Men don’t believe in a devil now,

As their fathers’ used to do;

They’ve forced the door of the broadest creed,

To let his majesty through

There isn’t a print of his cloven foot

Or a fiery dart from his bow

To be found in the earth or the air today,

For the world has voted so.

They say he doesn’t go round about

As a roaring lion now;

But whom shall we hold responsible

For the everlasting row

To be heard in home and church and state

To the earth’s remotest bound,

If the devil, by a unanimous vote,

Is nowhere to be found?

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 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 toiling saint,

And digs the pits for his feet?

Who sows the tares in the fields of time

Wherever God sows His wheat?

The devil was voted not to be,

And of course the thing is true;

But who is doing the kind of work

The devil used to do?

Won’t somebody step to the front forthwith,

And make his 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 want to know

Who carries his business on?

“Selected”.

Taken from: Richards, H. M. S.  Special Bible Study Helps, William Collins and Son, and Co. Ltd., New York