The Devil

Men don’t believe in the devil now, as their fathers used to do,
They have opened the gates of widest creeds, to let his majesty through,
And never a sign of his cloven hoof, or dart from his fiery bow,
Is seen in all the earth today, for the people have voted it so,
But who is mixing that deadly draught, that poisons heart and brain,
And loads the bier of each passing year, with ten hundred thousand slain!
Who blights the bloom of the earth today, with the fiery breath of hell’!
If the Devil isn’t and never was, Won’t somebody rise and tell?
Who dogs the steps of the tolling saint, digs a pit for his feet,
And sows the tares in the field of time, wherever God sows wheat?
The skeptic says that the devil’s dead, and of course, what he says is true!
But who is doing the awful work that the devil alone can do?
If there isn’t a devil, whence all the sin, and the jarring and hideous sounds
That are heard in senate and mart and home, to earth’s remotest bounds!
It may be true what the scoffer says, that the devil is dead and gone,
But sensible folks would like to know, WHO CARRIES HIS BUSINESS ON?

F. C. VERNON-HARCOURT

From my book, Victory Over the Devil.

JRT