[CHAPTER VII.]
THE reader will not fail to notice, that the personage known by the name of the Devil, Satan, &c., is treated of more fully than any other recorded in the Old or New Testament. The reason is, because his influence exceeds that of all the prophets, and even of the Saviour himself. So destructive has been his supposed reign, throughout the earth, that hundreds of volumes could be written, and still the half would remain untold. In the conclusion of this chapter, an account will be given of witchcraft in Sweden, which far exceeds any thing on record. The bare recital fills the mind with horror, pity, and indignation.
Before giving the dreadful tale, it will not be amiss to indulge in a few thoughts on the probable origin of the existence of a Being who has been a terror to all nations, both learned and ignorant. As the writer is convinced that every thing pertaining to theology is of man’s creation, it may be useful to express his opinions how it has happened that all religions have been based on two beings who have ever been opposed to each other, namely, a God and a Devil. Their opposition to each other is the ground-work of every system, whether it be of saint or savage.
To attempt to go back to the origin of theology, as to when or where it first assumed the form of religious worship, is to begin at the beginning of the human race. Religion may be compared to a chain, the first link of which is hidden in the darkness of past ages. The curtain is continually dropping; and the most that we can do is, to peep behind one of its comers. We find ourselves connected with that link which we call Christianity. How many preceding links there may have been, we know not, nor have we any means of knowing. All, therefore, is but conjecture. But carrying our ideas back to a time we know not when, to the beginning of that theology, the basis of which is a God and Devil opposing each other, the following memories are presented:—Before human beings were acquainted with the laws of nature, the universe must have presented to them appearances which surprised and alarmed them. Receiving no ideas but through the medium of the senses, the first idea which must strike them would be, the great contrast between a mighty power and their own weakness. They would discover from what they saw around them, a mighty power which no prudence could guard against, and which no strength, which they had, could oppose. They would see, that, if by accident, they fell into water, it would destroy life; if, by any means, their dwellings took fire, it would consume them; that thunder was calculated to alarm them, and that death, often followed the storm; and also, that the slightest accident often caused severe pain, and sickness followed, without their being acquainted with the original cause of all these evils. The first men, then, must have been astonished with the mighty power which every where surrounded them, when compared with their own weakness. Sometimes tasting the sweets of life, and at others, its evils, the first gave them pleasing sensations, the last, pain and distress. Having, then, nothing to guide them in drawing conclusions but the objects by which they were surrounded, they inferred that the mighty power which was every moment visible to their senses, and from which they received every thing that contributed to their happiness, resided in a being like themselves, but possessing wisdom and goodness.
To these children of nature, who saw “God in the clouds, and heard him in the wind,” by a simple process of the mind, such conclusions were very natural. The first theologians, then, who, by way of reasoning, we place at the fountain head of all religious systems which have come down to us, were convinced of the existence of a Supreme Power who governed the destinies of the human race. Power, then, was the first idea which man had, in the infancy of his rea-son, as to the existence of a God; and it is all that the great-est and wisest of the human race have ever discovered of the Being called by that name. And in this view of the subject, there is no man living who is an Atheist. The power that presented itself to untaught man, required no laborious investigation to discover. It struck his senses with as equal a force as it does the profoundest philosopher. On the contrary, the wisdom and goodness ascribed to God, resulted from a knowledge of the order and wonderful adaptation which pervades the universe, the investigation of which has employed master minds in all subsequent ages.
But untutored man must be overwhelmed with thinking of that power to whose bounds he could set no limits. The wisdom and munificence that run through all nature, were to him unknown. To those, therefore, from whom theology took its rise, it was a world of confusion. Ignorant of cause and effect in the order of nature, and their imaginations being active, while their reasoning powers were undeveloped, every thing they saw or felt was to them a mixture of pleasurable or painful sensations. The pleasure, ease, or comfort which they enjoyed, would be considered as the gift of a good power which conferred such blessings. On the other hand, it would appear inconsistent to them to ascribe the evils attending them to the author of good, they being incapable of judging that good (pleasure) and evil (pain) could proceed from the same power.
In reasoning from what they saw, they concluded that power was connected with, and resided in, living beings, who had life and motion like themselves. Hence they inferred, that the power from whom they received good, existed somewhere to them unknown. Proceeding in the same track in which they, in imagination, first set out, they conceived this power to be a Being whose residence was in the starry heavens. Untaught man, having imagined a Being from whom he received all the good, in following on in the same course soon came to the certain conclusion that the God who was the author of all his happiness, must have a location, a dwelling above, in some of the stars—at any rate, beyond the ken of mortals. As men’s thinking powers became move expanded, but still under the influence of imagination, they would conclude that this Being who dwelt in the skies, would, of course, have his attendants who fulfilled his orders, and added splendor to his habitation.
It appears, that by such a train of thinking, under the influence of the imagination, that the religious system which has come down to us, and which, from time to time, has had additions and modifications, namely, the existence of a God and of a place called Heaven, inhabited by angels, had its origin. Ignorant of the laws of nature, the power of imagination has produced, owing to the organization of the human mind, a world of fiction, consisting of a God, angels, and a habitation in the skies. By the same process of reasoning, (though feeble,) yet propelled by an active imagination, which had fixed the habitation of a good Being in the skies, in a splendid city, with attendants singing his praises, and eager to execute his orders, untaught man now turned hi# attention to the author of his misfortunes and misery. Being totally ignorant that a portion of pain was indispensable to the full enjoyment of happiness in his precarious life, he could not think that pleasure and pain proceeded from the same being; which must have induced him to conclude that an evil and malignant being existed, nearly equal in power to the one that was good; and to such an one, he ascribed all pain and misfortune.
Here, then, are all the materials for a system of theology which has been propagated and believed in by every nation under heaven, in which have been included “saint, savage, and sage.” In all the hundreds of systems of religious worship, the before-mentioned materials have been the ground-work, with the exception of the Jewish; for, during their dispensation, the Devil made no part of it. But when Jesus came to gather up “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” along came Mr. Devil to oppose him. As the imagination had created a Devil, the Father of all evil, something was still wanting to complete the whole; and that was, an abode of darkness and horror. Hell, then, is his dread mansion, over which he reigns triumphant.
It has been reserved for the Christian Religion to depict hell in all its awful terrors. The New Testament represents hell as a place of torment by fire never-ending, where the unfortunate occupants are forever burning, but kept alive, and never consumed. The hell of the Greeks and other nations is less horrible, being represented as the abode of darkness, humiliation, and sorrow. But Christianity has a God in heaven, and a Devil in hell, forever contending with each other, like gladiators of old for the prize; and that prize is the human race. But the same New Testament represents that the Devil will have by far the greatest number of prisoners, so that, in the final winding up of this holy war, Old Nick will win the field.