The dead civilizations, on their monuments and mausoleums, have left behind, carved indelibly, one story--whether on the banks of the Nile, the Areopagus of Greece, or the land of the Montezumas--it is the story of feeling in the dark after God. They had the disease and sought for a remedy. From the days of the astrologers and soothsayers, anxious souls have been victimized by every fad, fake and fanaticism in their search for relief. The venders of pulverized snake skins and lizard tongues, in their day, found as willing a patronage as the cultured proprietors of sanitariums to-day. The long-haired man on a goods box can do a flourishing business, if he has the gift of gab to convince the crowd his stuff will _cure_.
The quack doctor does not handle a variety of medicine; he knows just enough of anatomy and materia medica to make his speech sound scholarly--but his remedy, costing less than the price of one visit from a physician, will cure all the ills of the human body. Like De Soto, we are seeking the fountain of perennial youth--the elixir of life.
Just as the disease of the body and a passion to live open wide the door to charlatans, fakirs, and "healers" claiming powers direct from Gabriel to Beelzebub, so the disease of the soul, and a hunger for eternal life--"deep calling unto deep"--has opened the door of the heart to the religious doctor with his cure-all prescriptions. Out from unknown depths comes the yearning for readjustment and reconciliation with God.
No being, beside the Godhead, is more familiar with the secret hopes and impulses of the soul--than Satan. The long-haired quack on the street, bawling his "junk," is not half so anxious to defraud the crowd as Satan is to prescribe remedies that will not cure. His chief aspiration is to flood the land with bogus treatments which not only fail to cure, but they preempt the disease-infected spots so as to prevent the introduction of the genuine remedy.
The quack doctor is, no doubt, pleased when an imaginary cure has been wrought by his wares; but Satan is filled with wrath if some of his formulas strike deeper than he anticipated, and a soul emerges from darkness unto light. This, however, does not often occur; he is too cunning to advertise to a hungry, sin-sick world that which will bring permanent relief.