SATAN IN LITERATURE AND IN LIFE

An exposition of the "Satan" of the Book of Job can never be entirely satisfactory, and for these reasons:

First, the author assumes as matters of common knowledge things about which we have little or no information.

Second, we are not sufficiently certain of the date of Job to find the needed information in contemporary literature and life, in the theology, traditions, and folk-lore of the time.

Third, the pictoral representation of the unseen powers of the universe, the personifications which our author employs, the actions and motives which he ascribes to the ''spiritual hosts" alike of "wickedness"-— if it be wickedness — and of holiness in "the heavenly places,"1 are all so far removed from our habits of thought that we cannot attach reality to them. Only very radical treatment of the discussion can make possible dear thinking and spiritual edification. Yet we must be careful not to find in Job conceptions which may be entirely our own.

Satan in the Prologue.

Viewing the presentation of the Satan as we find it in the first two chapters of the Book of Job these things appear

1. Satan presents himself in the court of Heaven along with the sons of God. There is no definition of terms. We are not told who the sons of God are. We are not told how Satan comes to be numbered with them yet to be different from them. His name is best defined as "the adversary," though of what or of whom he is the adversary, or why as the adversary he should be present in the court of Heaven, is not dearly stated.

2. There is no hostility between the Satan and Jehovah. There is no rebellion, no disobedience on the part of Satan, no rebuke addressed by Jehovah to him. He is received on equal terms with the sons of God. He appears to be himself one of the sons of God. They seem to have been busy about Jehovah's business on earth, and the Satan appears to occupy a favoured and distinguished position amongst them. He is a sort of superintendent or inspector or overseer who, in the discharge of his duty to Jehovah, has been "going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it" The sons of God, apparently, are reporting upon their work, and Satan reports on his. And he is interrogated by Jehovah concerning one great and notable personage on earth. Job, "the greatest of all the children of the east."

3. The Satan is authorised by Jehovah to do a definite work; he is instructed to apply burning tests to the man of Uz.

4. And in this connection it appears that he has power to inflict sufferings upon the race of men, or upon individual men. As we know, robbers from the desert carry away Job's possessions, his camels and his oxen; fire destroys his sheep; a great wind brings down the house in which his sons and daughters are gathered, and all ten perish in the ruins; and Job is brought near to death by a frightful disease. These things, we gather, are caused by the Satan. But all, it must be carefully noted, are authorised by Jehovah. Satan does not do these things out of a malevolent disposition, warring against God. His authority is a delegated authority. Jehovah has given him leave to organise this succession of calamities and sorrows.

5. Negatively, this also should be noted. The Satan of Job does not tempt. The tempting serpent of the Garden of Eden is not here, nor the tempting Satan of New Testament story. This Satan afflicts — by Jehovah's express authority, as we have seen — he does not assail the soul of man.

So far, the Satan acts only as an angel, i.e. a "messenger," of God, not as a fallen angel nor as an evil spirit. He is obedient and faithful. And whether this is or is not a credible representation of the unseen forces which help to shape the lives of men, at least it is not inconsistent or unintelligible.

But now the discussion is complicated and the author's meaning is obscured by the Satan's own words and by the spirit which suggests them. He resorts to insinuations against the individual, and he is guilty of blasphemy against the race.

Insinuations against Job.

"Doth Job fear God for nought?" the Satan demands; and it is the mean, odious suggestion which for long ages the world has agreed to call satanic. "Hast not thou made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath, on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face."2 Whether we understand "Satan" or not, the man who speaks and thinks in this way has become Satanic, and the mood in which this view of men and women, of their deeds and their motives, arises spontaneously and habitually, is simply "devilish." It is not the individual maligned who suffers; it is the one who can think and say these things. When a man can travel from Dan even to Beer-sheba in human life and find all barren, find only selfishness, meanness, intrigue, and calculating policy in the hearts of men and women, it is not the men and women who are wrong; it is his own "satanised" soul. Our world is full of human goodness and kindness. The atmosphere we breathe is charged with neighbourly helpfulness. It is not possible to name one known form of human weakness, sorrow, or distress remediable or capable of alleviation which men and women have not organised themselves to combat If to-day a new form of suffering were discovered, conceivably removable by the effort of pity, love, and generous help, to-morrow a "society" or "committee " would be formed to fight the cause and find the cure. In every town and village in the world men and women "serve God for nought" — save God alone I

Blasphemies against the Race.

"All that a man hath will he give for his life" — God be praised, it is Satan's own lie! As these lines are being written there comes a pathetic, inspiring refutation of it. A friend of the writer, an English physician resident in San Francisco, has been bitten by a mad dog. Her Japanese "boy," a servant in her home, has been bitten, too. They are at this moment undergoing the Pasteur treatment. And the doctors cannot persuade the boy to take any food other than bread and water, though they tell him that he needs to "keep his strength up" with good nourishing food. But the boy says wearily — he has picked up the notion somewhere, perhaps in his home in Japan — that when one has been bitten by a rabid animal, if he eats nothing but bread and water, then, if he goes mad, "he will not bite anybody." And this splendid, ignorant boy, with the courage of a hero and the devotion of a saint, is jeopardising the success of the Pasteur treatment, running the risk, that is to say, of a hideous death from hydrophobia, so as not to risk the remote possibility of inflicting injury upon an unknown "somebody else/* And the records of the Christian martyrs reveal no grander spirit All that a man hath he will give for his life? This Japanese servant will not give for his life the humanity which God has planted in his soul.

What is the great, outstanding marvel which stands revealed in every notable railway accident or wreck at sea or fire in a building crowded with human beings? Not the readiness on the part of some hero to throw his life away, in the attempt to save a man or woman strange to him; not the absolute certainty that there is one hero there; but the fact that this hero is of the same flesh and blood and human spirit as everybody else; that he has come out of the crowd and will fall back into the crowd; and that never spark leaps from the stroke of flint or steel more inevitably than sacrifice, chivalry, and heroism leap from the contact of this rugged soul with human need. The simple fact is that we are brave all our life without knowing it. It has become instinctive with us. There are thousands of years of hereditary courage in our blood. And of any blaspheming Satan of our day who asks us to believe that all that a man hath he will give for his life the words stand sure, "When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father thereof."3

Satan in World-Literature.

The poets are the truest interpreters of life. Three of the greatest of these children of genius have stamped upon the thought of the world their conception of the adversary — the opposing, tempting principle in the heart of man and in the universe.

Milton.

In Milton, Satan is one of the great angels of God. He revolts, tries to establish an independent kingdom, is overcome by God and flung into hell, with all his fellow traitors. In hell they set themselves to plan and carry on rebellion. They hear of a new world and of man, and they determine to invade it, feeling that they can either conquer it and live there instead of in hell, or ravage and waste it and so do injury to a province of their Almighty foe. Satan, therefore, is sent to reconnoitre and report. He finds out where earth is and goes; enters Eden, and hears the conversation between Adam and Eve. He sits by the side of the sleeping Eve, and in the shape of a toad tries to hiss evil thoughts through her ear into her mind. Ithuriel finds him there and forces him away. He returns in a mist, enters the serpent, accosts Eve and persuades her to eat of the forbidden fruit. Then Satan returns to hell, and there he and his followers are changed into serpents; trees spring up, laden with what seems delicious fruit, which, when they eat, turns to dust and ashes in their mouths. So has the bruising of the serpent's head already begun.

The point of this is that Milton's Satan becomes a Satan through baffled ambition and hateful self-love. He will win! He must triumph! He will gratify himself, his hate, his revenge, his mortified longing for self-glorification, utterly reckless of another's loss or sorrow, utterly reckless of the loss or sorrow of a world. It is the typical crime of the universe.

Byron.

In Byron, the devil finds Cain in an evil mood, discontented with his lot, hating work. He racks the mind of the man with questions of life, death, good, evil, which the man is incapable of answering, which, indeed, he is incapable of understanding. In his revolt against law and God his rage is enflamed; hate blazes up, and he becomes a murderer.

And again the lesson lies on the surface. Whatever may be the pressure of pain or the poignancy of thought rebellion will not help. We shall not make the burden lighter by raging against it To a brave heart and a joyous faith the perplexities and troubles of life one by one yield and bow — and if they do not disappear from the life which now we live, this same brave heart or joyous faith is assured that they are "a light affliction" and "for the moment," which is "working for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."4 And the warning of Byron's Cain is in the words which God Himself speaks to the first murderer while yet there is for him time to be wise, "Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shall it not be lifted up? But if thou doest not well, behold sin croucheth5 at the door; and unto thee is its desire — but thou shouldst rule over it!"

Goethe.

The difference between Milton's "Satan" and Goethe's "Mephistopheles" is the difference between the primitive conceptions of an ancient people and the aspirations and yearnings of our complex civilisation. Mephistopheles is a sneering devil. Though a tempter, he tempts by scoffs. He finds his victim baffled in the search for knowledge, devitalised, and in that mood an easy prey.

It is when the higher faculties are wearied and the higher emotions are exhausted that we are ready to yield to the lower. The sins of saints are often no more than the actual devitalisation of the spiritual powers through excitement and overstrain. After spiritual triumph spiritual defeat is easy. But a soul is "lost" only when the higher is permanently subordinated to the lower. This is the sin unto death.6 But it is not so with Faust. For conscience is at work. He is willing to risk his life to save his victim. There is something which he, too, will not "give for his life." And at last he is victorious in the discovery that only in working for the general good does man attain unto life.

To this conclusion come at last poetry, philosophy, and revelation. The Son of God is manifested to destroy the works of the devil.7 And when Christ who is our life is manifested — in our life — then shall we also be manifested with Him in glory.8

1 Ephesians vi. 12.

2 Job i. 10, 11.

3 John viii. 44.

4 2 Corinthians iv. 17.

5 Better than "coucheth": sin is a wild beast, crouching to make his spring. Genesis iv. 6, 7.

6 1 John v. 16.

7 1 John iii. 8.

8 Colossians iii. 4.