Charles Bradlaugh - A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays

Can God be moved against a man to destroy him without a cause? If so, God is neither immutable nor all-wise. Yet the bible puts into God's mouth the terrible admission that the Devil had moved God against Job to destroy him without cause. If true, it destroys God's goodness; if false, then the bible is no revelation.

But Satan answered the Lord and said, "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life; put forth thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face."

Does the Lord now drive the Devil from his presence? Is there any expression of wrath or indignation against his tempter? Not so. "The Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand, but save his life." And Job, being better than everybody else, finds himself smitten in consequence with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. The ways of the Lord are not as our ways, or this would seem the reverse of an encouragement to virtue.

We turn over the pages of our bible for further information on this diabolic theme.

After reading the account of the numbering by David attentively, one is puzzled by the apparent contradiction, that in one place "God" and in another "Satan" occurs. 4 4 1 Chron. xxi, 1; 2 Sam. xxiv, 1.

But it may be that there is more harmony between God and the Devil than ordinary men are aware. Unfortunately, we have not the advantage of great scholarship, but one erudite commentator on the bible tells us, in speaking of the Hebrew word Azazel: "This terrible and venerable name of God, through the pens of biblical glossers, has been a Devil, a mountain , a wilderness, and a he-goat." 5 5 G. R. Gliddon's extract from "Land's Sagra Scritura," chap. iii, sec. 1. Well may incomprehensibility be an attribute of Deity, when, even to holy and reverend fathers, God has been sometimes undistinguishable from a he-goat or a Devil. Goats and Devils are alike represented with horns and tails. We trust that profanity will not enlarge on this sad confusion of ideas. Not possessing great lingual acquirements, we adhere to the English bible, believing that religion can never be improved by mere common sense, or human effort. We admire, without understanding, the skill of the Missionary, who makes the word "Mooigniazimoongo" an equivalent for God in the Sooahelee dialect, and who represents "original sin" to the Ottomi Indian by the word "Teacatzintiliztlatlacolli," and who recommends the Delaware to repentance as "Schiwelendamowitchewagan."

We do not wonder that in these translating thaumaturgic exploits God and Devil get mistaken for each other.

God is a spirit. Jesus was led up of the Spirit to be tempted of the Devil; and it is also true that spirits are very likely to lead men to the Devil. Too intimate acquaintance with whisky toddy overnight is often followed by the delirium tremens and blue-devils on the morrow. We advise our readers to eschew alike spirituous and spiritual mixtures. They interfere sadly with sober thinking, and play the Devil with your brains.

The history of the temptation of Jesus by the Devil has been dealt with in another essay. 6 6 "Who was Jesus Christ?" p. 8. Yet it may be well to add the opinion of a Church of England divine in this place: "That the Devil should appear personally to the Son of God is certainly not more wonderful than that he should, in a more remote age, have appeared among the sons of God, in the presence of God himself, to tempt and torment the righteous Job."

But that Satan should carry Jesus, bodily and literally, through the air – first to the top of a high mountain, and then to the topmost pinnacle of the temple – is wholly inadmissible, it is an insult to our understanding. 7 7 *"Christian Records," by the Rev. Dr. Giles, p. 144. It is pleasant to be able to find so many clergymen, in these days, zealously repudiating their own creeds. I am not prepared to speak strongly as to the color of the Devil; white men paint him black, black men white; but, allowing for the prejudices of dark-colored and fair-skinned believers, an invisible green would not be an unreasonable tint. We presume that he is not colorless, as otherwise the Evangelists or the persons present would have labored under considerable difficulties in witnessing the casting out of the Devil from the man in the synagogue. 8 8 Luke iv, 35, 36. This Devil is described as an unclean Devil, and it is, therefore, a fair inference that there are some clean Devils as well as dirty Devils. Printer's Devils are mostly unclean Devils, but then they are only little Devils, and we must not make too much of them. Nearly all the Devils seem to talk, and it has therefore been conjectured by some bachelor metaphysicians that they are of the feminine gender, but I see no reason to agree in this, and my wife is of a contrary opinion. The Devils are probably good Christians – one text tells us that they believe and tremble. It is a fact with some poor Devils that the more they believe the more they tremble. We are told in another text that the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He will have extremely bad taste, however, if he eat up the lean and bony working-classes, while so many fat bishops and stout archdeacons remain unconsumed.

Devils should be a sort of eternal salamander, for we are told there is everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels, 9 9 Matt, xxv, 41. and that there is a lake of brimstone and fire, into which the Devil was cast. 10 10 Jude, 9. Perhaps instead of being salamander they will, while in the fire, be rather of the 'otter tribe; but this is a question which Mr. C. H. Spurgeon, who is a far better judge of brimstone than myself, would be more competent to settle. The Devil has, at least upon one occasion, figured as a controversialist. He disputed with the archangel Michael, contending about the body of Moses; 11 11 Jude, 9. and in these degenerate days of personality in debate it is pleasant to know that the religious champion, unlike the Grants, Coopers, and Brindleys of the present period, was very civil toward his Satanic opponent. The Devil was once imprisoned for 1,000 years in a bottomless pit. 12 12 Rev. xxi, 10. If a pit has no bottom, it seems but little confinement to shut the top; but with faith and prayer, even a good foundation may be obtained for a bottomless pit.

It is urged by some that the Devil was the serpent of Genesis – that is, that it was really Satan who, in this guise, tempted Eve. There is this difficulty in the matter: the Devil is a liar, but in the interview with Eve the serpent seems to have confined himself to the strict truth. 13 13 Genesis iii, 4, 5, 22. There is, in fact, no point of resemblance – no horns, no hoof, nothing except the tail – which can be in any way identified.

The Old Testament speaks a little of the Devils, sometimes of Satan, but never of "The Devil," and it seems almost too much, in Matthew, to usher him in, in the temptation scene, without introduction, and as if he were an old acquaintance. I do not remember reading, in the Old Testament, anything about the lake of brimstone and fire; this feature of faith was reserved for the warmth of Christian love to inspire; the Pentateuch makes no reference to it. Zechariah, in a vision, saw "Joshua, the High-Priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him." 14 14 Zechariah iii, 1. Why the Devil wanted to resist Joshua is not clear; but as Joshua's garments were in a very filthy state, it may be that he was preaching to the Priest the virtues of cleanliness. It is often said that cleanliness is next to godliness; I honestly confess that I should prefer a clean sinner to a dirty saint. Jesus said that one of the twelve disciples was a Devil, 15 15 John vi, 70. but I am not prepared to say whether he meant the unfaithful and cowardly Peter, to whom he intrusted the keys of Heaven, or Judas who sold him for money, just as would nearly any bishop of the present day. The bishops preach that it is as difficult for a rich man to get into Heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle; yet they enrich themselves, and their families, as greedily and carelessly as if they, at any rate, never expected to smell brimstone as a consequence. You are told to resist the Devil, and he will flee from you; 16 16 John vi, 70. if this be true, he is a cowardly Devil, and thus does not agree quite with Milton's picture of his grand, defiant, almost heroism. But then Milton was a poet, and true religion has but little poetry in it.