SATAN.
Public Prosecutors--Satan as Accuser--English Devil-worshipper
--Conversion by Terror--Satan in the Old Testament--The trial
of Joshua--Sender of Plagues--Satan and Serpent--Portrait of
Satan--Scapegoat of Christendom--Catholic 'Sight of Hell'--
The ally of Priesthoods.
There is nothing about the Satan of the Book of Job to indicate him
as a diabolical character. He appears as a respectable and powerful
personage among the sons of God who present themselves before Jehovah,
and his office is that of a public prosecutor. He goes to and fro
in the earth attending to his duties. He has received certificates
of character from A. Schultens, Herder, Eichorn, Dathe, Ilgen, who
proposed a new word for Satan in the prologue of Job, which would
make him a faithful but too suspicious servant of God.
Such indeed he was deemed originally; but it is easy to see how the
degradation of such a figure must have begun. There is often a clamour
in England for the creation of Public Prosecutors; yet no doubt there
is good ground for the hesitation which its judicial heads feel in
advising such a step. The experience of countries in which Prosecuting
Attorneys exist is not such as to prove the institution one of unmixed
advantage. It is not in human nature for an official person not to make
the most of the duty intrusted to him, and the tendency is to raise
the interest he specially represents above that of justice itself. A
defeated prosecutor feels a certain stigma upon his reputation as much
as a defeated advocate, and it is doubtful whether it be safe that
the fame of any man should be in the least identified with personal
success where justice is trying to strike a true balance. The recent
performances of certain attorneys in England and America retained by
Societies for the Suppression of Vice strikingly illustrate the dangers
here alluded to. The necessity that such salaried social detectives
should perpetually parade before the community as purifiers of society
induces them to get up unreal cases where real ones cannot be easily
discovered. Thus they become Accusers, and from this it is an easy
step to become Slanderers; nor is it a very difficult one which may
make them instigators of the vices they profess to suppress.
The first representations of Satan show him holding in his hand
the scales; but the latter show him trying slyly with hand or
foot to press down that side of the balance in which the evil
deeds of a soul are being weighed against the good. We need not
try to track archæologically this declension of a Prosecutor, by
increasing ardour in his office, through the stages of Accuser,
Adversary, Executioner, and at last Rival of the legitimate Rule,
and tempter of its subjects. The process is simple and familiar. I
have before me a little twopenny book, [77] which is said to have
a vast circulation, where one may trace the whole mental evolution
of Satan. The ancient Devil-worshipper who has reappeared with such
power in England tells us that he was the reputed son of a farmer,
who had to support a wife and eleven children on from 7s. to 9s. per
week, and who sent him for a short time to school. 'My schoolmistress
reproved me for something wrong, telling me that God Almighty took
notice of children's sins. This stuck to my conscience a great while;
and who this God Almighty could be I could not conjecture; and how he
could know my sins without asking my mother I could not conceive. At
that time there was a person named Godfrey, an exciseman, in the town,
a man of a stern and hard-favoured countenance, whom I took notice of
for having a stick covered with figures, and an ink-bottle hanging at
the button-hole of his coat. I imagined that man to be employed by
God Almighty to take notice and keep an account of children's sins;
and once I got into the market-house and watched him very narrowly,
and found that he was always in a hurry, by his walking so fast; and I
thought he had need to hurry, as he must have a deal to do to find out
all the sins of children!' This terror caused the little Huntington to
say his prayers. 'Punishment for sin I found was to be inflicted after
death, therefore I hated the churchyard, and would travel any distance
round rather than drag my guilty conscience over that enchanted spot.'
The child is father to the man. When Huntington, S.S., grew up, it
was to record for the thousands who listened to him as a prophet his
many encounters with the devil. The Satan he believes in is an exact
counterpart of the stern, hard-favoured exciseman whom he had regarded
as God's employé. On one occasion he writes, 'Satan began to tempt me
violently that there was no God, but I reasoned against the belief of
that from my own experience of his dreadful wrath, saying, How can I
credit this suggestion, when (God's) wrath is already revealed in my
heart, and every curse in his book levelled at my head.' (That seems
his only evidence of God's existence--his wrath!) 'The Devil answered
that the Bible was false, and only wrote by cunning men to puzzle and
deceive people. 'There is no God,' said the adversary, 'nor is the
Bible true.' ... I asked, 'Who, then, made the world?' He replied,
'I did, and I made men too.' Satan, perceiving my rationality almost
gone, followed me up with another temptation; that as there was no
God I must come back to his work again, else when he had brought me
to hell he would punish me more than all the rest. I cried out, 'Oh,
what will become of me! what will become of me!' He answered that
there was no escape but by praying to him; and that he would show me
some lenity when he took me to hell. I went and sat in my tool-house
halting between two opinions; whether I should petition Satan, or
whether I should keep praying to God, until I could ascertain the
consequences. While I was thinking of bending my knees to such a
cursed being as Satan, an uncommon fear of God sprung up in my heart
to keep me from it.'
In other words, Mr. Huntington wavered between the petitions 'Good
Lord! Good Devil!' The question whether it were more moral, more
holy, to worship the one than the other did not occur to him. He
only considers which is the strongest--which could do him the most
mischief--which, therefore, to fear the most; and when Satan has almost
convinced him in his own favour, he changes round to God. Why? Not
because of any superior goodness on God's part. He says, 'An uncommon
fear of God sprung up in my heart.' The greater terror won the day;
that is to say, of two demons he yielded to the stronger. Such an
experience, though that of one living in our own time, represents a
phase in the development of the relation between God and Satan which
would have appeared primitive to an Assyrian two thousand years
ago. The ethical antagonism of the two was then much more clearly
felt. But this bit of contemporary superstition may bring before us
the period when Satan, from having been a Nemesis or Retributive Agent
of the divine law, had become a mere personal rival of his superior.
Satan, among the Jews, was at first a generic term for an adversary
lying in wait. It is probably the furtive suggestion at the root of
this Hebrew word which aided in its selection as the name for the
invisible adverse powers when they were especially distinguished. But
originally no special personage, much less any antagonist of Jehovah,
was signified by the word. Thus we read: 'And God's anger was kindled
because he (Balaam) went; and the angel of the Lord stood in the way
for a Satan against him.... And the ass saw the angel of the Lord
standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand.' [78] The eyes of
Balaam are presently opened, and the angel says, 'I went out to be a
Satan to thee because the way is perverse before me.' The Philistines
fear to take David with them to battle lest he should prove a Satan to
them, that is, an underhand enemy or traitor. [79] David called those
who wished to put Shimei to death Satans; [80] but in this case the
epithet would have been more applicable to himself for affecting to
protect the honest man for whose murder he treacherously provided. [81]
That it was popularly used for adversary as distinct from evil appears
in Solomon's words, 'There is neither Satan nor evil occurrent.' [82]
Yet it is in connection with Solomon that we may note the entrance
of some of the materials for the mythology which afterwards invested
the name of Satan. It is said that, in anger at his idolatries,
'the Lord stirred up a Satan unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite:
he was of the king's seed in Edom.' [83] Hadad, 'the Sharp,' bore
a name next to that of Esau himself for the redness of his wrath,
and, as we have seen in a former chapter, Edom was to the Jews the
land of 'bogeys.' 'Another Satan,' whom the Lord 'stirred up,' was
the Devastator, Prince Rezon, founder of the kingdom of Damascus,
of whom it is said, 'he was a Satan to Israel all the days of
Solomon.' [84] The human characteristics of supposed 'Scourges of
God' easily pass away. The name that becomes traditionally associated
with calamities whose agents were 'stirred up' by the Almighty is not
allowed the glory of its desolations. The word 'Satan,' twice used in
this chapter concerning Solomon's fall, probably gained here a long
step towards distinct personification as an eminent national enemy,
though there is no intimation of a power daring to oppose the will of
Jehovah. Nor, indeed, is there any such intimation anywhere in the
'canonical' books of the Old Testament. The writer of Psalm cix.,
imprecating for his adversaries, says: 'Set thou a wicked man over
him; and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged,
let him be condemned; and let his prayer become sin.' In this there is
an indication of a special Satan, but he is supposed to be an agent
of Jehovah. In the catalogue of the curses invoked of the Lord,
we find the evils which were afterwards supposed to proceed only
from Satan. The only instance in the Old Testament in which there
is even a faint suggestion of hostility towards Satan on the part of
Jehovah is in Zechariah. Here we find the following remarkable words:
'And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of
Jehovah, and the Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And
Jehovah said unto Satan, Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; even Jehovah,
that hath chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked
out of the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and
stood before the angel. And he answered and spake to those that stood
before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And to
him he said, Lo, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee,
and I will clothe thee with goodly raiment.' [85]
Here we have a very fair study and sketch of that judicial trial of
the soul for which mainly the dogma of a resurrection after death
was invented. The doctrine of future rewards and punishments is not
one which a priesthood would invent or care for, so long as they
possessed unrestricted power to administer such in this life. It is
when an alien power steps in to supersede the priesthood--the Gallio
too indifferent whether ceremonial laws are carried out to permit the
full application of terrestrial cruelties--that the priest requires a
tribunal beyond the grave to execute his sentence. In this picture
of Zechariah we have this invisible Celestial Court. The Angel
of Judgment is in his seat. The Angel of Accusation is present to
prosecute. A poor filthy wretch appears for trial. What advocate can
he command? Where is Michael, the special advocate of Israel? He does
not recognise one of his clients in this poor Joshua in his rags. But
lo! suddenly Jehovah himself appears; reproves his own commissioned
Accuser; declares Joshua a brand plucked from the burning (Tophet);
orders a change of raiment, and, condoning his offences, takes him
into his own service. But in all this there is nothing to show general
antagonism between Jehovah and Satan, but the reverse.
When we look into the Book of Job we find a Satan sufficiently
different from any and all of those mentioned under that name in other
parts of the Old Testament to justify the belief that he has been
mainly adapted from the traditions of other regions. The plagues and
afflictions which in Psalm cix. are invoked from Jehovah, even while
Satan is mentioned as near, are in the Book of Job ascribed to Satan
himself. Jehovah only permits Satan to inflict them with a proviso
against total destruction. Satan is here named as a personality in
a way not known elsewhere in the Old Testament, unless it be in 1
Chron. xxi. 1, where Satan (the article being in this single case
absent) is said to have 'stood up against Israel, and provoked David
to number Israel.' But in this case the uniformity of the passage with
the others (excepting those in Job) is preserved by the same incident
being recorded in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, 'The anger of Jehovah was kindled
against Israel, and he (Jehovah) moved David against them to say,
Go number Israel and Judah.'
It is clear that, in the Old Testament, it is in the Book of Job
alone that we find Satan as the powerful prince of an empire which
is distinct from that of Jehovah,--an empire of tempest, plague, and
fire,--though he presents himself before Jehovah, and awaits permission
to exert his power on a loyal subject of Jehovah. The formality of
a trial, so dear to the Semitic heart, is omitted in this case. And
these circumstances confirm the many other facts which prove this
drama to be largely of non-Semitic origin. It is tolerably clear that
the drama of Harischandra in India and that of Job were both developed
from the Sanskrit legends mentioned in our chapter on Viswámitra; and
it is certain that Aryan and Semitic elements are both represented in
the figure of Satan as he has passed into the theology of Christendom.
Nor indeed has Satan since his importation into Jewish literature
in this new aspect, much as the Rabbins have made of him, ever
been assigned the same character among that people that has been
assigned him in Christendom. He has never replaced Samaël as their
Archfiend. Rabbins have, indeed, in later times associated him
with the Serpent which seduced Eve in Eden; but the absence of any
important reference to that story in the New Testament is significant
of the slight place it had in the Jewish mind long after the belief
in Satan had become popular. In fact, that essentially Aryan myth
little accorded with the ideas of strife and immorality which the
Jews had gradually associated with Samaël. In the narrative, as
it stands in Genesis, it is by no means the Serpent that makes the
worst appearance. It is Jehovah, whose word--that death shall follow
on the day the apple is eaten--is falsified by the result; and while
the Serpent is seen telling the truth, and guiding man to knowledge,
Jehovah is represented as animated by jealousy or even fear of man's
attainments. All of which is natural enough in an extremely primitive
myth of a combat between rival gods, but by no means possesses the
moral accent of the time and conditions amid which Jahvism certainly
originated. It is in the same unmoral plane as the contest of the
Devas and Asuras for the Amrita, in Hindu mythology, a contest of
physical force and wits.
The real development of Satan among the Jews was from an accusing
to an opposing spirit, then to an agent of punishment--a hated
executioner. The fact that the figure here given (Fig. 5) was
identified by one so familiar with Semitic demonology as Calmet as a
representation of him, is extremely interesting. It was found among
representations of Cherubim, and on the back of one somewhat like
it is a formula of invocation against demons. The countenance is of
that severe beauty which the Greeks ascribed to Nemesis. Nemesis has
at her feet the wheel and rudder, symbols of her power to overtake
the evil-doer by land or sea; the feet of this figure are winged
for pursuit. He has four hands. In one he bears the lamp which, like
Lucifer, brings light on the deed of darkness. As to others, he answers
Baruch's description (Ep. 13, 14) of the Babylonian god, 'He hath a
sceptre in his hand like a man, like a judge of the kingdom--he hath
in his hand a sword and an axe.' He bears nicely-graduated implements
of punishment, from the lash that scourges to the axe that slays; and
his retributive powers are supplemented by the scorpion tail. At his
knees are signets; whomsoever he seals are sealed. He has the terrible
eyes which were believed able to read on every forehead a catalogue
of sins invisible to mortals, a power that made women careful of
their veils, and gave meaning to the formula 'Get thee behind me!' [86]
Now this figure, which Calmet believed to be Satan, bears on its
reverse, 'The Everlasting Sun.' He is a god made up of Egyptian and
Magian forms, the head-plumes belonging to the one, the multiplied
wings to the other. Matter (Hist. Crit. de Gnost.) reproduces it,
and says that 'it differs so much from all else of the kind as to
prove it the work of an impostor.' But Professor C. W. King has a
(probably fifth century) gem in his collection evidently a rude copy
of this (reproduced in his 'Gnostics,' Pl. xi. 3), on the back of
which is 'Light of Lights;' and, in a note which I have from him,
he says that it sufficiently proves Matter wrong, and that this form
was primitive. In one gem of Professor King's (Pl. v. 1) the lamp
is also carried, and means the 'Light of Lights.' The inscription
beneath, within a coiled serpent, is in corrupt cuneiform characters,
long preserved by the Magi, though without understanding them. There
is little doubt, therefore, that the instinct of Calmet was right,
and that we have here an early form of the detective and retributive
Magian deity ultimately degraded to an accusing spirit, or Satan.
Although the Jews did not identify Satan with their Scapegoat, yet
he has been veritably the Scapegoat among devils for two thousand
years. All the nightmares and phantasms that ever haunted the human
imagination have been packed upon him unto this day, when it is
almost as common to hear his name in India and China as in Europe and
America. In thus passing round the world, he has caught the varying
features of many fossilised demons: he has been horned, hoofed,
reptilian, quadrupedal, anthropoid, anthropomorphic, beautiful, ugly,
male, female; the whites painted him black, and the blacks, with
more reason, painted him white. Thus has Satan been made a miracle
of incongruities. Yet through all these protean shapes there has
persisted the original characteristic mentioned. He is prosecutor
and executioner under the divine government, though his office has
been debased by that mental confusion which, in the East, abhors the
burner of corpses, and, in the West, regards the public hangman with
contempt; the abhorrence, in the case of Satan, being intensified
by the supposition of an overfondness for his work, carried to the
extent of instigating the offences which will bring him victims.
In a well-known English Roman Catholic book [87] of recent times, there
is this account of St. Francis' visit to hell in company with the Angel
Gabriel:--'St. Francis saw that, on the other side of (a certain) soul,
there was another devil to mock at and reproach it. He said, Remember
where you are, and where you will be for ever; how short the sin was,
how long the punishment. It is your own fault; when you committed that
mortal sin you knew how you would be punished. What a good bargain you
made to take the pains of eternity in exchange for the sin of a day,
an hour, a moment. You cry now for your sin, but your crying comes
too late. You liked bad company; you will find bad company enough
here. Your father was a drunkard, look at him there drinking red-hot
fire. You were too idle to go to mass on Sundays; be as idle as you
like now, for there is no mass to go to. You disobeyed your father,
but you dare not disobey him who is your father in hell.'
This devil speaks as one carrying out the divine decrees. He
preaches. He utters from his chasuble of flame the sermons of Father
Furniss. And, no doubt, wherever belief in Satan is theological, this
is pretty much the form which he assumes before the mind (or what such
believers would call their mind, albeit really the mind of some Syrian
dead these two thousand years). But the Satan popularly personalised
was man's effort to imagine an enthusiasm of inhumanity. He is the
necessary appendage to a personalised Omnipotence, whose thoughts are
not as man's thoughts, but claim to coerce these. His degradation
reflects the heartlessness and the ingenuity of torture which must
always represent personal government with its catalogue of fictitious
crimes. Offences against mere Majesty, against iniquities framed in
law, must be doubly punished, the thing to be secured being doubly
weak. Under any theocratic government law and punishment would become
the types of diabolism. Satan thus has a twofold significance. He
reports what powerful priesthoods found to be the obstacles to their
authority; and he reports the character of the priestly despotisms
which aimed to obstruct human development.