When I was a Sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years
ago, I became interested in Satan, and wanted to find out all I could
about him. I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay,
the stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I
was anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects
when there wasn’t another boy in the village who could be hired to do
such a thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the
serpent, and thought Eve’s calmness was perfectly noble. I asked Mr.
Barclay if he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by
a serpent, would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber.
He did not answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into
matters above my age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that
he was willing to tell me the facts of Satan’s history, but he stopped
there: he wouldn’t allow any discussion of them.
In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or
six of them; you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I was
disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to
find that there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears
running down. Mr. Barclay’s sympathy and compassion were aroused, for
he was a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the
head and cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of
materials! I can still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words
shot through me.
Then he began to bail out that ocean’s riches for my encouragement and
joy. Like this: it was “conjectured”—though not established—that Satan
was originally an angel in Heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and
brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition.
Also, “we have reason to believe” that later he did so and so; that “we
are warranted in supposing” that at a subsequent time he traveled
extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries
afterward, “as tradition instructs us,” he took up the cruel trade of
tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by
and by, “as the probabilities seem to indicate,” he may have done
certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have
done still other things.
And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves on
a piece of paper, and numbered it “page 1”; then on fifteen hundred
other pieces of paper we set down the “conjectures,” and
“suppositions,” and “maybes,” and “perhapses,” and “doubtlesses,” and
“rumors,” and “guesses,” and “probabilities,” and “likelihoods,” and
“we are permitted to thinks,” and “we are warranted in believings,” and
“might have beens,” and “could have beens,” and “must have beens,” and
“unquestionablys,” and “without a shadow of doubts”—and behold!
_Materials?_ Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!
Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history
of Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions—suspicions that
my attitude in that matter was not reverent, and that a person must be
reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who
spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world
and also be brought to account.
I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly
misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect for Satan, and
that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of
any member of any church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by
his words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride him,
laugh at him, scoff at him; whereas in truth I had never thought of
such a thing, but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others
and laugh at _them_. “What others?” “Why, the Supposers, the
Perhapsers, the Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the
Must-Have-Beeners, the Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the
We-Are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and all that funny crop of solemn
architects who have taken a good solid foundation of five indisputable
and unimportant facts and built upon it a Conjectural Satan thirty
miles high.”
What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He
was shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said the
Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were _themselves_
sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock
them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any
respectable house, even by the back door.
How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been
for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven years of
age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the
biography, and have never been in a respectable house since.