THE HOLY GHOST.
A Hanover relic--Mr. Atkinson on the Dove--The Dove in the Old
Testament--Ecclesiastical symbol--Judicial symbol--A vision of
St. Dunstan's--The witness of chastity--Dove and Serpent--The
unpardonable sin--Inexpiable sin among the Jews--Destructive
power of Jehovah--Potency of the breath--Third persons of
Trinities--Pentecost--Christian superstitions--Mr. Moody on the
sin against the Holy Ghost--Mysterious fear--Idols of the cave.
There is in the old town of Hanover, in Germany, a schoolhouse
in which, above the teacher's chair, there was anciently the
representation of a dove perched upon an iron branch or rod; and
beneath the inscription--'This shall lead you into all truth.' In the
course of time the dove fell down and was removed to the museum; but
there is still left before the children the rod, with the admonition
that it will lead them into all truth. This is about as much as for
a long time was left in the average christian mind of the symbolical
Dove, the Holy Ghost. Half of its primitive sense departed, and there
remained only an emblem of mysterious terror. More spiritual minds
have introduced into the modern world a conception of the Holy Ghost
as a life-giving influence or a spirit of love, but the ancient view
which regarded it as the Iron Rod of judgment and execution still
survives in the notion of the 'sin against the Holy Ghost.'
Mr. Henry G. Atkinson writes as follows: [113]--'My old friend
Barry Cornwall, the fine poet, once said to me, 'My dear Atkinson,
can you tell me the meaning of the Holy Ghost; what can it possibly
mean?' 'Well,' I said, 'I suppose it means a pigeon. We have never
heard of it in any other form but that of the dove descending from
heaven to the Virgin Mary. Then we have the pretty fable of the dove
returning to the ark with the olive-branch, so that the Christian
religion may be called the Religion of the Pigeon. In the Greek Church
the pigeon is held sacred. St. Petersburgh is swarming with pigeons,
but they are never killed or disturbed. I knew a lady whose life
was made wretched in the belief that she had sinned the unpardonable
sin against the Holy Ghost, and neither priest nor physician could
persuade her out of the delusion, though in all other respects she
was quite sensible. She regarded herself as such a wretch that she
could not bear to see herself in the glass, and the looking-glasses
had all to be removed, and when she went to an hotel, her husband had
to go first and have the looking-glasses of the apartments covered
over. But what is the Holy Ghost--what is its office? Sitting with
Miss Martineau at her house at Ambleside one day, a German lady, who
spoke broken English, came in. She was a neighbour, and had a large
house and grounds, and kept fowls. 'Oh!' she said, quite excited,
'the beast has taken off another chicken (meaning the hawk). I saw
it myself. The wretch! it came down just like the Holy Ghost, and
snatched off the chicken.' How Miss Martineau did laugh; but I don't
know that this story throws much light upon the subject, since it
does but bring us back to the pigeon.'
It would require a volume to explain fully all the problems suggested
in this brief note, but the more important facts may be condensed.
It is difficult to show how far the natural characteristics and habits
of the dove are reflected in its wide-spread symbolism. Its plaintive
note and fondness for solitudes are indicated in the Psalmist's
aspiration, 'Oh that I had the wings of a dove, then would I fly
away and be at rest; lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in
the wilderness.' [114] It is not a difficult transition from this
association with the wilderness to investment with a relationship with
the demon of the wilderness--Azazel. So we find it in certain passages
in Jeremiah, where the word has been suppressed in the ordinary
English version. 'The land is desolate because of the fierceness
of the dove.' 'Let us go again to our own people to avoid the sword
of the dove.' 'They shall flee away every one for fear of the sword
of the dove.' [115] In India its lustres--blue and fiery--may have
connected it with azure-necked Siva.
The far-seeing and wonderful character of the pigeon as a carrier
was well known to the ancients. On Egyptian bas-reliefs priests are
shown sending them with messages. They appear in the branches of the
oaks of Dodona, and in old Russian frescoes they sometimes perch on
the Tree of Knowledge in paradise. It is said that, in order to avail
himself of this universal symbolism, Mohammed trained a dove to perch
on his shoulder. As the raven was said to whisper secrets to Odin,
so the dove was often pictured at the ear of God. In Nôtre Dame de
Chartres, its beak is at the ear of Pope Gregory the Great.
It passed--and did not have far to go--to be the familiar of kings. It
brought the chrism from heaven at the baptism of Clovis. White
doves came to bear the soul of Louis of Thuringia to heaven. The
dove surmounted the sceptre of Charlemagne. At the consecration of
the kings of France, after the ceremony of unction, white doves were
let loose in the church. At the consecration of a monarch in England,
a duke bears before the sovereign the sceptre with the dove.
By association with both ecclesiastical and political sovereignty,
it came to represent very nearly the old fatal serpent power which
had lurked in all its transformations. When the Holy Ghost was
represented as a crowned man, the dove was pictured on his wrist like
that falcon with which the German lady, mentioned by Mr. Atkinson,
identified it. But in this connection its symbolism is more especially
referable to a passage in Isaiah: [116] 'There shall come forth a rod
out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots;
and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom
and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of the
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.' The sanctity of the number
seven led to the partition of the last clause into three spirits,
making up the seven, which were: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel,
Strength, Knowledge, Piety, Fear. In some of the representations
of these where each of the seven Doves is labelled with its name,
'Fear' is at the top of their arch, a Psalm having said, 'The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' When the knightly Order
of the Holy Ghost was created in 1352, it was aristocratic, and,
when reorganised by Henry III. of France in 1579, it was restricted
to magisterial and political personages. With them was the spirit of
Fear certainly; and the Order shows plainly what had long been the
ideas connected with the Holy Ghost.
M. Didron finds this confirmed in the legends of every country, and
especially refers to a story of St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury,
in the tenth century. Three men, convicted of coining false money, had
been condemned to death. Immediately before the celebration of mass
on the day of Pentecost, the festival of the Holy Ghost, St. Dunstan
inquired whether justice had been done upon the three criminals:
he was informed in reply that the execution had been delayed on
account of the solemn feast of Pentecost then in celebration. 'It
shall not be thus,' cried the indignant archbishop, and gave orders
for the immediate execution of the guilty men. Several of those who
were present remonstrated against the cruelty of that order; it was
nevertheless obeyed.
After the execution of the criminals, Dunstan washed his face, and
turned with a joyful countenance towards his oratory. 'I now hope,'
said he, 'that God will be pleased to accept the sacrifice I am about
to offer;' and in fact, during the celebration of mass, at the moment
when the Saint raised his hands to implore that God the Father would
be pleased to give peace to his Church, to guide, guard, and keep
it in unity throughout the world, 'a dove, as white as snow, was
seen to descend from heaven, and during the entire service remained
with wings extended, floating silently in air above the head of the
archbishop.' [117]
The passionate sexual nature of the dove made it emblem of Aphrodite,
and it became spiritualised in its consecration to the Madonna. From
its relation to the falsely-accused Mary, there grew around the Dove
a special class of legends which show it attesting female innocence
or avenging it. The white dove said to have issued from the mouth
of Joan of Arc is one of many instances. There is still, I believe,
preserved in the Lyttleton family the picture painted by Dowager
Lady Lyttleton in 1780, in commemoration of the warning of death
given to Lord Lyttleton by the mother of two girls he had seduced,
the vision being attended by a fluttering dove. The original account
of his vision or dream, attributed to Lord Lyttleton, mentions only
'a bird.' When next told, it is that he 'heard a noise resembling the
fluttering of a dove,' and on looking to the window saw 'an unhappy
female whom he had seduced.' But the exigencies of orthodoxy are too
strong for original narratives. As the 'bird' attested an announcement
that on the third day (that too was gradually added) he would die,
it must have been a dove; and as the dove attends only the innocent,
it must have been the poor girl's mother that appeared. It was easy
to have the woman die at the precise hour of appearance. [118] When in
Chicago in 1875, I read in one of the morning papers a very particular
account of how a white dove flew into the chamber window of a young
unmarried woman in a neighbouring village, she having brought forth
a child, and solemnly declaring that she had never lost her virginity.
In this history of the symbolism of the Dove the theological
development of the Holy Ghost has been outlined. We have seen
in the previous chapter that the Holy Spirit is in opposition to
the Natural Air,--repository of evils. The Dove symbolised this
aspect of it in hovering over the world emerging from its diluvial
baptism, and also over the typical new Adam (Jesus) coming from his
baptism. But in this it corresponds with the serpent-symbol of life
in Egyptian mythology brooding over the primal mundane egg (as in
Fig. 23, vol. i.). Nathaniel Hawthorne found a mystical meaning in
the beautiful group at Rome representing a girl pressing a dove to
her bosom while she is attacked by a serpent. But in their theological
aspects the Dove and the Serpent blend; they are at once related and
separated in Christ's words, 'Be ye wise as serpents and harmless
as doves;' but in the office of the Holy Ghost as representing a
divine Intelligence, and its consequent evolution as executor of
divine judgments, it fulfils in Christendom much the same part as
the Serpent in the more primitive mythologies.
'Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven unto men,' said a legendary
Christ; [119] 'but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be
forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man,
it will be forgiven him, but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Ghost, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in that
to come.' In Mark [120] it is said, 'All things shall be forgiven
unto the sons of men, the sins and the blasphemies wherewith they
shall blaspheme: but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy
Ghost has never forgiveness, but will be guilty of everlasting sin;
(because they said, He has an unclean spirit).' When Christ uttered
these tremendous words, no disciple seems to have been startled,
or to have inquired into the nature of that sin, so much worse than
any offence against himself or the Father, which has since employed
so much theological speculation.
In fact, they needed no explanation: it was an old story;
the unpardonable sin was a familiar feature of ancient Jewish
law. Therein the sin excluded from expiation was any presumptuous
language or action against Jehovah. It is easy to see why this was
so. Real offences, crimes against man or society, were certain of
punishment, through the common interest and need. But the honour
and interests of Jehovah, not being obvious or founded in nature,
required special and severe statutes. The less a thing is protected
by its intrinsic and practical importance, the more it must, if at
all, be artificially protected. This is illustrated in the story
of Eli and his two sons. These youths were guilty of the grossest
immoralities, but not a word was said against them, they being sons
of the High Priest, except a mild remonstrance from Eli himself. But
when on an occasion these youths tasted the part of the sacrificial
meat offered to Jehovah, the divine wrath was kindled. Eli, much more
terrified at this ceremonial than the moral offence, said to his sons,
'If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him, but if a
man sin against Jehovah, who shall entreat for him?' In protecting
his interests, Jehovah's destroying angel does not allude to any
other offence of Eli's sons except that against himself. But when the
priestly guardians of the divine interests came with their people under
the control of successive Gallios,--aliens who cared not for their
ceremonial law, and declined to permit the infliction of its penalties,
as England now forbids suttee in India,--the priests could only pass
sentences; execution of them had to be adjourned to a future world.
The doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not one
which a priesthood would naturally prefer or invent. So long as a
priesthood possesses the power of life and death over the human body,
they would not, by suggesting future awards, risk the possibility
of a heresy arising to maintain Deorum injuria diis cura. But where
an alien jurisdiction has relegated to local deities the defence of
their own majesty, there must grow up the theory that such offences
as cannot be expiated on earth are unpardonable, and must, because
of the legal impunity with which they can be committed, be all the
more terribly avenged somewhere else.
Under alien influences, also, the supreme and absolute government of
Jehovah had been divided, as is elsewhere described. He who originally
claimed the empire of both light and darkness, good and evil, when
his rivalry against other gods was on a question of power, had to be
relieved of responsibility for earthly evils when the moral sense
demanded dualism. Thus there grew up a separate personification of
the destructive power of Jehovah, which had been supposed to lodge
in his breath. The last breath of man obviously ends life; there is
nothing more simple in its natural germ than the association of the
first breath and the last with the Creative Spirit. [121] This potency
of the breath or spirit is found in many ancient regions. It is the
natural teaching of the destructive simoom, [122] or even of the annual
autumnal breath which strikes the foliage with death. Persia especially
abounded with superstitions of this character. By a sorcerer's breath
the two serpents were evoked from the breast of Zohák. Nizami has woven
the popular notion into his story of the two physicians who tried to
destroy each other; one of whom survived his rival's poisonous draught,
and killed that rival by making him smell a flower on which he had
breathed. [123] Such notions as these influenced powerfully the later
development of the idea of Jehovah, concerning whom it was said of old,
'With the breath of his mouth shall he slay the wicked;' 'the breath
of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle (Tophet).'
Meanwhile in all the Trinitarian races which were to give form to
christian Mythology, destructiveness had generally (not invariably)
become the traditional rôle of the Third Person. [124] In Egypt there
were Osiris the Creator, Horus the Preserver, Typhon the Destroyer;
in Babylonia, Anu the Upper Air, Sin (Uri) the Moon, Samis the Sun. In
Assyria the Sun regains his place, and deadly influences were ascribed
to the Moon. In India, Brahma the Father, Vishnu the Saviour, Siva the
Destroyer; in Persia, Zeruâne-Akrane Infinite Time, Ormuzd the Good,
Ahriman the Evil; in Greece Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês, or Heaven,
Ocean, and Hell, were the first-born of Time. The Trinitarian form had
gradually crept in among the Jews, though their Jahvistic theology only
admitted its application to inferior deities--Cain, Abel, Seth; Moses,
Aaron, Hur; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. As time went on, these succeeded
the ideas of Jehovah, Messias, and Wisdom. But already the serpent
was the wisest of all the beasts of the field in Jewish mythology;
and the personified Wisdom was fully prepared to be identified with
Athene, the Greek Wisdom, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus
(the Air), and whose familiar was a serpent.
On the other hand, however, the divine Breath had also its benign
significance. Siva ('the auspicious') inherited the character of Rudra
('roaring storm'), but it was rather supported later on by his wife
Káli. Athena though armed was the goddess of agriculture. The breath
of Elohim had given man life. 'I now draw in and now let forth,'
says Krishna; [125] 'I am generation and dissolution; I am death
and immortality.' 'Thou wilt fancy it the dawning zephyr of an early
spring,' says Sàdi; 'but it is the breath of Isa, or Jesus; for in
that fresh breath and verdure the dead earth is reviving.' [126]
'The voice of the turtle is heard in the land,' sings Solomon.
When the Third Person of the Christian Trinity was constituted,
it inherited the fatality of all the previous Third Persons--the
Destroyers--while it veiled them in mystery. When the Holy Ghost
inspired the disciples the account is significant. [127] 'Suddenly
there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind,
... and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy
Ghost.' This was on the Day of Pentecost, the harvest festival, when
the first-fruits were offered to the quickening Spirit or Breath of
nature; but the destructive feature is there also--the tongues are
cloven like those of serpents. The beneficent power was manifest at
the gate called Beautiful when the lame man was made to walk by Peter's
power; but its fatal power was with the same apostle, and when he said,
'Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?' instantly
Ananias fell down and gave up the ghost. [128] The spirit was carried,
it is said, in the breath of the apostles. Its awfulness had various
illustrations. Mary offered up two doves in token of her conception by
the Holy Ghost. Jesus is described as scourging from the temple those
that sold doves, and the allegory is repeated in Peter's denunciation
of Simon Magus, who offered money for the gift of the Holy Ghost. [129]
In one of his sermons Mr. Moody said, 'Nearly every day we have
somebody coming into the inquiry-room very much discouraged and
disheartened and cast down, because they think they have committed
a sin against the Holy Ghost, and that there is no hope for
them.' Mr. Moody said he believed the sin was nearly impossible, but
he adds this remarkable statement, 'I don't remember of ever hearing
a man swear by the Holy Ghost except once, and then I looked upon
him expecting him to fall dead, and my blood ran cold when I heard
him.' But it is almost as rare to hear prayers addressed to the Holy
Ghost; and both phenomena--for praying and swearing are radically
related--are no doubt survivals of the ancient notions which I
have described. The forces of nature out of which the symbol grew,
the life that springs from death and grows by decay, is essentially
repeated again by those who adhere to the letter that kills, and
also by those who ascend with the spirit that makes alive. It is
probable that no more terrible form of the belief in a Devil survives
than this Holy Ghost Dogma, which, lurking in vagueness and mystery,
like the serpent of which it was born, passes by the self-righteous
to cast its shadows over the most sensitive and lowly minds, chiefly
those of pure women prone to exaggerate their least blemishes.
In right reason the fatal Holy Ghost stands as the type of that Fear
by which priesthoods have been able to preserve their institutions
after the deities around whom they grew had become unpresentable,
and which could best be fostered beneath the veil of mystery. They
who love darkness rather than light because their deeds cannot bear
the light, veil their gods not to abolish them but to preserve
them. Calvinism is veiled, and Athanasianism, and Romanism; they
are all veiled idols, whose power lives by being hid in a mass of
philology and casuistry. So long as Christianity can persuade the
Pope and Dr. Martineau, Dean Stanley and Mr. Moody, Quakers, Shakers,
Jumpers, all to describe themselves alike as 'Christians,' its real
nature will be veiled, its institutions will cumber the ground, and
draw away the strength and intellect due to humanity; the indefinable
'infidel' will be a devil. This process has been going on for a long
time. The serpent-god, accursed by the human mind which grew superior
to it, has crept into its Ark; but its fang and venom linger with that
Bishop breathing on a priest, the priest breathing on a sick child,
and bears down side by side with science that atmosphere of mystery
in which creep all the old reptiles that throttle common sense and
send their virus through all the social frame.
In demonology the Holy Ghost is not a Devil, but in it are reflected
the diabolisation of Culture and Progress and Art. It was these
'Devils' which compelled the gods to veil themselves through successive
ages, and to spiritualise their idols and dogmas to save their
institutions. The deities concealed have proved far more potent over
the popular imagination than when visible. The indefinable terrible
menace of the Holy Ghost was a consummate reply to that equally
indefinable spirit of loathing and contempt which rises among the
cultured and refined towards things that have become unreal, their
formalities and their cant. It is this ever-recurring necessity that
enables clergymen to denounce belief in Hell and a Devil in churches
which assuredly would never have been built but for the superstition
so denounced. The ancient beliefs and the present denunciation of them
are on the same thread,--the determination of a Church to survive and
hold its power at any and every cost. The jesuitical power to veil
the dogma is the most successful method of confronting the Spirit
of an Age, which in the eye of reason is the only holy spirit, but
which to ecclesiastical power struggling with enlightenment is the
only formidable Satan.