YOUTHFUL VIEWS OF THE ARCH-ENEMY.
IT would seem as if our Arch-Enemy were exciting an unusual amount of interest just now in imaginative and thoughtful minds,—an interest which is both manifested and increased by a famous novelist choosing him as the hero of her story, and a well-known and eloquent preacher taking him as the subject of a course of sermons. These and other examples may only indicate a passing phase of thought ; but that there are some members of the community who take a deep and constant interest in-this fearful personage—namely, children—we have long observed. And the same opinion seems to be held by the writer of an amusing article on " Children's Theology" in this month's Cornhill Maga- zine, containing some delightful anecdotes ; and it will be interesting to consider presently what some of the reasons can be that give so repulsive a being a sort of fascination for youthful minds. The thought of him seems indeed to seize upon the imagination of children ; he is a real living personality to them, a factor in their daily lives, and an "enemy whom they delight to get the better of. "I was saying my prayers the other day," re- marked a little boy-friend of the writer's, "when the devil came to me, so I said to him, Get along you old rogue !'•" or, as another observed when asked why he remained on his knees after he had finished his prayers, " Well, mother, you know it says in the hymn, Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees,' so I thought I'd make him. shake a little longer." To these little ones, as to many others,. the realisation of the assaults of Satan is as vivid as that of St. Dunstan, when he attacked the enemy with a pair of tongs, or of many another saint of mediaeval times. And it is a. curious fact that keen as are the imaginations and sensitive the nerves of children in other respects, the thought of the devil does not seem to fill them with terror so much as with this imaginative interest, and with the longing to get the better of- the " old rogue." " Have you ever seen the debble? " asked a small maiden of her nurse. "Oh, no!" was the shocked, reply. " I thought perhaps he might be one of your ackaint- ance," answered little Missie calmly. It would seem, indeed, as if in all departments of human life, whether individual or collective, this characteristic is always a pronounced one in- the immature stage of existence. Take those nations who are- farthest removed from civilisation, and whose education is at zero, and we find that the idea of evil-spirits has taken so strong a hold upon them, as to be developed into a tmvestie- of religion itself ; and dreadful has been the outcome. If we rise many stages higher in the scale and study the early history of our own and neighbouring nations, every branch, of art and literature bears witness to the same tendency. History, romance, the legends of the saints, ballads, plays, all present their pictures of the devil and his attendant bad• spirits, in forms grotesque, horrible, humorous; painters. represent them in strange forms and colours, expressive of the qualities they ascribe to them ; architects and sculptors. adorn even the most sacred spots in their churches, the rood- screens and choirs of their cathedrals, with demoniacal heads. and figures in which they let their fancy run riot in grim. humour ; poets choose them, if not as the heroes, yet as tlie villains of their plays and poems ; while Nature herself in all her beauty and grandeur suggests to the mind new legends in• which Satan is the principal actor, and he is made to give his name to the wildest and most striking features of' natural scenery. The Devil's Bridge, the Devil's Jumps, the Devil's Punchbowl, at once occur to the mind as instances.
Or let us take the case of the poor of our own day, whose- mental powers are in an immature and undeveloped state,. like those of children, especially the poor living in remote- parts, where new ideas have least penetrated, and we shall find interest in beings of a demoniac order a prevalent feature.. The bogey-man will have a fine field there for his pranks:- That he should have a more meagre one in big towns where there are none of the wilder features of Nature to stimulate imagination, and where the prosaic side of life is predominant,. is quite natural. The devil appears, alas ! too often in the language of poor city folk ; but the part het plays in their fancies is insignificant, compared with the alefi he fills in the- thoughts of their remote fellow-countrymen of hill and dale. The Evil Spirit is a dull workaday sort of fiend to them, more- like a policeman than the picturesque enemy of childish or medieval imagination. Indeed, we were once amused to find in the East End of London that the policeman was actually taking. the part of diabolus in an adjuration, and to hear the question. asked by one shopwoman of another, " What the pleeeemani do you want ?"
Having insisted on the fact, let us try and get at some of the causes why Satan plays so prominent a part in the minds. of children as well as of the uneducated. One important- reason seems to be that he presents himself to them on the- more attractive, or at any rate, the least repulsive, side of his- character, and thus their imagination is able to de-diabolise him and divest him of the horror of moral infamy which he• deserves. His desperate character, his awful audacity in waging war against the Almighty himself, his supremacy over the legions of evil, take the youthful imagination by storm, in the same way that the bold deeds of buccaneers and. pirates fascinate boyish readers. Children are almost inclined, to put him in the position of a rival divinity to the Almighty, as the Zoroastrians placed Ahriman, with regard to Ormuzd; and stories are told us of their even addressing prayers to him. They regard him as a fierce opponent, fighting on the wrong
side, like Saladin who led the Moslem forces against the Christian hosts of Richard Cceur-de-Lion, yet invested by his wondrous temerity and mighty power with a curious interest and fascination. This is scarcely strange, when even the great poet Milton is charged with a similar error, and accused of making his Satan the real hero of "Paradise Lost." Chil- dren are, indeed, too ignorant and innocent to realise the repulsive side of his character, the low, mean, contemptible one, the cunning, the cruelty, the base vindictive selfishness, all the vices that would make a human being most hateful in their sight, and rouse their hottest indignation. We could not wish that they should, for such a realisation of evil would be incompatible with the happiness and the charm of childhood. 'Their thoughts of him will be darkened with a deeper horror and hatred as life goes on, and they learn by experience the real suffering inflicted on the soul by the temptations of this evil being, and as they gain more power of realising what moral evil is. We know that this power varies in grown men and women, the more saintly among them generally possessing it in fullest measure. But children can- not attain to it, and it is well that they should not; for their minds are too tender and sensitive for the shock it would give them.
Another reason that makes the thought of Satan an in- teresting one to children, is that he gives them an outlet for their innate love of fighting ; for man, and woman too, is a fighting animal from the first, and little boys and girls love to plunge into the fray, as their very games testify ; those which mimic war, like the warlike ones of Greeks and 'Trojans, Cavaliers and Roundheads, French and English, 'being the chief favourites. Recognising as they do his awful 'cunning and strength, their triumph is glorious if they 'conquer; while, if defeated, his mighty power supplies a good excuse. So felt a little maiden of whom we heard the 'other day. Having been vainly forbidden many times to touch the black-currants in the garden, and a promise of obedience for the future being at last extracted, she once more came before her mother with a face stained with the tell-tale juice. On being accused of her fault, this small 'daughter of Eve remarked, " Well, mother, I was standing by the currants when the devil came to me, so I said, Get thee behind me, Satan,' and then he went and rushed me into the bush." How delightful to be able to throw the blame on him ! There is besides in the thought of an encounter with the Evil One, the sort of naughty pleasure which the "natural man" in a child takes in ,playing with danger. Its terror is its charm. And so the 'little boy quoted above loved to tease his mighty foe by 'remaining on his knees after he had said hie prayers, that 'he might make Satan shake a little longer. He enjoyed sporting with danger and running as great a risk as he dared, just as children like to cheek, if we may be allowed the word, a big dog chained to his kennel, by running as close to him as they can venture. Some of our own poets, whose minds have a certain affinity with those of children in being of imagination all compact, and in even the most philosophical of whom there is always a childlike strain, show a like pleasure in poking their fan at the devil, teasing, mocking, and playing with him in the rollicking spirit of humour displayed in the ballads of Southey, of Scott, and of Robert Burns.
It is interesting to find that those writers for and about 'children who can enter with sympathetic insight into their minds and characters, show an appreciation of the mental trait of which we have been speaking. Let us take two examples,—a poet and a writer of fiction. The late Mrs. Alexander, whose insight no one acquainted with her Hymns for Little Children " would dispute, strikes this note clearly and boldly. She well understood that one of the strongest incentives against wrong-doing would be to rouse the fighting instinct in children and put them on their mettle against the foe. She warns them against the attacks of Satan in a hymn at the beginning of her col- lection, which is generally one of the first they are taught to repeat; and towards the end of her little book she again reminds them of that wily enemy-
" Whose voice is sweet, whose arm is strong."
She understands children far too well to keep this dreadful being in the background, but brings him boldly forward and bids them challenge him to the fight. Our other example shall be of a more humorous kind, our author being that delightful writer of short stories, Miss Barlow, author of "Irish Idylls." If nearly all children are richly endowed with imagination, we should certainly expect the lively, keen-witted youngsters of the sister-isle to have a double portion. And so in her vivid pictures of Irish-life, called "Strangers at Lisconnel," Miss Barlow gives us the following entertaining speculations about the occupations of the devil in prehistoric times :-
"' What was there in the world before the beginnin' of everythin' ? ' asks a small boy who had spent a surprisingly considerable part of his six years in metaphysical speculations.- ` Sure nothin' at all,' answered his elder brother Peter. = Then what was there before the beginnin' of nothin' ?' pursued Thady. =Dunne,' said.Feter indifferently, unless it was more nothin'.' —` Suro, not at all, that wouldn't be the way of it,' Johanna said dreamily, yet with decision. If there was nothin' but nothin' in it, there'd ha' been apt to not be e'er an anythin' ever. Where'd it ha' come from? Don't be tellin' the child lies, Peter. Why for one thing.' she said, her tone sharpening polemically, and taking a touch of triumph, there was always God Almighty in it and the Divil. Maybe that's what you call nothin'.'—Peter evaded this point, saying,—' Well, anyway, those times, if there was just the two of them in it, and no harm to be doin', let alone any good people to know the differ, it's ony a quare sort of Divil he'd get the chance of Win'. I wouldn't call him anythin' He wouldn't be so very long, you may depend,' Johanna pronounced. Musha, sure the Divil couldn't stay contint any while at all, till he'd take to some manner of ould mischief 'ud soon show you the sort of crathur he was— it's his nathur. I should suppose the first thing he'd go to do, 'ud be makin' all the sorts of hijjis roarin' great bastes and snakes and riptiles that he could think of, and the disolit black wet bogs, wid the could win' over them fit to cut you in two,
when you're sleepin' out at night and the workhouses —bad luck to the whole of them !—where there's rats in the cocoa and mad people frightenin' you, and the cross matrons and the polls, and the say to drowned the fishin' boats in, and dirty ould naygurs that put dacint people out of their little places.'—' If it had been me,' said Peter, 'I'd ha' been very apt to just hit him a crack on the head when I noticed what he was at, and bid him lave them sort of consthructions alone.'—' I dunno the rights of it entirely,' Johanna admitted, but it's a cruel pity he ever got the chance to be carryin' on the way he's done.'—' Ah ! sure it can't be helped now at all events,' said Peter, ready to take life aisy that fine sunny day.—` Belike it can't,' said Johanna, but 'twould be real grand if it could. Suppose I was out on the hill there some fine evenin', and I not thinkin' of anythin' in partic'lar, and all of a auddint I'd see a great big, ugly black. lookin' baste of a feller, the size of forty, skytin' away wid him- self, along the light of the sky over yonder, where the sun was about goin' down, and his shadder the len'th of an awful tall tree, slippin', streelin' after him, till it was off over the edge of the world like; and that same 'ud be just the Divil that they were after bundlin out of it body and bones, the way he wouldn't get meddlin' and makin' and annoyin' people any more.'—' Sure,' answers Thady, know all about God Almighty and the Divil, I was on'y axin' what was in it before the beginnin' of everythin', and you're not tellin' me that'—' There's a dale of things little spalpeens like you wouldn't be told the rights of at all,' said Peter loftily."
If there are some persons in the present day who find it difficult to believe in the personality of the Evil Spirit, children are not among them. There are some things in which their eyes may perhaps see more clearly and truly than our own.
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