On the other hand, however, the divine Breath had also its benign significance. Siva (‘the auspicious’) inherited the character of Rudra (‘roaring storm’), but it was rather supported later on by his wife Káli. Athena though armed was the goddess of agriculture. The breath of Elohim had given man life. ‘I now draw in and now let forth,’ says Krishna;[13] ‘I am generation and dissolution; I am death and immortality.’ ‘Thou wilt fancy it the dawning zephyr of an early spring,’ says Sàdi; ‘but it is the breath of Isa, or Jesus; for in that fresh breath and verdure the dead earth is reviving.’[14] ‘The voice of the turtle is heard in the land,’ sings Solomon.
When the Third Person of the Christian Trinity was constituted, it inherited the fatality of all the previous Third Persons—the Destroyers—while it veiled them in mystery. When the Holy Ghost inspired the disciples the account is significant.[15] ‘Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, ... and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’ This was on the Day of Pentecost, the harvest festival, when the first-fruits were offered to the quickening Spirit or Breath of nature; but the destructive feature is there also—the tongues are cloven like those of serpents. The beneficent power was manifest at the gate called Beautiful when the lame man was made to walk by Peter’s power; but its fatal power was with the same apostle, and when he said, ‘Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?’ instantly Ananias fell down and gave up the ghost.[16] The spirit was carried, it is said, in the breath of the apostles. Its awfulness had various illustrations. Mary offered up two doves in token of her conception by the Holy Ghost. Jesus is described as scourging from the temple those that sold doves, and the allegory is repeated in Peter’s denunciation of Simon Magus, who offered money for the gift of the Holy Ghost.[17]
In one of his sermons Mr. Moody said, ‘Nearly every day we have somebody coming into the inquiry-room very much discouraged and disheartened and cast down, because they think they have committed a sin against the Holy Ghost, and that there is no hope for them.’ Mr. Moody said he believed the sin was nearly impossible, but he adds this remarkable statement, ‘I don’t remember of ever hearing a man swear by the Holy Ghost except once, and then I looked upon him expecting him to fall dead, and my blood ran cold when I heard him.’ But it is almost as rare to hear prayers addressed to the Holy Ghost; and both phenomena—for praying and swearing are radically related—are no doubt survivals of the ancient notions which I have described. The forces of nature out of which the symbol grew, the life that springs from death and grows by decay, is essentially repeated again by those who adhere to the letter that kills, and also by those who ascend with the spirit that makes alive. It is probable that no more terrible form of the belief in a Devil survives than this Holy Ghost Dogma, which, lurking in vagueness and mystery, like the serpent of which it was born, passes by the self-righteous to cast its shadows over the most sensitive and lowly minds, chiefly those of pure women prone to exaggerate their least blemishes.
In right reason the fatal Holy Ghost stands as the type of that Fear by which priesthoods have been able to preserve their institutions after the deities around whom they grew had become unpresentable, and which could best be fostered beneath the veil of mystery. They who love darkness rather than light because their deeds cannot bear the light, veil their gods not to abolish them but to preserve them. Calvinism is veiled, and Athanasianism, and Romanism; they are all veiled idols, whose power lives by being hid in a mass of philology and casuistry. So long as Christianity can persuade the Pope and Dr. Martineau, Dean Stanley and Mr. Moody, Quakers, Shakers, Jumpers, all to describe themselves alike as ‘Christians,’ its real nature will be veiled, its institutions will cumber the ground, and draw away the strength and intellect due to humanity; the indefinable ‘infidel’ will be a devil. This process has been going on for a long time. The serpent-god, accursed by the human mind which grew superior to it, has crept into its Ark; but its fang and venom linger with that Bishop breathing on a priest, the priest breathing on a sick child, and bears down side by side with science that atmosphere of mystery in which creep all the old reptiles that throttle common sense and send their virus through all the social frame.
In demonology the Holy Ghost is not a Devil, but in it are reflected the diabolisation of Culture and Progress and Art. It was these ‘Devils’ which compelled the gods to veil themselves through successive ages, and to spiritualise their idols and dogmas to save their institutions. The deities concealed have proved far more potent over the popular imagination than when visible. The indefinable terrible menace of the Holy Ghost was a consummate reply to that equally indefinable spirit of loathing and contempt which rises among the cultured and refined towards things that have become unreal, their formalities and their cant. It is this ever-recurring necessity that enables clergymen to denounce belief in Hell and a Devil in churches which assuredly would never have been built but for the superstition so denounced. The ancient beliefs and the present denunciation of them are on the same thread,—the determination of a Church to survive and hold its power at any and every cost. The jesuitical power to veil the dogma is the most successful method of confronting the Spirit of an Age, which in the eye of reason is the only holy spirit, but which to ecclesiastical power struggling with enlightenment is the only formidable Satan.
[1] To the ‘Secular Chronicle,’ February 11, 1877.
[2] Psalm lv.
[3] Jer. xxv. 38; xlvi. 16; l. 16.
[4] Isaiah xi. 2, 3.