Part 33 (1/2)

Bildad falls back on his dogma of depravity. Man is a 'worm,' a 'reptile.' Job finds that for a worm Bildad is very familiar with the divine secrets. If man is morally so weak he should be lowly in mind also. G.o.d by his spirit hath garnished the heavens; his hand formed the 'crooked serpent'--

Lo! these are but the borders of his works; How faint the whisper we have heard of him!

But the thunder of his power who can understand?

Job takes up the position of the agnostic, and the three 'Comforters'

are silenced. The argument has ended where it had to end. Job then proceeds with sublime eloquence. A man may lose all outward things, but no man or G.o.d can make him utter a lie, or take from him his integrity, or his consciousness of it. Friends may reproach him, but he can see that his own heart does not. That one superiority to the wicked he can preserve. In reviewing his arguments Job is careful to say that he does not maintain that good and evil men are on an equality. For one thing, when the wicked man is in trouble he cannot find resource in his innocence. 'Can he delight himself in the Almighty?' When such die, their widows do not bewail them. Men do not befriend oppressors when they come to want. Men hiss them. And with guilt in their heart they feel their sorrows to be the arrows of G.o.d, sent in anger. In all the realms of nature, therefore, amid its powers, splendours, and precious things, man cannot find the wisdom which raises him above misfortune, but only in his inward loyalty to the highest, and freedom from moral evil.

Then enters a fifth character, Elihu, whose plan is to mediate between the old dogma and the new agnostic philosophy. He is Orthodoxy rationalised. Elihu's name is suggestive of his ambiguity; it seems to mean one whose 'G.o.d is He' and he comes from the tribe of Buz, whose Hebrew meaning might almost be represented in that English word which, with an added z, would best convey the windiness of his remarks. Buz was the son of Milkah, the Moon, and his descendant so came fairly by his theologic 'moons.h.i.+ne' of the kind which Carlyle has so well described in his account of Coleridgean casuistry. Elihu means to be fair to both sides! Elihu sees some truth in both sides! Eclectic Elihu! Job is perfectly right in thinking he had not done anything to merit his sufferings, but he did not know what snares were around him, and how he might have done something wicked but for his affliction. Moreover, G.o.d ruins people now and then just to show how he can lift them up again. Job ought to have taken this for granted, and then to have expressed it in the old abject phraseology, saying, 'I have received chastis.e.m.e.nt; I will offend no more! What I see not, teach thou me!' (A truly Elihuic or 'contemptible' answer to Job's sensible words, 'Why is light given to a man whose way is hid?' Why administer the rod which enlightens as to the anger but not its cause, or as to the way of amend?) In fact the casuistic Elihu casts no light whatever on the situation. He simply overwhelms him with metaphors and generalities about the divine justice and mercy, meant to hide this new and dangerous solution which Job had discovered--namely, that the old dogmatic theories of evil were proved false by experience, and that a good man amid sorrow should admit his ignorance, but never allow terror to wring from him the voice of guilt, nor the attempt to propitiate divine wrath.

When Jehovah appears on the scene, answering Job out of the whirlwind, the tone is one of wrath, but the whole utterance is merely an amplification of what Job had said--what we see and suffer are but fringes of a Whole we cannot understand. The magnificence and wonder of the universe celebrated in that voice of the whirlwind had to be given the lame and impotent conclusion of Job 'abhorring himself,'

and 'repenting in dust and ashes.' The conventional Cerberus must have his sop. But none the less does the great heart of this poem reveal the soul that was not shaken or divided in prosperity or adversity. The burnt-offering of his prosperous days, symbol of a wors.h.i.+p which refused to include the supposed powers of mischief, was enjoined on Job's Comforters. They must bend to him as nearer G.o.d than they. And in his high philosophy Job found what is symbolised in the three daughters born to him: Jemima (the Dove, the voice of the returning Spring); Kezia (Ca.s.sia, the sweet incense); Kerenhappuch (the horn of beautiful colour, or decoration).

From the Jewish point of view this triumph of Job represented a tremendous heresy. The idea that afflictions could befall a man without any reference to his conduct, and consequently not to be influenced by the normal rites and sacrifices, is one fatal to a priesthood. If evil may be referred in one case to what is going on far away among G.o.ds in obscurities of the universe, and to some purpose beyond the ken of all sages, it may so be referred in all cases, and though burnt-offerings may be resorted to formally, they must cease when their powerlessness is proved. Hence the Rabbins have taken the side of Job's Comforters. They invented a legend that Job had been a great magician in Egypt, and was one of those whose sorceries so long prevented the escape of Israel. He was converted afterwards, but it is hinted that his early wickedness required the retribution he suffered. His name was to them the troubler troubled.

Heretical also was the theory that man could get along without any Angelolatry or Demon-wors.h.i.+p. Job in his singleness of service, fearing G.o.d alone, defying the Seraphim and Cherubim from Samael down to do their worst, was a perilous figure. The priests got no part of any burnt-offering. The sin-offering was of almost sumptuary importance. Hence the rabbinical theory, already noticed, that it was through neglect of these expiations to the G.o.d of Sin that the morally spotless Job came under the power of his plagues.

But for precisely the same reasons the story of Job became representative to the more spiritual cla.s.s of minds of a genuine as contrasted with a nominal monotheism, and the piety of the pure, the undivided heart. Its meaning is so human that it is not necessary to discuss the question of its connection with the story of Harischandra, or whether its accent was caught from or by the legends of Zoroaster and of Buddha, who pa.s.sed unscathed through the ordeals of Ahriman and Mara. It was repeated in the encounters of the infant Christ with Herod, and of the adult Christ with Satan. It was repeated in the unswerving loyalty of the patient Griselda to her husband. It is indeed the heroic theme of many races and ages, and it everywhere points to a period when the virtues of endurance and patience rose up to match the agonies which fear and weakness had tried to propitiate,--when man first learned to suffer and be strong.

CHAPTER XV.

SATAN.

Public Prosecutors--Satan as Accuser--English Devil-wors.h.i.+pper --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 h.e.l.l'-- 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

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 inst.i.tution 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 archaeologically 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-wors.h.i.+pper 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 G.o.d Almighty took notice of children's sins. This stuck to my conscience a great while; and who this G.o.d 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 G.o.dfrey, 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 b.u.t.ton-hole of his coat. I imagined that man to be employed by G.o.d 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 G.o.d's employe. On one occasion he writes, 'Satan began to tempt me violently that there was no G.o.d, but I reasoned against the belief of that from my own experience of his dreadful wrath, saying, How can I credit this suggestion, when (G.o.d's) wrath is already revealed in my heart, and every curse in his book levelled at my head.' (That seems his only evidence of G.o.d'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 G.o.d,' 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 G.o.d I must come back to his work again, else when he had brought me to h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l. I went and sat in my tool-house halting between two opinions; whether I should pet.i.tion Satan, or whether I should keep praying to G.o.d, 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 G.o.d sprung up in my heart to keep me from it.'

In other words, Mr. Huntington wavered between the pet.i.tions 'Good Lord! Good Devil!' The question whether it were more moral, more holy, to wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d. Why? Not because of any superior goodness on G.o.d's part. He says, 'An uncommon fear of G.o.d 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 G.o.d and Satan which would have appeared primitive to an a.s.syrian two thousand years ago. The ethical antagonism of the two was then much more clearly felt. But this bit of contemporary superst.i.tion 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.s 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 s.h.i.+mei 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 G.o.d' easily pa.s.s away. The name that becomes traditionally a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.s 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.