this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

This of course does not refer to physical snakes, no matter what their species; for almost everyone realizes that the “serpent” of the Garden of Eden which spoke to Eve could not have been of the snake family, but must have been an intelligence much wiser than Eve, having a serpent nature, and which evidently lived in the Garden, or how could it have been there!

Was this then not the first evidence shown in biblical history of the existence of Satan, and of the place he occupies in the scheme of life? And has not Satan ever since been crawling on his belly before men, been spit upon and eating the dirt men cast upon him? And has there not always been enmity between the seed of Satan and the seed of woman, so that men have ever condemned and bruised the head of Satan, and Satan’s brood has ever attacked the heel of the hindmost part of man’s understanding—his cupidity, the child of his selfishness, and through it has always been able to lead him astray?

One cannot help but notice, if he reads with seeing eyes, the sinister part that Satan, the “serpent,” plays all through both biblical and secular history, from the Garden of Eden days up to the present time. Always he is there, seducing and deceiving men into believing what he tells them, as opposed to what God has taught is the right and true way. Always it is he that leads men into trouble, inharmony, suffering, sickness, sin and crime. Were he not in existence, there would be none of these,