ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF THE DEVIL

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue IX, 29 August 1896, Page 283

ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF THE DEVIL

The devil of the early Christian ages, who has survived among the ignorant even onto onr day,' is founded upon the Biblical conception. But in many ways he is a strange contrast. He has lost all his dignity, he is no longer the enemy of God, but the petty persecutor of man. Even his vices have become dwarfed.

The monstrous conceptions of Satan which found form in art were also all based upon the Bible. But the plain meaning of the Bible was wrestled so as to convert symbols and metaphors into facts. St. Peter compares the devil to a roaring lion ; it was instantly supposed that be was in the habit of actually assuming that shape. Christ said to his disciples : * Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.' The devil, therefore, must appear in the likeness of a wolf. The devil tempted Eve in the form of a serpent, and he is called * that old serpent, the devil,' in the Apocalypse; therefore, he torments the saints in the likeness of snakes. * Deliver my darling from the power of the dog,’said David, and so in monkish legends the devil frequently makes his appearance as a black dog. Thus it happened that the early saints, toward whom the devil bore an especial grudge, were wont to behold him under the form of hideous and loathsome beasts or reptiles. To St. Anthony, for example, he appeared in multiform shapes, once as a degraded centaur, a man above and an ass below, then as a serpent, as vatious beasts of prey, and finally, * in the shape in which Job saw him ’ This last shape is terrifying, and no doubt had an immense influence on the art and the literature of demonology in the Middle Ages. * His eyes were, as it were, lamps, out of his mouth go burning torches. His hair is sprinkled with fire, from his nostrils goeth forth smoke as of furnace of burning coals. His breath was as a live coal, flame rolls from his mouth. He esteemeth iron as straw and brass as rotten wood.’ It is true that Job was describing Behemoth. Mediaeval authorities declared that Behemoth and Satan were identical. It should be mentioned that the mediaeval devil has one great virtue. He is always faithful to the spirit and to the letter ot his contract. In this respect he sets an example to his victims, who are continually endeavouring by chicanery, by hair splitting, by logic chopping, by an adherence to the letter which killeth, to rob the devil of his due. And it must be confessed that Providence itself, or its saints, too often interfered to save a soul by some unworthy subterfuge. One of the devil’s favourite contracts was for a man’s soul. It was not always the soul of the contracting party. The • Devil’s Bridge,’ for instance, is a natural formation across an Alpine stream in Switzerland. The legend runs that it was built for St. Kado by bis Satanic majesty on condition that he should have the soul of the first one to cross it. When it was finished the wily saint drove a cat across the bridge and the devil acknowledged that he was beaten.

The learned Socmunder, a holy Norseman, once had occasion to desire a journey to Iceland. So he called to the devil : * Swim with me to Iceland,’ be said, * and if you bring me there without wetting the skirts of my coat you shall have my soul.’ Right glad was the devil to have the soul of so holy a man at such a slight cost. Changing himself into a sea), he took Socmunder on his back and started for Iceland. *On the way,’ says the quaint old chronicle, * Socmunder amused himself by reading the*|Psalms of David. But when they got close to the shore of Iceland he closed the book and hit the seal on the head with it; he dived, and Socmunder’s skirts were wetted, but he easily reached the land. So the devil lost his bargain.’ But in the greatest of all these legends the devil gets bis due. Faust, after the years of the compact are over, is claimed and carried off by the fiend. This is the end of Faust also in the opera, but not in Goethe’s great drama. The original Mephistopheles was a considerable advance upon the mediaeval caricature. He had more dignity, more knowledge of the world and of men, and more power. Goethe transformed him into a type of elegant and gentlemanly cynicism. But he loses his hold on Faust because * he always wills the bad and does the good.’ In other words, Goethe held that evil is a necessary factor in the upward evolution of the world.

No such subtle view was presented by the early legend. It is curious to note that Faustus and Luther were contemporaries. The legend of the former’s compact with Satan was accepted both by Protestants and Catholics. For Protestantism did not kill the medieval devil, but only assisted in rehabilitating him. Did not Luther himself have a vision of the devil while translating the Bible? Did he not hurl an inkstand at the foul fiend’s head ? Is not the ink spot on the wall still shown, fresh as if made yesterday, as, perchance, it was ? Although Luther's inkstand did not kill

the Prince of Darkness it spattered him over, and he has been declining ever since in popular respect. A ludicrous * Old Nick ’ has taken his place. The churches gradually became ashamed of the devil. King James’ translation dropped him out of the Lord’s Prayer, and the Westminster Shorter Catechism mentioned him but once. So it went on until, a few years ago, the devil was legally degraded in England. An old-fashioned clergyman, who had refused the communion to a parishioner who denied the devil’s existence, was compelled to administer that sacrament to the aceptic. About the same time the eternity of hell was implicity declared no part of the Anglican creed. In law also criminal indictments no longer contain the words * incited by the devil. *