Part 17

But supposing them a gift from God as damages sustained by Job at the hand of Satan through the instigation of God, yet they could not assuage his grief for the loved ones ruthlessly torn from his embrace. It is easy to see that this story is nothing more than an oriental tale--a myth. It is wanting not only in fact, but it teaches very bad morals. There is nothing ennobling in it. 1. God had no moral right to permit Satan to come unrebuked into the company of the sons of God. An earthly father teaches his children to avoid "evil communications," but on this occasion the heavenly father did not scorn the company of Satan, but treated him respectfully. 2. Again, the infinite being would not need to ask the Devil what his opinion of Job was, for he would know beforehand. 3. The infinitely good being would not want the Devil's opinion--nor would he value it a straw, if it were given before it was asked. 4. The infinitely just ruler of the universe would not give the great adversary of man and God such diabolical power over that "perfect and upright man" Job. Nor would he have permitted the three "miserable comforters," reeling mentally under the blind staggers of a blind theology, to have added more torment to that imposed by his Satanic Majesty. Nor would he have permitted him to murder the seven sons and three daughters, as a mere matter of experiment in testing Job's staying powers. All this is so horrible that the afterthought of more camels and asses, as a compensation is an insufficient patch to cover the unqualified wrongs done to the man of Uz. Even Job does not shine as conspicuously in all this as he should. Job ought to have protested with all his might and main against both God and Devil, that his individual rights were invaded. He should have taken a change of venue, to have a hearing before some other god, where there was a slight hope of securing more justice. But he didn't and the consequence is we are all advised, when suffering the outrageous wrongs of despotism, to "be patient like Job." It has been a great evil to the human family that Job was no "kicker;" it has opened wide the flood gates of tyranny, and transfused the cowardly blood of sheep into the veins of men. Oh, that Job had kicked and taken an appeal, what an inspiration it would be to the fold of God now, to resist the shears of the fleecers! to rebel against the rule of robbers!

Some questions to be answered by the man who pounds the Bible and claims to understand the Greek scriptures:

1. Who were the sons of God?

2. How many were there present, and were there still more of them elsewhere?

3. Where did they come from?

4. Were they any relation to the people of Nod?

5. Who were their mothers?

6. What were their occupations?

7. Where are they now?

8. Where did the Devil come from?

9. Did God create him or did he make himself?

10. If God made him then is he not responsible for all that old Nick does?

11. If he is as terribly demoniacal as orthodox theology describes him, "why in 'l don't God kill the Devil?"

12. If he cannot kill him does it not prove that the Devil is his match; and if he can, but will not, does it not prove that he sustains him and approves of his work?

13. In the light of modern theology is not the Devil almost always successful? Does he not have a larger kingdom, a larger following than God?

14. Why did the Creator inflict such a hellish punishment upon Adam and Eve, and let the Serpent off so lightly?

15. Has the punishment inflicted upon the Devil lessened his power?

16. Have the curses which God has pronounced on the world made it better?

17. Is there any place in the record, accounts of the Devil's stealing, robbing, and murdering?

18. Are there not numerous stories in the Bible recounting the robberies and murders perpetrated in the name and by the sanction of God? Some times the people of God destroyed five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand, seventy thousand, and in one instance six hundred and seventy thousand, as in the case of Pharaoh and his hosts in the Red sea. Did Satan ever try to do anything as hellish as this?

19. Is the Devil the father of lies? When did he tell a deliberate falsehood? To Eve? Oh no, it was the other party who did that business.

20. Did he lie when he took Jesus up into an exceeding high mountain, etc., and saith unto him, "All these will I give thee," etc.? (Mat. 4 : 8.) It is claimed that old Beelzebub lied on this occasion. It would hit the bull's eye in the center if we were to say that the writer of this story about Jesus being carried off bodily into an exceeding high mountain, was the boy responsible for this lie. But without resting the case there let us see how it opens out. It is urged that "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof;" but it may be urged that the Devil is called "the prince of this world," implying that he has just claims both by conquest and possession; and therefore he could have given at least a quitclaim deed.

The Devil is an expensive luxury of the church. It costs about $1,000,000,000 annually for preaching against the Devil. Even if there is less said derogatory to his Satanic Majesty now-adays, yet it costs just as much, and more too, for drawing it mild, than it did formerly, for describing the split hoof, horns, and spear-headed tail, hell, etc. Notwithstanding the fact that the people want less Devil and more bread and beef, yet they must have some Devil. Hence the church clings to its Devil-idol with which to scare the people. To give up the Devil is to break up house-keeping all around. If there be no Devil then there is no hell; and if no hell, there is no salvation; and if no salvation there is no need of preaching; and "no preach no pay." How could a fat minister with a fat salary, look such a ghost as that in the face? Yes, it would be impossible for the church to survive without the Devil. The clergy have to fall back upon him in times of revival to stir up the fears of uninformed people.

The Devil has had many hard names heaped upon him, for example: The Tempter; the Adversary or Satan; Beelzebub; the Prince of Devils; the Strong One; the Enemy, or the Hostile One; the Serpent; Lying Spirit; Lucifer; Son of the Morning; Prince of Darkness; Prince of the Power of the Air; the Accuser; Angel of the Bottomless Pit; Angel of Light; Mammon; Belial; Legion; the Foul Spirit; the Unclean Spirit; the God of this World; the Great Red Dragon; Abaddon; Apollyon, the Destroyer, etc. Besides these sacred titles, he is equally well known by certain house-hold names, as, Old Nick; Old Splitfoot; the Old Scratch; Old Harry; Old Horny; the Old Boy; the Deuce; the Dickens; auld Clouty; Nickie; Ben; his Satanic Majesty, etc. It must be confessed that these names do not carry much sanctity with them, nor do they leave us in love with the character they represent. But before we proceed further, it is only simple justice (that is giving the Devil his due), to call attention to the various names by which God has been known.

The early Hebrew literature speaks of gods, not God. We find the following names ascribed to them: El; Elohim; El Shaddai; Shaddai; Elvoh; Yahve, or Jah. The following is a personal photograph as nearly as we can draw it, of the Jewish Jehovah as described in the Bible: "There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it." (Ps. 18 : 8.) "Round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies." (Ps. 18 : 11.) "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire." (Rev. 1 : 14.) "And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace." (Rev. 1 : 15.) "He had horns coming out of his hand." (Hab. 3 : 4.) "And burning coals went forth at his feet." (Hab. 3 : 5.) "In the midst of the seven candle-sticks one like unto the son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot and girt about the paps with a golden girdle." (Rev. 1 : 13.) "And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword." (Rev. 1 : 16.)

This God has violated all the moral laws he ever gave to man. He approved of lying, robbing, adultery, murder, war, and all the great crimes known to man.

Is it any wonder that Theodore Parker should say to the Calvinist who was trying to convert him, "The difference between us is simple,--your God is my Devil."

The reader has his choice--or he may say "good Lord good Devil," and float with the current. There is, however, no disguising the fact that between God and the Devil, as described in the Bible, the Devil sustains the better moral character of the two. He is not spotless and clean, it is true, but he has infinitely less bloodshed to answer for than Jehovah.

Where the Devil did he come from? I am reminded of this form of expression by a little incident related of a Scotch preacher, who took for his text, on one occasion, the following passage: "The Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour." (1 Peter 5 : 8.) It must be borne in mind, in order to better understand the full force and beauty of the preacher's division of the text into three heads, that it was common in earlier times to repeat the pronoun in a sentence, for example, John Smith, his book, Mary she has come home, etc. In charming accord with this old style, the minister divided his text into three parts. He said, "My brethren, we will first inquire where the Devil he was walking to? and secondly, who the Devil he wanted to devour? and thirdly, what the Devil he was roaring about?"

Having gratuitously thrown in this gem, we proceed to answer the question, "Where the Devil, did he come from?"

It is evident that the earlier Hebrew literature is almost wholly free from any traces of a personal Devil, and that later writings of the same people show strong outline of such a personality of evil.

While it is true that Satan is a Hebrew word, it is equally true that the word does not denote a being at all, but means anything adverse or opposing. We may cite in illustration a few passages. Second Samuel 19 : 22: "David said, What have we to do with you, ye sons of Jeremiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me?" First Kings 11 : 14: "And Jehovah stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Adomite." First Kings 11 : 23: "And God stirred up another adversary, Rezon, the son of Eliadah."

In these instances, the word rendered adversary or adversaries, is Satan, and means nothing more than an opponent.

When the Jews were carried captives to Babylon, they came into immediate contact with a people, the Persians, who believed in a good being and a bad one. Ormazd was their good God, and Ahriman their Devil. The latter was as clearly defined in the duality of Zoroastrian theology, as the former. During their seventy years' captivity it could not be otherwise, than that the enslaved people should imbibe some of the customs and beliefs of their masters. If they went so far as to change the characters of their language from the original Hebrew letters to those of the Chaldas, it is easy to see that they would of course, adopt this notion of an evil principle and personality, so prevalent at that time in Chaldea. After the Babylonian exile the doctrine of a Devil became a part of the Jewish belief, and the evil spirit was termed Satan, as he was the foe or adversary of God. In First Chronicles 21 : 1, there is a circumstance related in which Satan or the Devil is the principal agent. The words are: "And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel." Now the book of Chronicles being written after the captivity, it was quite natural that the writer should consider and designate the enemy of God, the Devil or Satan. But the same event is mentioned in another of the Jewish books, written before the captivity, and the temptation of David is referred to entirely another being. Here the words are:

"And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and moved David against them, to say, 'Go number Israel and Judah,' Thus in the earlier books, the affair is attributed to the Lord, but in the books written after the Jewish connection with the Chaldeans and Persians, Satan is blamed for the same act. This, beyond doubt proves the source of the Christian superstition respecting the Devil." ("The Devil," by John Watts.)

"With this dualistic system the Jews came in contact during their captivity at Babylon, and are supposed to have retained permanent traces of it in their subsequent theology. The conception of the Devil and of a lower kingdom of demons or devils is the evident illustration of this. (Ency. Brit. V. Devil.)

"The reason why there was no Devil in the early books was because none was needed then. The gods considered themselves as being quite equal to any emergency that might arise in the way of wickedness."--M. D. Conway.

In other words, the Devil is a myth coming out of the terrible darkness of remote ages. Every fear that the primitive man and men of barbarous races have had, painted devils before their minds of every description. The master mind has said:

"'Tis the eye of child-hood That fears a painted Devil."

The thought that millions of people commonly well informed on general matters, still believe in this barbarous myth, must shock and oppress like an incubus every sensitive and well-informed mind. Such people can smile pleasantly over the homely myth of Santa Claus, but the Devil is altogether a different personage. An old lady was once told that the Devil was dead. She sat silent for a moment, and then replied, "Well, you may think so, but we hope for better things."

As the horrid doctrine of witchcraft under the light of advancing knowledge has had to retire into the background of oblivion; as the Puritan doctrine of infant damnation has been relegated to the limbo of forgetfulness; as hell's fire has burned to ashes and the ashes become cold, so too, is the doctrine of a personal Devil retreating from the minds of all sensible people.

SOUL FARRAGO.

What is, and Where is the Soul?

Until the Greek philosophy taught the world how to use and abuse abstract notions, immaterialism was not an attainable phase of thought. (Prof. Bain, "Mind and Body," p. 143.)

Thought necessarily supposes conditions. To think is to condition, and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile) the eagle out-soar the atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he may be supported; so the mind cannot transcend the sphere of limitation, within and through which exclusively the possibility of thought is realized. (Sir William Hamilton, "Philosophy" p. 456.)

In this paper an attempt is made to answer two very important questions, namely: What is, and where is the soul? in such fashion that everybody will be satisfied that he has a soul, and the exact spot it occupies in his mundane tabernacle. Here are a number of opinions on this subject, by the most learned men the world has ever produced. In a multitude of counsel there is wisdom. The first witness I shall put upon the stand is:

Pythagoras: (6th c. B. C.) The soul is number and a harmony. Taught the doctrine of metempsychosis. His disciples held the soul to be an aggregate of particles of great subtilty pervading the air in constant agitation.

Heraclitus: (6th c. B. C.) The soul is a spark of the stellar essence: "Scintilla stellaris essentia."

Pherecides: (6th c. B. C.) Souls existed from all eternity.

Anaximenes: (Ionic philosopher, 5th c. B. C.) God is air, air is a life-giving principle to man. The soul is air.

Diogenes of Appollonia: (Greek natural philosopher, 5th c. B. C.) The soul of the world and the soul of man is air.

Anaxagoras: (5th c. B. C.) The soul is an immortal, aerial spirit.

Socrates: (4th c. B. C.) The soul is corporeal and eternal.

Epicurus: (4th c. B. C.) The soul is a bodily substance, composed of subtile particles, disseminated through the whole frame, and having a great resemblance to spirit or breath.

Empedocles: (Sicilian philosopher and poet, 5th c. B. C.) Declared himself to have been "a boy, a girl, a bush, a bird, a fish;" that the soul inhabits every form of animal and plant.

Aristotle: (4th c. B. C.) Plants have souls without consciousness. Animals have souls, but inseparable from body. The human body is inseparable from mind, but the human mind is divided into active and passive intellect. The active intellect is pure form, detached from matter, and immortal.

Josephus: (1st c.) There were three sects among the Jews--the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Pharisees believed in metempsychosis; the Sadducees believed that the soul perished with the body; the Essenes held that the soul was immortal. The soul descended in an aerial form into the body, from the highest region of the air, whither they were carried back again by a violent attraction, and after death those which had belonged to the good dwelled beyond the ocean in a country where there was neither heat nor cold, nor wind nor rain.

Pliny: (2d c.) The body and the soul have, from the moment of death, as little sensation as before birth.

Justin Martyr: (2d c.) It is heresy to say that the soul is taken up into heaven, men rise with the same bodies.

Tatian: (2d c.) There are two spirits conjoined in the human body. A material and an immaterial spirit.

Athenagoras: (2d c.) The soul is spiritual, but with a spirituality subject to material tendencies.

Origen: (3d c.) The soul is neither spirit nor matter.

Augustine: (4th c.) The soul has neither length, breadth, nor thickness. It acts on the body through the corporeal substances of light and air, which substances are mingled through the denser parts of the body. The commands of the soul are first communicated to this subtile matter, and by it immediately conveyed to the heavier elements.

Tertullian: (Latin father, about 160.) The soul has the human form, the same as its body, only it is delicate, clear, and ethereal. Unless it were corporeal, how could it be effected by the body, be able to suffer, or be nourished within the body?

St. Ambrose: (4th c.) We know nothing but what is material, excepting only the ever venerable Trinity.

St. Hilary: (5th c.) There is nothing created which is not corporeal, neither in heaven nor in earth, neither visible nor invisible; all is formed of elements; and souls, whether they inhabit a body, or are without a body, have always a corporeal substance.

Gregory Nazianzen: (4th c.) Soul, or spirit, is composed of two properties--motion and diffusion.

Bishop Nemesius: (5th c.) The soul is an immaterial substance. It is involved, as Plato taught, in eternal, self-produced motion, from which the motion of the body is derived. The pre-existence of the soul proves its supra-sensible character, and its immortality.

Faustus: (Bishop of Regium, in Gaul, A. D. 470.) All created things are matter; the soul being composed of air, God alone is incorporeal.

Mamertus: (In reply to the bishop.) Man was made in the image of God. Now, as there can be no likeness to God in matter, therefore it must be found in the soul, therefore the soul is immaterial. The soul is present in every part of the body as well as in the whole, just as God is present in the whole universe, otherwise a part of it would be lost when any portion of the body is cut off. The soul is not contained in the body, but in reality contains it. Hence, it must be immaterial, for no material substance can at once contain the body and be within it as its animating principle.

Thomas Aquinas: (13th c.) The soul is the Actuality of body, as heat, which is the source whence bodies are made hot, is not body, but a sort of actuality of body. The soul of man is an independent substance.

Duns Scotus: (13th c. British philosopher.) The soul is a created something, the basis of all finite existence, including corporeal matter itself.

Albert Magnus: (13th c.) Held that the active intellect is a part of the soul, and is immortal by virtue of its community with God.

Gassendi: (French philosopher, 17th c.) There is no evidence of the spirituality of the soul.

Malebranche: (Priest and philosopher, 17th c.) We see all in God, who is in fact our soul.

Locke: (17th c.) Matter may think, and God may communicate thought to matter.

Paracelsus: (15th c.) Taught there were four souls--vegetal, sensitive, rational, and spiritual. Campanella demonstrates this last by the fact that carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.

Mansel: ("Philosophy of Consciousness," p. 327.) We are not authorized to say that we know the soul to be simple, and that, therefore, it is indestructible; but only that we do not know the soul to be compound, and, therefore, that we cannot infer its mortality from the analogy of bodily dissolution.

"Buck's Theo. Dic." defines soul: That vital, immaterial, active substance, or principle in man, whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons, and wills. It is rather to be described as to its operations than to be defined as to its essence. Various, indeed, have been the opinions of philosophers concerning its substance.

Parkhurst: (A distinguished Hebrew lexicographer.) As a noun, nephesh hath been supposed to signify the spiritual part of man, or what we commonly call the soul. I must, for myself, confess that I can find no passage where it hath undoubtedly this meaning.

Hobbes: Spirit is synonymous with ghost--a mere phantom of the imagination.

Locke: ("Understanding," p. 419.) We can no more know that there are finite spirits really existing, by the idea we have of such things in our minds, than by the ideas any one has of fairies, or centaurs; he can come to know that things answering those ideas do really exist.

Voltaire: The Greeks distinguish three sorts of souls--Psyche, signifying the sensitive soul--the soul of the senses; hence it was that Love, the son of Aphrodite, had so much passion for Psyche, and that she loved him so tenderly. Pneuma, the breath which gave life and motion to the whole machine, and which we have rendered by spiritus--spirit--a vague term which has received a thousand different acceptations. And lastly, Nous, intelligence. Thus we possess three souls, without having the slightest notion of any of them.... What are we to think of a child with two heads, which is otherwise well formed? Some say that it has two souls, because it is furnished with two pineal glands, with two callous substances, with two sensoria communia. Others answer, that there cannot be two souls with but one breast and one navel.... The word soul is one of those which everyone pronounces without understanding it. We understand those things of which we have an idea, but we have no idea of soul--spirit; therefore, we do not understand it.

John Calvin: The soul is an immortal essence, the nobler part of man. It is a creation out of nothing, not an emanation; it is essence without motion, not motion without essence. It is not properly bounded by space, still it occupies the body as a habitation, animating its parts and endowing its organs for their several functions.

Dugald Stewart: Although we have the strongest evidence that there is a thinking and sentient principle within us, essentially distinct from matter, yet we have no direct evidence of the possibility of this principle exercising its various powers in a separate state from the body. On the contrary, the union of the two, while it subsists, is evidently of the most intimate nature.