Flowers of Freethought (First Series)

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Foote George William. Flowers of Freethought (First Series)

OLD NICK

FIRE!!!

SKY PILOTS

DEVIL DODGERS

FIGHTING SPOOKS

DAMNED SINNERS

WHERE IS HELL?

SPURGEON AND HELL

IS SPURGEON IN HEAVEN?

GOD IN JAPAN

STANLEY ON PROVIDENCE

GONE TO GOD

THANK GOD

JUDGMENT DAY

SHELLEY'S ATHEISM.2

LONG FACES

OUR FATHER

WAIT TILL YOU DIE

DEAD THEOLOGY

MR. GLADSTONE ON DEVILS

HUXLEY'S MISTAKE

THE GOSPEL OF FREETHOUGHT

ON RIDICULE

WHO ARE THE BLASPHEMERS?

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMON SENSE

THE LORD OF LORDS.3

CONSECRATING THE COLORS

CHRISTMAS IN HOLLOWAY GAOL.4

WHO KILLED CHRIST?

DID JESUS ASCEND?

THE RISING SON

ST. PAUL'S VERACITY

NO FAITH WITH HERETICS

THE LOGIC OF PERSECUTION

LUTHER AND THE DEVIL

BIBLE ENGLISH

LIVING BY FAITH

VICTOR HUGO.5

DESECRATING A CHURCH

WALT WHITMAN.6

TENNYSON AND THE BIBLE.7

CHRIST'S OLD COAT

CHRIST'S COAT, NUMBER TWO

SCOTCHED, NOT SLAIN

GOD-MAKING

GOD AND THE WEATHER

MIRACLES

A REAL MIRACLE.9

JESUS ON WOMEN

PAUL ON WOMEN

MOTHER'S RELIGION

Отрывок из книги

This gentleman is of very ancient descent. His lineage dwarfs that of the proudest nobles and kings. English peers whose ancestors came in with the Conqueror; the Guelphs, Hapsburgs, and Hohenzollens of our European thrones; are things of yesterday compared with his Highness the Devil. The Cæsars themselves, the more ancient rulers of Assyria, and even the Pharaohs of the first dynasty, are modern beside him. His origin is lost in the impenetrable obscurity of primitive times. Nay, there have been sages who maintained his eternity, who made him coeval with God, and placed upon his head the crown of a divided sovereignty of the infinite universe.

But time and change are lords of all, and the most durable things come to an end. Celestial and infernal, like earthly, powers are subject to the law of decay. Mutability touches them with her dissolving wand, and strong necessity, the lord of gods and men, brings them to the inevitable stroke of Death. Senility falls on all beings and institutions – if they are allowed to perish naturally; and as our august Monarchy is the joke of wits, and our ancient House of Lords is an object of popular derision, so the high and mighty Devil in his palsied old age is the laughing-stock of those who once trembled at the sound of his name. They omit the lofty titles he was once addressed by, and fearless of his feeble thunders and lightnings, they familiarly style him Old Nick. Alas, how are the mighty fallen! The potentate who was more terrible than an army with manners is now the sport of children and a common figure in melodrama. Even the genius of Milton, Goethe, and Byron, has not been able to save him from this miserable fate.

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But as the Christian superstition declined, the gods of Paganism also disappeared. Their vengeance was completed, and they retired with the knowledge that the gods of Calvary were mortal like the gods of Olympus.

During the last two centuries the Devil has gradually become a subject for joking. In Shakespeare's plays he is still a serious personage, although we fancy that the mighty bard had no belief himself in any such being. But, as a dramatist, he was obliged to suit himself to the current fashion of thought, and he refers to the Devil when it serves his purpose just as he introduces ghosts and witches. His Satanic Majesty not being then a comic figure, he is spoken of or alluded to with gravity. Even when Macbeth flies at the messenger in a towering rage, and cries "the Devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon," he does not lose his sense of the Devil's dignity. In Milton's great epic Satan is really the central figure, and he is always splendid and heroic. Shelley, in fact, complained in his preface to Prometheus Unbound that "the character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry, which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure." Goethe's Mephistopheles is less dignified than Milton's Satan, but he is full of energy and intellect, and if Faust eventually escapes from his clutches it is only by a miracle. At any rate, Mephistopheles is not an object of derision; on the contrary, the laugh is generally on his own side. Still, Goethe is playing with the Devil all the time. He does not believe in the actual existence of the Prince of Evil, but simply uses the familiar old figure to work out a psychological drama. The same is true of Byron. Satan, in the Vision of Judgment, is a superb presence, moving with a princely splendor; but had it suited his purpose, Byron could have made him a very different character.

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