The Devil

(By Alfred J. Hough)[1]

Men don’t believe in a Devil now as our fathers used to do;

They forced the door of the broadest creed to let His Majesty through

There is not a print of his cloven foot or a fiery dart from his bow,

To be found in earth or air to-day, for the world has voted so.

But who is it mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and brain,

And loads the bier of each passing year with ten hundred thousand slain?

Who blights the bloom of the land to-day 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 toiling saint and digs the pit for his feet?

Who sows the tares in the field of time wherever God sows his wheat?

The Devil is voted not to be, and of course the thing is true;

But who is doing the kind of work the Devil alone should do?

We are told he does not go around like a roaring lion now;

But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting row?

To be heard in home, in Church and State, to the earth’s remotest bound,

If the Devil by a unanimous vote is nowhere to be found?

Won’t somebody step to the front forthwith, and make their bow and show,

How the frauds and the crimes of a single day, spring up?  We want to know.

The Devil was fairly voted out, and of course the Devil’s gone,

But simple people would lie to know who carries his business on.

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[1] Alfred J. Hough was born in 1848.  He was a poet and lyricist, and active in the Odd Fellows Society. He was Poet-Laureate of the Grand Lodge of Vermont.  His Odd Fellowship in Song: Epilogue of the Golden Age of the Order is included in The Official History and Literature of Odd Fellowship by H. L. Stillson.  The Devil, above, was quoted by Edward M. Bounds in his 1922 book Satan: His Personality, Power and Overthrow. Hough died in 1922.