Page:The Natural History of the Christian Devil.pdf/5

 few compared with the myriads of the lost (Matt. vii., 13, 14); a city contains the people of God, while the Devil has a bottomless pit, lest there should not be room enough for the millions upon millions of his subjects; his kingdom will endure for ever, its lurid flames challenging the radiance of the new Jerusalem; unconquered, unsubdued, he stands upright face to face with God, triumphing over him on earth as he will triumph through all eternity.

Outside the "Scriptures", Jewish writers have added some details to our knowledge of the Devil, as for instance that he married Adam's first wife, and that the latter was the real agent in the temptation of Eve in Paradise. It will be remembered that according to the Elohistic legend given in Gen. i. the first man and woman were created simultaneously, "male and female created he them" (Gen. i., 27). But in chapter ii. the woman is created long after the man, the creation and the naming of all the beasts and birds intervening between the making of the man and of the woman. It appears that there is no contradiction between these two accounts, for they refer to different women. The woman created simultaneously with man was Lilith, and Adam and Lilith were the "male and female" alluded to. Soon after they met, they unfortunately fell out, for Adam claimed superiority over his wife, and his wife denied his right to her submission. She asserted that she was quite as good as he was, that she was as old and made of the same material, and was in no wise inferior. At last the quarrel grew so hot that wings burst out of Lilith's shoulders and she flew away, leaving her husband with no wife to bully. As the peopling of the earth presented difficulties under these circumstances, God was obliged to create another woman, and he thereupon made her out of one of Adam's ribs, so that if she claimed equality he might be able to retort: "Well, you are nothing but a rib, and would never have existed at all if I had not lent a bone to make you out of."

Meanwhile Lilith had met Samaël, the head of the Devils, and had married him; these Devils were anxious that the human race should fall from purity, in order that they might be able to enter into them and live in their bodies. For God was making the Devils when the first Sunday morning began; "These beings were the last of the six days' creation, but they were made so late in the day that there was no daylight by which to fashion bodies for them. The Creator was just putting them off with a