Page:The Natural History of the Christian Devil.pdf/6

 promise that he would make them bodies next day, when lo! the Sabbath—which was for a long time personified—came and sat before him, to represent the many evils which might result from the precedent he would set by working even a little on the day whose sanctity had already been promulgated. Under these circumstances the Creator told the Devils that they must disperse and try to get bodies as they could find them. On this account they have been compelled ever since to seek carnal enjoyments by nestling in the hearts of human beings and availing themselves of human senses and passions" ("Demonology". M. D. Conway, vol. ii., p. 94). Consequently the fall of Adam and Eve was of vital importance, and as Lilith was jealous of the happiness of her original husband with his second wife, she entered willingly into the plot, and it was she who entered into a serpent and tempted her rival into eating of the forbidden tree.

The description of the Devil as a serpent, a dragon, in the Old and New Testament, is one of the most interesting signs of his descent. As Mr. Conway well points out in the book above quoted, every religion is inclined to transform into Devils the Gods of the religion that it supplants. The Persian Devil is a serpent, because the serpent was the symbol of Vishnu, the Hindu deity, and in the bitter conflict between Parsee and Hindu each party devilised the Gods of the other. "The word deva, meaning deity to Brahmans, means devil to Parsees. In the early hymns of India the appellation asuras is given to the Gods. Asura means a spirit. But in the process of time asura, like dæmon, came to have a sinister meaning. The Gods were called suras, the demons asuras, and these were said to contend together. But in Persia the asuras—demonised in India—retained their divinity, and gave the name ahura to the supreme deity, Ormuzd (Ahura-mazda). On the other hand, as Mr. Muir supposes, Varenya, applied to evil spirits of darkness in the Zendavesta, is cognate with Varuna (Heaven); and the Vedic Indra, king of the Gods—the Sun—is named in the Zoroastrian religion as one of the chief councillors of that Prince of Darkness" ("Demonology." M. D. Conway, vol. 1, pp. 25, 26).

To the early Christians, the Pagan Gods were real beings, but beings of an evil kind. "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to Devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with Devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup