Part 39

Christendom, in the day of our Puritan forefathers, believed in a devil peculiar to a few centuries--in one who was of more modern birth than the Bible or other ancient histories--who was very different from any being characterized in either Jewish or heathen records of antiquity, and has no parallel, we trust, in any creed to-day.

Probably many malicious, as well as benevolent, unseen personages exist, who may often act upon men and their affairs. There may be powerful evil ones, in realms unseen, who there rule over hosts of like dispositions with themselves. Neither the existence of many devils, nor intermeddling by them with man's peace and welfare, is called in question.

Authors of the Bible, when using the terms devil, Satan, and others of similar import, generally designated, as our own age extensively does, beings very unlike such a devil as was conceived of and dreaded by Christendom from two to five hundred years ago. Prior to and during the days of Jesus and his apostles, such terms were often applied to whatever, in either the visible or the unseen world, tempted or forced men to wrong-doing, or hindered their progress in goodness. Jesus said to a disciple, "Get thee behind me, Satan;" and this, simply because Peter was giving him advice more carnal than spiritual, and which was designed to dissuade Jesus from following the course which his conscience was prompting him to pursue. The mere giving of unwise advice made Peter a Satan. Turning to 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, you may read that the LORD, being angry, moved David to number the people. Turning again to 1 Chron. xxi. 1, you will find a description of the same transaction, in which it is said that "Satan ... provoked David to number Israel." Therefore, in biblical language, even the LORD, when angry, was equivalent to Satan. Any accuser, in a court of justice or equity, might properly have been called a Satan, in the days of the prophets, for then that term was applicable to any adversary or opponent, of whatever grade or nature.

Very much later than David's day the word devil frequently had a much softer meaning than it usually bears now. Jesus said (John vi. 70), "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" Having previously called Peter "Satan," Jesus here called Judas a devil. Thus highest Christian authority spoke of unwise and treacherous men as being Satans and devils, and thereby showed that those words anciently were sometimes applied, by the pure and wise, to other beings than one special great malignant spirit. The devil of modern witchcraft was unknown by Jesus and by all biblical authors.

Whence, then, since not from the Bible,--whence did Christians of the seventeenth and some earlier centuries obtain those peculiar conceptions of him, which made the devil almost counterbalance, in malignity and monstrosity, the benignity and beauty of the Infinite God? Where did they find him? So far as we perceive and believe, his like was never recognized, either outside of Christendom, or prior to the dark ages. No being verily like him was ever dreaded as an enemy by any other people than Christians, and not by them till within the last thousand years. About all that we know is, that he had become huge and frightful at the time of the Reformation; and our belief is, that morbid fancy, in the cloisters and monasteries of Europe, through several centuries plied her limnistic verbal skill, and thereby outlined and blackened piecemeal her most outré conceptions possible of the lineaments and expressions of a being as monstrous in shape, as powerful, wily, and malicious, as imagination could fabricate, and thus gave the Christian world a monk-made devil--a hideous personification of evil. Lapsing time eventually caused this cloister-born scarecrow to be looked upon as vitalized malignity incarnate--as an immortal, ubiquitous personality--as a living fiend of awful sway and force, who should be watched, feared, and fought by every God-serving man. We look upon him as a production of human fancy. But not so did our predecessors. They assigned to their devil of horrid form and huge dimensions a very different origin and nature.

Where born, and what his nature, according to the belief of those who imported him to New England shores, are important questions the appropriate answers to which must be comprehended before one can obtain just appreciation of the position in which their creed placed our forefathers, and the direction and force it gave to their action whenever seeming diabolism not only fearfully disturbed private firesides and social relations, but threatened tenure of lands, and continued existence of church and state throughout the colonies.

Their Author of witchcraft was conceived of, believed in, and set forth in language, as having been heaven-born--a glorious angel once, but apostate and banished from his native skies;--as one mighty, malignant personality, almost ubiquitous, almost omniscient, second in power to Almighty God alone, and nearly His equal. As quoted by Upham, vol. i. p. 390, Wierius, a learned German physician, described the devil as being one who "possesses great courage, incredible cunning, superhuman wisdom, the most acute penetration, consummate prudence, an incomparable skill in vailing the most pernicious artifices under a specious disguise, and a malicious and infinite hatred toward the human race, implacable and incurable."--"He was," says Appleton's N. A. Cyc., "often represented on the stage, with black complexion, flaming eyes, sulphuric odor, horns, tail, hooked nails, and cloven hoof." Many of us now living have seen him pictured nearly thus in some old illustrated editions of the Bible.

But the gifted Milton's comprehensive fancy and lofty diction, exempted, under poetic license, from adherence to fact or creed, or other enfeebling restraint, put forth, in masterly and acceptable manner, lineaments and features appropriate to an embodiment of his highest possible conceptions of combined majesty, might, and malignity, and thus allured his own and future ages to bow in awe before a devil who in grandeur far surpassed any which monkish powers had been able to fabricate and describe. He imputed to Satan "eyes that sparkling blaz'd; his other parts, besides prone on the flood, extended long and large lay floating many a rood," ... "unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield," ... "resolve to wage by force or guile eternal war, irreconcilable to our grand foe, ... ever to do ill our sole delight, as being the contrary to his high will whom we resist; If then his providence out of our evil seek to bring forth good, our labor must be to prevent that end, and out of good still to find means of evil." Such was the great poet's "Archangel ruined;" nearly such was the prevalent perception of him by the general mind of Christendom. He was one mighty Evil Spirit--monarch of all fiends, and an untiring operator for harm to both the body and soul of man.

Such conceptions were general alike in Europe and America. But still another view, quite as appalling as any of the foregoing, and appealing more directly to the temporal interests of men, operated in America, and made it specially needful for all property holders here to contest the devil's advances. Cotton Mather called the arch mischief-worker "a great landholder;" and he was spoken of as though conceived to be temporal as well as spiritual ruler over all Indian tribes and their lands, and also as being a contester against God and Christ for empire over each and every part of the American continent where Christians encroached upon his sable majesty's domains. God and devil--each was a vast and powerful spirit, exercising sway and dominion widely, as the other would let him; and these two mighty spiritual Rulers were often struggling in sharp conflict of doubtful issue for empire over particular portions of the earth. The Devil--and such a devil too--occupied much space not only in the theology and philosophy of the learned, but also in the daily and worldly thoughts of the common colonists.

Upham has forcefully and truthfully said (vol. i. p. 393), that our fathers "were under an impression that the devil, having failed to prevent progress of knowledge in Europe, had abandoned his efforts to obstruct it effectually there; had withdrawn into the American wilderness, intending here to make a final stand; and had resolved to retain an undiminished empire over the whole continent and his pagan allies, the native inhabitants. Our fathers accounted for the extraordinary descent, and incursions of the Evil One among them, in 1692, on the supposition "that it was a desperate effort to prevent them from bringing civilization and Christianity within his favorite retreat; and their souls were fired with the glorious thought, that, by carrying on the war with vigor against him and his confederates, the witches, they would become chosen and honored instruments in the hands of God for breaking down and abolishing the last stronghold on the earth of the kingdom of darkness."

This mighty Devil, commander-in-chief of the countless hosts of all the devils, demons, satans, Indians, heathen, sinners in, above, upon, or around earth,--this mighty contester for dominion with God and Christ and all good Christians, was conceived to be author of all works called witchcrafts, producing them through human beings who had voluntarily made a covenant to serve him, and who resided in the midst of the people whom he molested; for we shall soon see that the philosophy of those times permitted him no other possible access to man than through persons who were in covenant with himself.

Any covenanter with such a devil, that is, any wizard or witch, could be regarded by the public as nothing less formidable than a voracious wolf burrowing within the Christian sheepfold, who, if not at once unearthed and slain, would either actually devour, or frighten away from their pasturing grounds, all those with their descendants who had crossed the ocean to feed on the hills and vales of America. Our fathers felt that the possession and value of their homes and lands, as well as the temporal peace and prosperity of the community, its religious privileges, and the salvation of human souls, were at stake in a witchcraft conflict. Their faith, their interests temporal and spiritual, their manhood, and all that was brave, strong, and good in them, called upon them to face boldly even such a devil as has been described above, and to fight him by any processes which had been tried and approved in Europe; the chief of which was, to seize his covenanted servants--his guns--and silence them promptly and permanently. Witches must die!

LIMITATIONS OF THE DEVIL'S POWERS.

Creed-makers before the Reformation conceived, what is probably true, that natural barriers at all times have effectually debarred even the mightiest devil, as well as each and all of his disembodied imps, from coming directly into such close contact with a human body, or any other material object, as enabled them to produce effects perceptible by man's physical senses. Being themselves spirits, whether primarily earth-born or foreign, devils could effect direct access to, and could harm the minds and souls of men, and, unaided by mortals, could incite human beings to evil actions and self-debasement, while yet, so long as they were unaided by voluntary human alliance, they were absolutely unable to act upon matter--unable to subject human forms to fits, twitchings, tumblings, transformations, sicknesses, pains, &c., such as the bewitched of old experienced, and such as await many mediumistic persons to-day. Devils, formerly, and spirits now, to make the effects of their powers observable, or to make themselves felt by men's external senses, usually must act first and directly upon the equivalent to such nervous fluid or aura as enables man's mind to actuate his own body. Any disembodied spirit, of whatsoever grade or character, may be, and probably is, seldom able to command that intermediate aura--or that something--excepting when in or near an animal organism which possesses those properties or conditions, whatever they are, which render a person mediumistic. Constructors of the witchcraft creed probably had learned that nature always and everywhere makes matter intangible by spirit directly, and they thence inferred that the devil could never get into close contact with human bodies without the aid of some spirit, or of appendages to some spirit, who holds living alliance with matter, and consequently has in or around itself nervous fluid, or its equivalent, which is usable by mind not its own--is loanable, or at least liable to be abstracted.

Transpiring observation now quite distinctly perceives that control of human organisms by disembodied spirits is usually attended by conditions fundamentally analogous to an antecedent covenant. The old creed-makers may have reasoned from facts of experience and observation much more generally and logically than the present age imagines. No special desire is felt, and we do not see that any special obligation rests upon us, to palliate the doings of those monastics who in dark ages both fabricated and shackled the devil of witchcraft. Still we do not begrudge them such justification as may flow out that passing facts. We have already stated the probability that nature makes physical man intangible by spirits directly. Because of protracted observations of their doings, we assume that spirits are able to read at a glance the properties of each form to which they give special attention, and are at no loss to determine what organisms are controllable by them when conditions are all favorable. One and an important condition is, absence of resistance to control by the mind to which the susceptible organism pertains. The genuine owner generally can withhold his or her nervous fluids, or auras, or those properties, of whatever kind or name, which a spirit must use in the controlling process; and, consequently, a quasi agreement, amounting at least to acquiescence on the part of the medium, is generally a necessary preliminary to any modern spirit-manifestation, especially with mediums not much accustomed to be controlled.

When and where belief prevailed that all disembodied spirits who ever actuated human forms were the devil or his imps, the inference that those whom he and his controlled had entered into an agreement with him, was natural and almost necessary. For an agreement or consensus between a controlling spirit and the will of the person controlled is very common now, and, no doubt, has been in all past ages. The assumption, however, which seems to have been prevalent formerly, that such consensus involved eternal reciprocal obligation between the devil and a human soul, or the sale of that soul to the Evil One, could not be required or suggested by any facts perceivable by modern observation. No doubt each successive use of properties of a particular body by an intelligence from outside itself, generally enables the foreign spirit subsequently to manage that body with increasing ease to itself, and with more satisfaction probably to both parties; and the practice, if mutually pleasurable, renders prolonged co-operation probable; but co-operation for a time imposes no obligation or necessity that the parties shall remain forever conjoined. Common use of the same magnetism, nervous elements, or whatever they use in common, may tend to make a spirit and a mortal assimilate in their tastes, emotions, motives, and characters. This co-operation may evoke such sympathy between them, that each may often be drawn to the of other's aid, and conjointly they may manifest both physical and mental powers which neither could put forth alone. And it is possible that a liberated spirit may be so linked in sympathy with numerous other spirits, that the joint powers of many are at his service, so that through a single human form there may be manifested to the outer world the effects of the combined forces of legions of ascended spirits, either good or bad, in one accordant band.

Obviously, spiritual beings, of whatever quality, are generally dependent, for any manifestation to the outer world, on one or more of a class of mortals possessing special properties or susceptibilities. Nature seems to impose such necessity. She does not let even man's own spirit act upon his stable body directly, but through something evanescent before microscope and scalpel.

COVENANT WITH THE DEVIL

Perhaps, and probably, the direst and most disastrous of all deluding misconceptions by our forefathers--the one which engendered, nurtured, and intensified the greatest evils of witchcraft--was, that neither their huge devil, nor any subordinate fiendish spirit, could get access to external nature and human bodies through any other avenue than some man, woman, or child, who had already voluntarily made an explicit agreement with him or his to be his obedient and faithful servant, in consideration of helps and favors which the devil promised to bestow in requital. When such a covenant had been ratified by signature in the devil's book, written with the blood of the mortal party, then forthwith the devil and his hosts thereby became subject to his new servant's call, and the servant to the devil's summons, so that either could command the powers of both for co-operation in the execution of any malice or deviltry whatsoever, and upon any designated individual. The assumed fact that the devil could use the faculties and properties of no human being who had not expressly covenanted with him, conjoined with belief that he must have the voluntary help of some human being whenever he molested men, was the specially murderous ingredient of faith which impelled good and humane men on to copious shedding of innocent blood. The making of that covenant, and thereby opening an aperture for the devil's entrance through nature's barrier, and thus admitting a wolf into the Christian fold, who otherwise could not possibly have entered, constituted the essence of the crime of witchcraft. That covenanting act made the covenanting man or woman a wizard or a witch; and God had said, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

THE DEVIL'S DEFENSE.

The custom is humane and equitable which permits the accused to be heard in their own behalf. It is a common saying, that even the prisoner now at our bar is always entitled to his due and we cheerfully grant him opportunity to defend himself. Under his alias, Satan, and using a cultured Englishman as his amanuensis, he has recently favored the world with his autobiography; in which he says,--

"I am a power. I am a power under God, and as such I perform a task which, however unlovely and however painful, is destined to put forward God's wise and benignant purposes for the good of man.... I am an image of the evil that is in man, arising from his divinely-given liberty of moral choice. That evil I discipline and correct, as well as represent; and so I am also a divine school-master to bring the world to God. My origin is human, my sphere of action earthly, my final end dissolution. Evil must cease when good is universal. While, then, I cannot boast of a heavenly birth, I disown fiendish dispositions. Worse than the worst man I cannot be. I am indeed a sort of mongrel, born, bred, reared, and nurtured of human fancy, folly, and fraud. As such I possess a sort of quasi omnipresence and a quasi omniscience, for I exist wherever man exists, and, dwelling in human hearts, know all that men think, feel, and do. Hence I have power to tempt and mislead; and that power, when in my worst moods, I am pleased to exercise.... I am a personification of the dark side of humanity and the universe.... I exist in every land, and occupy a corner in every human heart.... I am the child of human speculation: I came into existence on the first day that man asked himself, 'Whence this world in which I live and of which I am a part?'"

The Autobiography of Satan, edited by John R. Beard, D. D., London, 1872.

The frankness, perspicuity, definiteness, and point, taken in connection with the calm, earnest tone, and gentle, candid spirit in which his then placid Majesty dictated that account of himself to his Reverend scribe, win our credence, and induce us to believe he utters only the simple truth when he describes himself as "a personification of the dark side of humanity and the universe,"--as one who "cannot boast of a heavenly birth," but was "born, bred, and nurtured of human fancy, folly, and fraud,"--as possessing "a sort of quasi omnipresence and a quasi omniscience," existing "wherever man exists, ... dwelling in human hearts," knowing "all that men think, feel, and do," having power "to tempt and mislead," and, in his "worst moods, is pleased to exercise" that power. Such a Satan, or devil, no doubt exists. But, though we admit that he was a mighty impersonal power in the midst of witchcraft scenes, he was vastly different from the heaven-born "Archangel fallen," whom the good people of New England believed in, feared, and supposed themselves to be fighting against.

A personification of the principle of evil, or "of the dark side of humanity and the universe," is the only devil who is simultaneously present with the whole human race. But hosts of unseen personalities--earth-born, expanded, wily, malignant, and powerful--may act upon man, and bands of such may be subservient to some abler ones of their kind, who reign over them as princes of the dark powers of the air. Malignant departed mortals are the only disembodied personal devils who molest mankind. We believe in many devils, but not in Christendom's witchcraft chief One.

The devil of our fathers, though but a fiction, was chief cause of witchcraft's woes, and therefore merits attention first, in any attempt to subject that matter to new analysis.

DEMONOLOGY AND NECROMANCY.

Demonology--intercourse with demons--implies dealings with spiritual personalities; but these may be either good or bad, and may consist wholly, or only in part, of departed human beings, provided there be any other grade of spirits residing in, or able to enter, earth's spirit spheres: probably there are not.