Demonology and Devil-lore Part 36

An honest mirror was held up before this theology by the christian Adamites. Their movement (second and third centuries) was a most legitimate outcome of the Pauline and Johannine gospel. The author of this so-called 'heresy,' Prodicus, really antic.i.p.ated the Methodist doctrine of 'sanctification,' and he was only consistent in admonishing his followers that clothing was, in the Bible, the original badge of carnal guilt and shame, and was no longer necessary for those whom Christ had redeemed from the Fall and raised to the original innocence of Adam and Eve. These believers, in the appropriate climate of Northern Africa, had no difficulty in carrying out their doctrine practically, and having named their churches 'Paradises,'

a.s.sembled in them quite naked. There is still a superst.i.tion in the East that a snake will never attack one who is naked. The same Adamite doctrine--a prelapsarian perfection symbolised by nudity--was taught by John Picard in Bohemia, and a flourishing sect of 'Adamites'

arose there in the fifteenth century. The Slavonian Adamites of the last century--and they are known to carry on their services still in secret--not only dispense with clothing, but also with sacraments and ceremonies, which are for the imperfect, not for the perfected. Again and again has this logical result of the popular theology appeared, and with increasingly gross circ.u.mstances, as the refined and intelligent abandon except in name the corresponding dogmas. It is an impressive fact that Paul's central doctrine of 'a new creature'

is now adopted with most realistic orthodoxy by the Mormons of Utah, whose initiation consists of a dramatic performance on each candidate of moulding the body out of clay, breathing in the nostrils, the 'deep sleep' presentation of an Eve to each Adam, the temptation, fall, and redemption. The 'saints' thus made, unfortunately, seem to have equally realistic ideas that the Gentiles are adherents of the Prince of this world, and their sacramental bands have shown some striking imitations of those events of history which, when not labelled 'Christian,' are p.r.o.nounced barbarous. Now that the old dogmatic system is being left more and more to the ignorant and vulgar to make over into their own image and likeness, it may be hoped that elsewhere also the error that libels and outrages nature will run to seed; for error, like the aloe, has its period when it shoots up a high stem and--dies.

CHAPTER XX.

THE HOLY GHOST.

A Hanover relic--Mr. Atkinson on the Dove--The Dove in the Old Testament--Ecclesiastical symbol--Judicial symbol--A vision of St. Dunstan's--The witness of chast.i.ty--Dove and Serpent--The unpardonable sin--Inexpiable sin among the Jews--Destructive power of Jehovah--Potency of the breath--Third persons of Trinities--Pentecost--Christian superst.i.tions--Mr. Moody on the sin against the Holy Ghost--Mysterious fear--Idols of the cave.

There is in the old town of Hanover, in Germany, a schoolhouse in which, above the teacher's chair, there was anciently the representation of a dove perched upon an iron branch or rod; and beneath the inscription--'This shall lead you into all truth.' In the course of time the dove fell down and was removed to the museum; but there is still left before the children the rod, with the admonition that it will lead them into all truth. This is about as much as for a long time was left in the average christian mind of the symbolical Dove, the Holy Ghost. Half of its primitive sense departed, and there remained only an emblem of mysterious terror. More spiritual minds have introduced into the modern world a conception of the Holy Ghost as a life-giving influence or a spirit of love, but the ancient view which regarded it as the Iron Rod of judgment and execution still survives in the notion of the 'sin against the Holy Ghost.'

Mr. Henry G. Atkinson writes as follows: [113]--'My old friend Barry Cornwall, the fine poet, once said to me, 'My dear Atkinson, can you tell me the meaning of the Holy Ghost; what can it possibly mean?' 'Well,' I said, 'I suppose it means a pigeon. We have never heard of it in any other form but that of the dove descending from heaven to the Virgin Mary. Then we have the pretty fable of the dove returning to the ark with the olive-branch, so that the Christian religion may be called the Religion of the Pigeon. In the Greek Church the pigeon is held sacred. St. Petersburgh is swarming with pigeons, but they are never killed or disturbed. I knew a lady whose life was made wretched in the belief that she had sinned the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, and neither priest nor physician could persuade her out of the delusion, though in all other respects she was quite sensible. She regarded herself as such a wretch that she could not bear to see herself in the gla.s.s, and the looking-gla.s.ses had all to be removed, and when she went to an hotel, her husband had to go first and have the looking-gla.s.ses of the apartments covered over. But what is the Holy Ghost--what is its office? Sitting with Miss Martineau at her house at Ambleside one day, a German lady, who spoke broken English, came in. She was a neighbour, and had a large house and grounds, and kept fowls. 'Oh!' she said, quite excited, 'the beast has taken off another chicken (meaning the hawk). I saw it myself. The wretch! it came down just like the Holy Ghost, and s.n.a.t.c.hed off the chicken.' How Miss Martineau did laugh; but I don't know that this story throws much light upon the subject, since it does but bring us back to the pigeon.'

It would require a volume to explain fully all the problems suggested in this brief note, but the more important facts may be condensed.

It is difficult to show how far the natural characteristics and habits of the dove are reflected in its wide-spread symbolism. Its plaintive note and fondness for solitudes are indicated in the Psalmist's aspiration, 'Oh that I had the wings of a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest; lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.' [114] It is not a difficult transition from this a.s.sociation with the wilderness to investment with a relationship with the demon of the wilderness--Azazel. So we find it in certain pa.s.sages in Jeremiah, where the word has been suppressed in the ordinary English version. 'The land is desolate because of the fierceness of the dove.' 'Let us go again to our own people to avoid the sword of the dove.' 'They shall flee away every one for fear of the sword of the dove.' [115] In India its l.u.s.tres--blue and fiery--may have connected it with azure-necked Siva.

The far-seeing and wonderful character of the pigeon as a carrier was well known to the ancients. On Egyptian bas-reliefs priests are shown sending them with messages. They appear in the branches of the oaks of Dodona, and in old Russian frescoes they sometimes perch on the Tree of Knowledge in paradise. It is said that, in order to avail himself of this universal symbolism, Mohammed trained a dove to perch on his shoulder. As the raven was said to whisper secrets to Odin, so the dove was often pictured at the ear of G.o.d. In Notre Dame de Chartres, its beak is at the ear of Pope Gregory the Great.

It pa.s.sed--and did not have far to go--to be the familiar of kings. It brought the chrism from heaven at the baptism of Clovis. White doves came to bear the soul of Louis of Thuringia to heaven. The dove surmounted the sceptre of Charlemagne. At the consecration of the kings of France, after the ceremony of unction, white doves were let loose in the church. At the consecration of a monarch in England, a duke bears before the sovereign the sceptre with the dove.

By a.s.sociation with both ecclesiastical and political sovereignty, it came to represent very nearly the old fatal serpent power which had lurked in all its transformations. When the Holy Ghost was represented as a crowned man, the dove was pictured on his wrist like that falcon with which the German lady, mentioned by Mr. Atkinson, identified it. But in this connection its symbolism is more especially referable to a pa.s.sage in Isaiah: [116] 'There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of the knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.' The sanct.i.ty of the number seven led to the part.i.tion of the last clause into three spirits, making up the seven, which were: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Strength, Knowledge, Piety, Fear. In some of the representations of these where each of the seven Doves is labelled with its name, 'Fear' is at the top of their arch, a Psalm having said, 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' When the knightly Order of the Holy Ghost was created in 1352, it was aristocratic, and, when reorganised by Henry III. of France in 1579, it was restricted to magisterial and political personages. With them was the spirit of Fear certainly; and the Order shows plainly what had long been the ideas connected with the Holy Ghost.

M. Didron finds this confirmed in the legends of every country, and especially refers to a story of St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the tenth century. Three men, convicted of coining false money, had been condemned to death. Immediately before the celebration of ma.s.s on the day of Pentecost, the festival of the Holy Ghost, St. Dunstan inquired whether justice had been done upon the three criminals: he was informed in reply that the execution had been delayed on account of the solemn feast of Pentecost then in celebration. 'It shall not be thus,' cried the indignant archbishop, and gave orders for the immediate execution of the guilty men. Several of those who were present remonstrated against the cruelty of that order; it was nevertheless obeyed.

After the execution of the criminals, Dunstan washed his face, and turned with a joyful countenance towards his oratory. 'I now hope,'

said he, 'that G.o.d will be pleased to accept the sacrifice I am about to offer;' and in fact, during the celebration of ma.s.s, at the moment when the Saint raised his hands to implore that G.o.d the Father would be pleased to give peace to his Church, to guide, guard, and keep it in unity throughout the world, 'a dove, as white as snow, was seen to descend from heaven, and during the entire service remained with wings extended, floating silently in air above the head of the archbishop.' [117]

The pa.s.sionate s.e.xual nature of the dove made it emblem of Aphrodite, and it became spiritualised in its consecration to the Madonna. From its relation to the falsely-accused Mary, there grew around the Dove a special cla.s.s of legends which show it attesting female innocence or avenging it. The white dove said to have issued from the mouth of Joan of Arc is one of many instances. There is still, I believe, preserved in the Lyttleton family the picture painted by Dowager Lady Lyttleton in 1780, in commemoration of the warning of death given to Lord Lyttleton by the mother of two girls he had seduced, the vision being attended by a fluttering dove. The original account of his vision or dream, attributed to Lord Lyttleton, mentions only 'a bird.' When next told, it is that he 'heard a noise resembling the fluttering of a dove,' and on looking to the window saw 'an unhappy female whom he had seduced.' But the exigencies of orthodoxy are too strong for original narratives. As the 'bird' attested an announcement that on the third day (that too was gradually added) he would die, it must have been a dove; and as the dove attends only the innocent, it must have been the poor girl's mother that appeared. It was easy to have the woman die at the precise hour of appearance. [118] When in Chicago in 1875, I read in one of the morning papers a very particular account of how a white dove flew into the chamber window of a young unmarried woman in a neighbouring village, she having brought forth a child, and solemnly declaring that she had never lost her virginity.

In this history of the symbolism of the Dove the theological development of the Holy Ghost has been outlined. We have seen in the previous chapter that the Holy Spirit is in opposition to the Natural Air,--repository of evils. The Dove symbolised this aspect of it in hovering over the world emerging from its diluvial baptism, and also over the typical new Adam (Jesus) coming from his baptism. But in this it corresponds with the serpent-symbol of life in Egyptian mythology brooding over the primal mundane egg (as in Fig. 23, vol. i.). Nathaniel Hawthorne found a mystical meaning in the beautiful group at Rome representing a girl pressing a dove to her bosom while she is attacked by a serpent. But in their theological aspects the Dove and the Serpent blend; they are at once related and separated in Christ's words, 'Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves;' but in the office of the Holy Ghost as representing a divine Intelligence, and its consequent evolution as executor of divine judgments, it fulfils in Christendom much the same part as the Serpent in the more primitive mythologies.

'Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven unto men,' said a legendary Christ; [119] 'but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him, but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in that to come.' In Mark [120] it is said, 'All things shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, the sins and the blasphemies wherewith they shall blaspheme: but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost has never forgiveness, but will be guilty of everlasting sin; (because they said, He has an unclean spirit).' When Christ uttered these tremendous words, no disciple seems to have been startled, or to have inquired into the nature of that sin, so much worse than any offence against himself or the Father, which has since employed so much theological speculation.

In fact, they needed no explanation: it was an old story; the unpardonable sin was a familiar feature of ancient Jewish law. Therein the sin excluded from expiation was any presumptuous language or action against Jehovah. It is easy to see why this was so. Real offences, crimes against man or society, were certain of punishment, through the common interest and need. But the honour and interests of Jehovah, not being obvious or founded in nature, required special and severe statutes. The less a thing is protected by its intrinsic and practical importance, the more it must, if at all, be artificially protected. This is ill.u.s.trated in the story of Eli and his two sons. These youths were guilty of the grossest immoralities, but not a word was said against them, they being sons of the High Priest, except a mild remonstrance from Eli himself. But when on an occasion these youths tasted the part of the sacrificial meat offered to Jehovah, the divine wrath was kindled. Eli, much more terrified at this ceremonial than the moral offence, said to his sons, 'If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him, but if a man sin against Jehovah, who shall entreat for him?' In protecting his interests, Jehovah's destroying angel does not allude to any other offence of Eli's sons except that against himself. But when the priestly guardians of the divine interests came with their people under the control of successive Gallios,--aliens who cared not for their ceremonial law, and declined to permit the infliction of its penalties, as England now forbids suttee in India,--the priests could only pa.s.s sentences; execution of them had to be adjourned to a future world.

The doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not one which a priesthood would naturally prefer or invent. So long as a priesthood possesses the power of life and death over the human body, they would not, by suggesting future awards, risk the possibility of a heresy arising to maintain Deorum injuria diis cura. But where an alien jurisdiction has relegated to local deities the defence of their own majesty, there must grow up the theory that such offences as cannot be expiated on earth are unpardonable, and must, because of the legal impunity with which they can be committed, be all the more terribly avenged somewhere else.

Under alien influences, also, the supreme and absolute government of Jehovah had been divided, as is elsewhere described. He who originally claimed the empire of both light and darkness, good and evil, when his rivalry against other G.o.ds was on a question of power, had to be relieved of responsibility for earthly evils when the moral sense demanded dualism. Thus there grew up a separate personification of the destructive power of Jehovah, which had been supposed to lodge in his breath. The last breath of man obviously ends life; there is nothing more simple in its natural germ than the a.s.sociation of the first breath and the last with the Creative Spirit. [121] This potency of the breath or spirit is found in many ancient regions. It is the natural teaching of the destructive simoom, [122] or even of the annual autumnal breath which strikes the foliage with death. Persia especially abounded with superst.i.tions of this character. By a sorcerer's breath the two serpents were evoked from the breast of Zohak. Nizami has woven the popular notion into his story of the two physicians who tried to destroy each other; one of whom survived his rival's poisonous draught, and killed that rival by making him smell a flower on which he had breathed. [123] Such notions as these influenced powerfully the later development of the idea of Jehovah, concerning whom it was said of old, 'With the breath of his mouth shall he slay the wicked;' 'the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle (Tophet).'

Meanwhile in all the Trinitarian races which were to give form to christian Mythology, destructiveness had generally (not invariably) become the traditional role of the Third Person. [124] In Egypt there were Osiris the Creator, Horus the Preserver, Typhon the Destroyer; in Babylonia, Anu the Upper Air, Sin (Uri) the Moon, Samis the Sun. In a.s.syria the Sun regains his place, and deadly influences were ascribed to the Moon. In India, Brahma the Father, Vishnu the Saviour, Siva the Destroyer; in Persia, Zeruane-Akrane Infinite Time, Ormuzd the Good, Ahriman the Evil; in Greece Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, or Heaven, Ocean, and h.e.l.l, were the first-born of Time. The Trinitarian form had gradually crept in among the Jews, though their Jahvistic theology only admitted its application to inferior deities--Cain, Abel, Seth; Moses, Aaron, Hur; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. As time went on, these succeeded the ideas of Jehovah, Messias, and Wisdom. But already the serpent was the wisest of all the beasts of the field in Jewish mythology; and the personified Wisdom was fully prepared to be identified with Athene, the Greek Wisdom, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus (the Air), and whose familiar was a serpent.

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 Kali. Athena though armed was the G.o.ddess of agriculture. The breath of Elohim had given man life. 'I now draw in and now let forth,'

says Krishna; [125] 'I am generation and dissolution; I am death and immortality.' 'Thou wilt fancy it the dawning zephyr of an early spring,' says Sadi; 'but it is the breath of Isa, or Jesus; for in that fresh breath and verdure the dead earth is reviving.' [126]

'The voice of the turtle is heard in the land,' sings Solomon.

When the Third Person of the Christian Trinity was const.i.tuted, 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. [127] '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. [128] The spirit was carried, it is said, in the breath of the apostles. Its awfulness had various ill.u.s.trations. 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. [129]

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, pa.s.ses by the self-righteous to cast its shadows over the most sensitive and lowly minds, chiefly those of pure women p.r.o.ne 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 inst.i.tutions 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 G.o.ds 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 ma.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions will c.u.mber 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-G.o.d, 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 G.o.ds to veil themselves through successive ages, and to spiritualise their idols and dogmas to save their inst.i.tutions. 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 h.e.l.l and a Devil in churches which a.s.suredly would never have been built but for the superst.i.tion 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.

CHAPTER XXI.

ANTICHRIST.

The Kali Age--Satan sifting Simon--Satan as Angel of Light--Epithets of Antichrist--The Caesars--Nero--Sacraments imitated by Pagans--Satanic signs and wonders--Jerome on Antichrist--Armillus--Al Dajjail--Luther on Mohammed--'Mawmet'--Satan 'G.o.d's ape'--Mediaeval notions--Witches Sabbath--An Infernal Trinity--Serpent of Sins--Antichrist Popes--Luther as Antichrist--Modern notions of Antichrist.

In the 'Padma Purana' it is recorded that when King Vena embraced heretical doctrine and abjured the temples and sacrifices, the people following him, seven powerful Rishis, high priests, visited him and entreated him to return to their faith. They said, 'These acts, O king, which thou art performing, are not of our holy traditions, nor fit for our religion, but are such as shall be performed by mankind at the entrance of Kali, the last and sinful age, when thy new faith shall be received by all, and the service of the G.o.ds be utterly relinquished.' King Vena, being thus in advance of his time, was burned on the sacred gra.s.s, while a mantra was performed for him.

This theory of Kali is curious as indicating a final triumph of the enemies of the G.o.ds. In the Scandinavian theory of 'Ragnarok,' the Twilight of the G.o.ds, there also seems to have been included no hope of the future victory of the existing G.o.ds. In the Parsi faith we first meet with the belief in a general catastrophe followed by the supremacy and universal sway of good. This faith characterised the later Hebrew prophecies, and is the spirit of Paul's brave saying, 'When all things shall be subjected unto him, then also shall the Son himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that G.o.d may be all in all.'

When, however, theology and metaphysics advanced and modelled this fiery lava of prophetic and apostolic ages into dogmatic shapes, evil was accorded an equal duration with good. The conflict between Christ and his foes was not to end with the conversion or destruction of his foes, but his final coming as monarch of the world was to witness the chaining up of the Archfiend in the Pit.

Christ's own idea of Satan, a.s.suming certain reported expressions to have been really uttered by him, must have been that which regarded him as a Tempter to evil, whose object was to test the reality of faith. 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked you for himself, that he might sift you as the wheat; but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not; and when once thou hast returned, confirm thy brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and into death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, a c.o.c.k will not crow this day till thou wilt thrice deny that thou knowest me.' [130] Such a sentiment could not convey to Jewish ears a degraded notion of Satan, except as being a nocturnal spirit who must cease his work at c.o.c.k-crow. It is an adaptation of what Jehovah himself was said to do, in the prophecy of Amos. 'I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord.... I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.' [131]

Paul, too, appears to have had some such conception of Satan, since he speaks of an evil-doer as delivered up to Satan 'for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved.' [132] There is, however, in another pa.s.sage an indication of the distinctness with which Paul and his friends had conceived a fresh adaptation of Satan as obstacle of their work. 'For such,' he says, 'are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no marvel: for Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also transform themselves as ministers of righteousness; whose end will be according to their works.' [133] It may be noted here that Paul does not think of Satan himself as transforming himself to a minister of righteousness, but of Satan's ministers as doing so. It is one of a number of phrases in the New Testament which reveal the working of a new movement towards an expression of its own. Real and far-reaching religious revolutions in history are distinguished from mere sectarian modifications, which they sum up in nothing more than in their new phraseology. When Jehovah, Messias, and Satan are gradually supplanted by Father, Christ, and Antichrist (or Man of Sin, False Christ, Withholder (katechon), False Prophet, Son of Perdition, Mystery of Iniquity, Lawless One), it is plain that new elements are present, and new emergencies. These varied phrases just quoted could not, indeed, crystallise for a long time into any single name for the new Obstacle to the new life, for during the same time the new life itself was too living, too various, to harden in any definite shape or be marked with any special name. The only New Testament writer who uses the word Antichrist is the so-called Apostle John; and it is interesting to remark that it is by him connected with a dogmatic statement of the nature of Christ and definition of heresy. 'Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of G.o.d; and every spirit that confesses not Jesus is not of G.o.d: and this is the spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it comes; and now it is in the world already.' [134] This language, characteristic of the middle and close of the second century, [135]

is in strong contrast with Paul's utterance in the first century, describing the Man of Sin (or of lawlessness, the son of perdition), as one 'who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called G.o.d, or that is worshipped; so that he sat in the temple of G.o.d, showing himself that he is G.o.d.' [136] Christ has not yet begun to supplant G.o.d; to Paul he is the Son of G.o.d confronting the Son of Destruction, the divine man opposed by the man of sin. When the nature of Christ becomes the basis of a dogma, the man of sin is at once defined as the opponent of that dogma.

As this dogma struggled on to its consummation and victory, it necessarily took the form of a triumph over the Caesars, who were proclaiming themselves G.o.ds, and demanding worship as such. The writer of the second Epistle bearing Peter's name saw those christians who yielded to such authority typified in Balaam, the erring prophet who was opposed by the angel; [137] the writer of the Gospel of John saw the traitor Judas as the 'son of perdition,' [138] representing Jesus as praying that the rest of his disciples might be kept 'out of the evil one;' and many similar expressions disclose the fact that, towards the close of the second century, and throughout the third, the chief obstacle of those who were just beginning to be called 'Christians'

was the temptation offered by Rome to the christians themselves to betray their sect. It was still a danger to name the very imperial G.o.ds who successively set themselves up to be worshipped at Rome, but the pointing of the phrases is unmistakable long before the last of the pagan emperors held the stirrup for the first christian Pontiff to mount his horse.

Nero had answered to the portrait of 'the son of perdition sitting in the temple of G.o.d' perfectly. He aspired to the t.i.tle 'King of the Jews.' He solemnly a.s.sumed the name of Jupiter. He had his temples and his priests, and shared divine honours with his mistress Poppaea. Yet, when Nero and his glory had perished under those phials of wrath described in the Apocalypse, a more exact image of the insidious 'False Christ' appeared in Vespasian. His alleged miracles ('lying wonders'), and the reported prediction of his greatness by a prophet on Mount Carmel, his oppression of the Jews, who had to contribute the annual double drachma to support the temples and G.o.ds which Vespasian had restored, altogether made this decorous and popular emperor a more formidable enemy than the 'Beast' Nero whom he succeeded. The virtues and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius still increased the danger. Political conditions favoured all those who were inclined to compromise, and to mingle the popular pagan and the Jewish festivals, symbols, and ceremonies. In apocalyptic metaphor, Vespasian and Aurelius are the two horns of the Lamb who spake like the Dragon, i.e., Nero (Rev. xiii. 11).

The beginnings of that mongrel of superst.i.tions which at last gained the name of Christianity were in the liberation, by decay of parts and particles, of all those systems which Julius Caesar had caged together for mutual destruction. 'With new thrones rise new altars,'

says Byron's Sardanapalus; but it is still more true that, with new thrones all altars crumble a little. At an early period the differences between the believers in Christ and those they called idolaters were mainly in name; and, with the increase of Gentile converts, the adoption of the symbolism and practices of the old religions was so universal that the quarrel was about originality. 'The Devil,'

says Tertullian, 'whose business it is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circ.u.mstances of the Divine Sacraments in the mysteries of idols. He himself baptizes some, that is to say, his believers and followers: he promises forgiveness of sins from the sacred fount, and thus initiates them into the religion of Mithras; he thus marks on the forehead his own soldiers: he then celebrates the oblation of bread; he brings in the symbol of resurrection, and wins the crown with the sword.' [139]

What ma.s.ses of fantastic nonsense it was possible to cram into one brain was shown in the time of Nero, the brain being that of Simon the Magician. Simon was, after all, a representative man; he reappears in christian Gnosticism, and Peter, who denounced him, reappears also in the phrenzy of Montanism. Take the followers of this Sorcerer worshipping his image in the likeness of Jupiter, the Moon, and Minerva; and Monta.n.u.s with his wild women Priscilla and Maximilla going about claiming to be inspired by the Holy Ghost to re-establish Syrian orthodoxy and asceticism; and we have fair specimens of the parties that glared at each other, and apostrophised each other as children of Belial. They competed with each other by pretended miracles. They both claimed the name of Christ, and all the approved symbols and sacraments. The triumph of one party turned the other into Antichrist.

Thus in process of time, as one hydra-head fell only to be followed by another, there was defined a Spirit common to and working through them all--a new devil, whose special office was hostility to Christ, and whose operations were through those who claimed to be christians as well as through open enemies.