily, scooping up not sand alone, but the very marrow of one's bones Yet even there l have also seen spring up Film wells and palm trees.
 There was a certain Madame Blavatsky. way back, I think, in the seventies. and she had a sort of familiar, known as Root Hoomi, and there was mended crockery and astral communication by precipitated correspondence. But that is another story.