Part 68

Nor is the usual description of the results of the Fall, a less extravagant perversion of Scripture. The necessities of toil to the man, the pangs of travail to the woman, and to both a consequent abbreviation of the term of life, are all the effects of which the original speaks, and to which Josephus refers.[547] St. Paul adds to these the introduction of mortality; but neither in his writings, nor in any more authoritative place than the invention of modern divines, do we find the least hint of any moral corruption entailed by the fall on the human constitution, or any penal woes prepared for our lapsed nature after death. Throughout the whole subsequent Scriptures, there are only three places in which the effects of the first transgression are mentioned:[548] all of these are in the epistles of Paul; two, out of the three, are mere passing allusions, not occupying a line; and in the remaining one, as well as in the others, _natural death_ alone is said to have passed on the descendants of Adam; “not” (as Mr. Locke justly remarks) “either actual or imputed sin,” which, he says, “is evidently contrary to St. Paul’s design here.”[549] Between the guilt of men, and the fall of their progenitor, there did not exist the slightest connexion in the Apostle’s mind; they are never once mentioned together. When he draws his fearful pictures of the depravity of both Jews and Gentiles, he is wholly silent respecting the fall, describing all this corruption not as constitutional but as actual, not as the growth of a foul and incapable nature, but rather as the abuse and insult of one inherently noble.[550] And when again he speaks of the fall and its issues, he is silent about moral depravity, and dwells only on physical death. Never was there a writer more barbarously tortured, more ingeniously forced to speak in a spirit which he loved to withstand, than this glorious Apostle. Out of his own writings, by incredible perversion, his generous conceptions are condemned as heresies, and his favourite sentiments denounced as blasphemies.

“I will put enmity,” says the book of Genesis, “between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”[551] Considered as a description of the mutual hostility and injuries of the race of venomous reptiles and the human species,—man naturally attacking the head of the creature, and the animal, especially among the naked feet of oriental climes, finding nothing in man so vulnerable as the heel,—a more vivid sentence can scarcely be conceived. Considered as a prophecy of Christ, ingenuity could construct nothing more obscure. And, accordingly, it is never once appealed to, as a prediction, either by the Messiah himself, or by any of the New Testament writers; and before the Advent, it had certainly failed to produce the proper effect of prophecy, and had not aided in preparing the minds of the Hebrews for the event. It is indeed acknowledged by “a strenuous advocate for this application of the passage,” “that the expressions here used do not necessarily imply the sense thus attributed to them; and that there is no appearance of our first parents’ having understood them in this sense, or that God intended they should so understand them.”[552] If, then, this prophetic signification escaped the persons to whom the announcement was made, and the nation before whose eye it lay for ages, and the Christ himself of whom it spake, and the Evangelists and Apostles who proclaimed him to the world, our doubt of its reality can scarcely be deemed unwarrantable.

But it is, I believe, a misconception of the author, to treat this passage as a piece of history. Neither Moses, nor any other scriptural writer, professes to have been miraculously instructed in the events of the antediluvian world; and if they make no such pretension themselves, it is altogether gratuitous in us to make it for them. The slightest consideration must convince us, that all _natural_ sources of information respecting so primitive a period must have ceased to exist, at least in any reliable form: and the earliest portions of the book of Genesis have every characteristic of that beautiful mythical composition, which is the first fruit of the literary activity of every simple-hearted nation, and which mingles together in one texture, tradition, fact, speculation, poetical conception, and moral truth. In this instance, the writer seems to have been oppressed by the feeling, that human peace and tranquillity were disturbed by the restless aspirings and inquisitive ambition of the mind. If man could but be content to take the good which God has spread within his easy reach, and not permit himself to pry into the possibilities of having more, his life might be spent as in a garden of the Lord, in the warmth of sunny days, and the light sleep of unhaunted nights. But he cannot repress his insatiable curiosity, his passion for the fruits of knowledge and dignity, of which Providence has given him the idea, but which have been set beyond his permitted reach; and this thirst of his nature he resolves at all hazards to indulge; this godlike aspiration, imprisoned in a frame to which it is unsuited, chafes against his quiet, and abbreviates his days. Hence proceed the struggle and the toil of life; the thistle and the thorn which he gathers from a soil that might have yielded only flowers; hence, children are we all of care and sorrow; hence, by the sweat of the hardy brow we must live, and soon fret down existence into dust; not however, without our victory after all; for we subjugate the earth, and reign thereon.

Observe too, that Adam rules the woman; and the woman has a heel upon the serpent:—the last seduced is placed the highest; and the first corrupter sinks into a reptile. Our temptations are _beneath_ us; and having once detected them, we are to rule them ever after. Once let the knowledge of good and evil be tasted, and the primitive equality of things, which put man and beast upon a level, is destroyed; all beings fall into the ranks of a moral gradation; and though none that have free will may escape a fall, he that is last to yield shall be the first to reign.

(2.) Neither then in the original account, nor in the scanty subsequent notices of the transgression in Eden, is there any disclosure of a Satanic existence. Let us rapidly follow down the course of Hebrew literature, and search in it for the first and successive indications of this belief. I have stated that the books of Moses are destitute of all trace of such a conception; nor can any thing at all corresponding to the popular idea of the Devil, be found in any part of the Old Testament. The name itself never once occurs; and it would be a great mistake to identify the Satan of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the Devil of the Greek.[553] The Satan of the former has a very uncertain personality. The name rather denotes an office, which any agent of Providence might be appointed to fill, than a definite individual being. Any person, performing the function of an accuser, or who prepares matter for accusation, by seducing men into evil,—any one acting the part of an adversary to another,—is called Satan. Thus David is called Satan to the Philistines;[554] a certain captain named Rezon was Satan to Israel;[555] the angel of Jehovah was Satan to Balaam;[556] nay, even Paul uses this singular expression, “Hymeneus and Alexander, I have delivered to Satan” (for what purpose, do you suppose), “_that they may be taught not to blaspheme_.”[557] No doubt this idea, at first vague and indefinite, gradually became individualized; and that which had been an appellative, passed into a proper name, yet without ever wholly losing its generic character.[558] At the commencement of the book of Job occurs its most distinct and definite use. It is there applied, not to a fallen Spirit, not to a repudiated subject of the celestial state, but to an angel near the throne, to a recognized minister of the Supreme Power, who appears in the courts above among “the Sons of God.” He is represented as a general inspector and public prosecutor of the Divine government over man; going to and fro over the earth, by heavenly commission, to execute the probationary part of the great Ruler’s will, and administer to mankind the severities which test their faith. In the earlier Hebrew writings, this office is said to be filled by no subordinate instrument: it is Jehovah himself who is represented as trying his servants,—as the personal cause of their afflictions, and author of their temptations. I recently heard the following passage from the first book of Chronicles adduced in proof of the agency of Satan in seducing men from their allegiance to God. “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.”[559] Now it so happens, that this same event is recorded also in the much more ancient books of Samuel, where it is thus introduced: “And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and HE moved David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’”[560] What can more clearly mark the natural progress of opinion on this point? As the ideas of God became more elevated and refined, it was felt to be scarcely compatible with his perfections to seduce his children into violation of the duties he himself required: and the imagination at least, if not the understanding, was relieved by assigning that office, of hardening the heart and tempting the will, (which originally had been left with Jehovah himself,) to some interposing being, who might separate between God and guilt.

When we open the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, we perceive a complete change in this class of ideas. Even the latest written of the canonical books introduce us to several angelic beings, unknown to the earlier Scriptures,—as the Michael and Gabriel of Daniel. But in addition to these, we find in the Jewish Apocrypha, for the first time, the matured conception of the Prince of evil;[561] who is thenceforth represented in the scarcely consistent relations of creature and enemy of the Most High: and it is in this form that the notion presents itself to us in the New Testament writings. Now what is the inference from these facts? In the books of the ancient dispensation, this malignant Spirit does not yet appear: in the writings of the new dispensation, he is mentioned,—not as a novelty of revelation, but as long familiar to the mind of every reader. The origin then of the belief in his existence, must be sought between the close of the Hebrew inspiration and the opening of the Christian. And what had happened in this interval? The Jewish people had been in long and intimate relation with Persia: connected with it by political ties, and united by the sympathies of monotheism. The characteristic features of the Persian religion were,—its doctrine of a Spirit of Evil in perpetual enmity to the Supremely Good;—and its representation of a heavenly hierarchy, whose spirits were ranged in ranks of angels and archangels, and received their separate names. These ideas then naturally passed into the Jewish mind, with little change; except that the Evil Spirit was reduced to a somewhat lower station, in obedience to the stern Mosaic principle, of the absolute Monarchy of God.[562] And as these notions became perfectly engrafted on the national faith of Israel, the founders of Christianity were educated in them; and they were permitted to appear by incidental allusion, and in conformity with the general sentiments of the country and the age, in the pages of history and correspondence, which the evangelists and apostles have left. Nor can I perceive, either how it can be proved, or why it should be desired, that God would annihilate from the understanding of his inspired servants, all the harmless ideas, foreign to their mission, which constituted the common stock of thought at the time, and gave them points of necessary sympathy and intellectual contact with the spirit of their generation. How slight the sanction which they give to some, at least, of these mythological imaginations, may be estimated by a single fact. The whole theory respecting fallen angels rests upon two verses,[563] each in one of the most doubtful of the New Testament writings: indeed the texts can scarcely be regarded as constituting two independent authorities; for the latter is little else than a repetition of the former; occurring in a portion of the second epistle of Peter, which, strangely enough, contains, the sentiments and even the language of a large part of the epistle of Jude. When such evidence as this is brought forward, as conclusive and infallible, I would respectfully ask our opponents, whether they seriously believe, on the authority of the same epistle, that Michael the archangel disputed with the Devil about the body of Moses? and as this is nowhere else mentioned, whether an express and personal revelation of the fact was imparted to St. Jude? If so, consistency would require them to maintain, that this is one of the essential doctrines of the Gospel: for how much soever our natural and corrupt reason might be tempted to think the circumstance trivial, if true, it cannot really be otherwise than fundamental, if privately and explicitly revealed.[564]

From the foregoing remarks, the general principles, in conformity with which I would treat the question of demoniacal possessions, will be so evident, that it will be unnecessary to enter into any details. The precise relation to each other of the various orders of evil spirits in which the Jews believed, it is not possible to define. It is certain, however, that they made a distinction, which our common translation of the Scriptures has improperly obliterated, between demons and devils. The former were thought to be of only human rank, the souls of the wicked dead: and it was these only that were supposed to possess and afflict the bodies of the living. The latter were guilty angels, and had no agency assigned to them on earth, being kept in durance within the prisons of the unseen world. There was therefore the same difference between demons and devils, as with us between ghosts and fiends. Of the former, Beelzebub was considered as the chief; of the latter, Satan: and whether these beings were regarded as standing in any definite relation to each other, is uncertain; probably the Devil, as the Prince of darkness, was believed to be the ruler of all the powers of evil, whether human or angelic. Unlike his incarcerated compeers, Satan was permitted to be at large, and to practise his arts against mankind: all gentile kingdoms being absolutely his; and even the chosen people not protected wholly from his malignity, at least until the Messiah’s reign, which was to commence with his dethronement. It may be observed by any careful reader of the gospels, that the evils of which he was held to be the author, are not the same that are ascribed to Beelzebub and his demons. Satan, and he only, was the moral seducer: and the physical calamities proceeding from him were only natural and intelligible diseases, regular enough to fall under the cognizance of science. The demons had, on the contrary, no concern with the conscience; and occasioned only the irregular and apparently preternatural maladies, which science deserted and left to the tender mercies of superstition;—of which epilepsy and insanity are the most remarkable examples.

Of this system of notions the evangelists were doubtless possessed. But that they held them on the tenure of unerring inspiration can by no means be shown. On the contrary, the natural causes which produced them can be so clearly detected in the prevalent sentiments of their age and country, that not the slightest pretext remains for referring them to express revelation. So far from requiring a miracle to excite these conceptions, we must admit, that nothing less than a miracle could have excluded them, familiar as they had been to the national mind from the time of its intercourse with Persia. Had the founders of Christianity never received any extraordinary mission, they would have entertained the conception of demoniacal possession; and its hold upon their thoughts must therefore be regarded as the result of natural prepossession, not of supernatural communication. A notion whose human origin can be distinctly traced,—which was shared by uninspired persons, and existed in the authors of our religion in their uninspired years,—has no claim to be considered as a part of Christianity, and is as open to doubt and examination as any other opinion of antiquity. To affirm that, were it not true, God must have blotted it from the mind of his messengers, is not only to overbear evidence with assertion, but to decide dogmatically on the obligations of Deity, and, with infinite presumption, to dictate the fit measure of his gifts. Till it can be shown, that inspiration is co-extensive with omniscience, it must remain compatible with error.

The language of the Gospels then, respecting demoniacs, is not to be regarded as a condescending accommodation to popular prejudice; but as a genuine expression of the writers’ own state of mind. There is no reason to doubt that the prevalent ideas were shared by the apostles themselves. By these did they interpret the facts which they witnessed: through the colouring of these, their minds beheld the miracles of Christ, and their own: and at the suggestion of these arose the language in which they have recorded the ministry of their Lord. All this has not the smallest effect on the truth and soundness of their testimony. They no doubt reported faithfully that which they _saw and heard_; only they tell us something more, adding a few phrases, disclosing also what they _thought_. Like all witnesses of simple mind, especially when telling that which awakens their wonder and affection, they mix up their statements of phenomena with notions of causation; and present us with a composite register of sensible impressions and mental interpretations. It should be our business, as we read, to call up before us the scene described; to see for ourselves the things visible, and hear the things audible, of which the record speaks; and we shall find that this effort will usually make a perfect and easy separation between the real and the merely ideal, between the permanent fact and the temporary explanation. When, for example, it is said, that the _demons_ in a man possessed _spake_ to Christ, of what are we to think? for what voice are we to listen? where are the lips from which the utterance flows?—Certainly it was from the organs of the poor _lunatic himself_ that the sound must have proceeded: and modern language would describe this fact by saying, that _he_ spake; and in thus believing we accept the whole _attestation_ of the historian.

(3.) The same principle must be applied to the temptation of Christ. No hint whatever is given, implying any visible appearance communing with Jesus; nor need we even suppose any audible voice addressing him.[565] The Evil Spirit, like God himself, was held to be invisible, and inappreciable by any human senses: and when _words_ are attributed to him, they represent only the dialogue which he is supposed to hold with the silent and tempted heart. His whole guilty transactions indeed belonged, it was imagined, to the region of the mind; and his was a viewless and speechless wrestling with conscience on its throne. Whenever therefore the seductive assaults of Satan are recorded, the real fact described is this; that internal moral conflicts have been going on, and deluding thoughts have been passing, like the shadow of a dark Spirit, across the purer soul. And in such case, the first and the only thing of which our consciousness can be aware, is, the occurrence of these thoughts. To their antecedent source, our testimony cannot reach; and whether they are precipitated on us by some enemy from without, or are of spontaneous origin within our own minds, is a point accessible indeed to speculation, but beyond the contact of experience. Till they enter our nature, and so become a part of our personality, they are nothing and nowhere: and when they enter and we feel their torment, they are ours and no other being’s. No one ever sees, hears, or feels, the Devil; he _perceives_ simply the intrusion of sinful ideas, and _supposes_ them to be the result of diabolic power. He experiences the temptation in reality; and refers it to the tempter in idea. And were this not true of Christ, as of ourselves, it would be false to say, that he “was tempted in all points as we are.” The temptation of our Lord then, stripped of the dress which the historians have thrown around the central facts, was the natural struggle, by which he exchanged the imperfect, and local, and ambitious conceptions of the Messiah, which his cottage training in Nazareth had imparted,—for that pure, and self-sacrificing, and comprehensive interpretation of the office, which broke upon his solitude so awfully. That he learned, at Mary’s knees, to cherish the common hope of his nation, in the form under which it prevailed among the peasantry, appears as little doubtful, as that he caught the language of his native fields. Yet it is certain that this early vision passed away; and that when he himself was called to fill the appointed office, he acted out a conception quite opposite to the dreams imparted to his childhood. Once he had mused on the widening glory of Judæa; but he ended with announcing the prospect of its fall. Once he had exulted in the dignity and power of the coming messenger, who should break the oppression of his people, and set forth anew the triumph of their ancient Providence: he declared himself at length the meek prophet of penury, and woe and childhood. Once he had thought of what Jerusalem would be, when the temple should be the centre of the world’s homage, and multitudes of all nations should throng its pavement, and its incense should rise in the pride of freedom, and its hymn spring upward on the wing of happy melody: but ere his work of life was finished, he taught a lowlier yet sublimer expectation, not of the compression of the world into the Hebrew worship,—but of the diffusion of that worship to cover the world; and revealed that secret shrine in every human heart, where emotions, purer than incense, may burn for ever, and tones sweeter than music be for ever breathed. This revolution of sentiment, this conflict, by which new thoughts of inspiration expelled the old ones inherited from education and reputed prophecy, constituted the temptation in the wilderness; nor was it possible that ideas the most divine, should thus burst the shell of custom and tradition, without a convulsion truly terrible. It would be easy, were it not irrelevant, to show how this hidden colloquy between the national prepossessions and the personal intuitions of our Lord’s mind, would give rise to the separate scenes of which the temptation is said to have been composed. Possibly, however, the history, as it stands, is not the record of a single event, to which a fixed date can be assigned in his ministry: more probably, it gathers into one view a series of mental conflicts, distributed over his whole public life; the struggles between the accidental and the essential portions of his nature; between the national and the human: between an historical imagination trained amid the gorgeousness of prophecy, and a heavenly conscience dwelling with the simplicity of God; between the conventional and the spiritual; between, in short, the superinduced faith contracted from time and place, and the inborn faith of a soul divine and free.