erminated with a Devilish Chain and a Cancan of Hell, at seven in the
morning." It was led by four principal dancers (who have since
appeared in London in the _Huguenot Captain_), and it is many years
since I have seen such perfect dancing, as far as finish and accuracy
of art and fulness of animal power and fire are concerned. Nothing
could be better done, in its own evil way, the object of the dance
throughout being to express, in every gesture, the wildest fury of
insolence and vicious passions possible to human creatures. So that
you see, though, for the present, we find ourselves utterly incapable
of a rapture of gladness or thanksgiving, the dance which is presented
as characteristic of modern civilization is still rapturous
enough--but it is with rapture of blasphemy.

LETTER X.

THE MEANING AND ACTUAL OPERATION OF SATANIC OR DEMONIACAL INFLUENCE.

_March 16, 1867._

49. You may gather from the facts given you in my last letter that, as
the expression of true and holy gladness was in old time statedly
offered up by men for a part of worship to God their Father, so the
expression of false and unholy gladness is in modern times, with as
much distinctness and plainness, asserted by them openly to be offered
to another spirit: "Chain of the Devil," and "Cancan of Hell" being
the names assigned to these modern forms of joyous procession.

Now, you know that, among the best and wisest of our present
religious teachers, there is a gradual tendency to disbelieve, and to
preach their disbelief, in the commonly received ideas of the Devil,
and of his place, and his work. While, among some of our equally
well-meaning, but far less wise, religious teachers, there is, in
consequence, a panic spreading in anticipation of the moral dangers
which must follow on the loss of the help of the Devil. One of the
last appearances in public of the author of the 'Christian Year' was
at a conclave of clergymen assembled in defense of faith in
damnation.[A] The sense of the meeting generally was, that there
_must_ be such a place as hell, because no one would ever behave
decently upon earth unless they were kept in wholesome fear of the
fires beneath it: and Mr. Keble, especially insisting on this view,
related a story of an old woman who had a wicked son, and who, having
lately heard with horror of the teaching of Mr. Maurice and others,
exclaimed pathetically, "My son is bad