pounded and enforced, in different forms of speech, | over the earth. This interpretation we shall vinupon three or four different classes of men, there dicate upon grounds not before brought forward, is a wonderful elevation and harmony, which, if which will place the passage in a new, and, we not utterly destroyed, is at least very much low- trust, a fuller light. ered, by the popular sense of devil given to the term daimon, as used in the passages we have been discussing. If it should be asked why they are designated "unclean spirits"-vεvuara, like frogs-the spirits of daimons, working miracles, we would Now, as St. Paul uses the term daimon in this point to the part which they enact on the prophetic Gentile or Pagan sense, in special connection with scroll. They "go forth unto the kings of the the idol-worship of the old Pagan world which earth and of the whole world, to gather them to prevailed in his own time, and, in 1 Tim. iv. 1, in the battle of that great day of God Almighty." reference to the revived Pagan notions of subordi- Now if, as we have shown, or, as we hope to nate mediators, foretold by the Spirit for the apos- show before we conclude this paper, the term daitasy of the latter times; so the author of the mon, everywhere in the New Testament, except Revelations applies it in precisely a similar sense, in the mouth of the Apostle of the Gentiles, by in connection with the idol-worship of this corrupt whom it is used in a Gentile or Pagan sense, and and Paganized Christianity. In this sense only in that passage of Revelations, which, referring to can we, consistently with the truth of prophecy, a Pagan condition of apostate Christendom, to a and the facts of ecclesiastical history, understand worship of daimoniac mediators, and of idols or the word daimonia, as used in Rev. ix. 20-images, employs the term in the same Pagan sense "And the rest of the men-yet repented not of and connection-if everywhere else it indicates the the work of their hands, that they should worship phenomena of some species of lunacy, madness, devils, [daimons,] and idols of gold and silver," epilepsy, or other disease, manifested by convul&c. For this passage occurs in the description sive action and mental derangement (as we, from of events which follow the sounding of the sixth association, to this day, say "he is possessed," to angel's trumpet, and refers, according to the opin- express extravagant and unaccountable conduct)— ion of all commentators, to the judgments inflicted if the phrase "unclean spirit," constantly used as upon the corrupted nations of Christendom, more synonymous with daimwn, is, as we have seen ́especially, perhaps, the Eastern churches, by the above, but another name among the Jews as invasions of the Arabian, Turkish, and Tartar among the Hindoos-for affections either of a hordes, symbolized, in the prophecy, by the loos- lunatic, an epileptic, or an hysteric type, from the ing of "the four angels, which are bound in the abandonment of clothes, and other acts and habits great river Euphrates, which were prepared for an of an uncleanly and repulsive character, which hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to persons thus affected commonly exhibit; and if slay the third part of men.' Now, none of the the prophet mean to designate the sudden rise, and Christians of the Eastern, the African, or the Span- contagious, and, as it were, convulsionary, propaish churches, upon whom this judgment principally gation of wild principles and doctrines, whether fell, or indeed of any Christian church whatever, of political phrenzy, or social madness, or spiritual since the first preaching of the gospel, have ever delusion, circulating from city to city, from throne been guilty of worshipping devils or infernal spirits. to throne, with electric speed and galvanic action, But a very large portion of Christendom, both literally convulsing the world, producing in a few east and west, fell into the worship of daimons or days the revolutions and changes which centuries intermediate beings-namely, of angels, and dei- of systematic effort in man's regular progress were fied or canonized men and women, and conjoined necessary to accomplish, and boding the catastrowith this the use and worship, or veneration, of phe of universal war and confusion upon earth, images, or idols of gold and silver, &c. This, may we not recognize a most just and appropriate therefore, must be the sin here imputed to them, picture, of such a startling phase in the world's since the other never existed. Here, therefore, history, in the striking words which he employs, also, as in 1 Tim. iv. 1, and 1 Cor. x. 20, 21, without supposing that any personal fallen angel daimon means something very different from devil is at all designated? And, further, have we not, In our sense, and had better have been rendered apparently, some reason to fear, from the signs in by dæmon, or some other word which would have the heaven and upon the earth, that the exodus marked its distinction from diabolos. of these three-spirits of daimons-these three contagious and convulsing phrenzies has already commenced in these our days? As for the "three unclean spirits like frogs," that are called "the spirits of daimons" in Rev. xvi. 13, 14, they must denote wicked doctrines or It is a curious point, that nowhere in the New principles, and not individuals; for how could one Testament, nowhere, indeed, in the whole Bible, personal spirit come out of the mouth of another? is there indicated any connection or resemblance Commentators are, we believe, agreed upon this between Satan, the diabolos, or proper devil-who point, that the going forth of these three spirits is called "the wicked one," "the dragon," and “out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the" the serpent"—and these daimons, such as would mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the lead us to conclude them personal wicked spirits, false prophet," symbolizes the simultaneous rise similar to him in his moral nature, and obedient and spread of three different forms of evil principle to his will; or to infer any relation whatever to exist between them, other than that by which they, in common with death, and sickness, and infirmity, and all other human misery, and even serpents and scorpions, and the unwilling subjection of the creature to vanity and the bondage of corruption, and the groaning and travailing of the whole creation, are represented as a result and a portion of his permitted power upon earth. Never are they termed his ministers. Whenever the fallen spirits who obey the behests of Satan are alluded to, they are called " his angels." Thus, in Matt. xxv. 41, we read, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil [diabolos] and his angels." So, also, in Rev. xii. 7,"And the dragon fought, and his angels;" and v. 9," And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil [diabolos] and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels [not daimons] were cast out with him." strained as a sort of spiritual alembic-to note the degree of conclusive proof which this shuddering testimony was supposed to afford; and then to say, is not this the terrified credence, the believing and trembling of the daimons, to which St. James refers? Was the apostle alluding to what passes in the world of spirits among the fallen angels, of which our Lord himself never vouchsafes a hint, and to which, were they even revealed to himself, St. James could hardly refer as an argument calculated to influence forcibly those he was addressing? Or was he not, rather, referring to the fearful cries, and the confessions made amid tremblings and convulsions of the frame, by parties under the daimoniac paroxysm, which they had all, probably, frequently witnessed; and which they, as well as he, in common with their times, believed to proceed from tabernacling daimons? We find this very mode of speech, this treating the acts of the possessed, as if performed immediBut there is one other important passage that ately, and almost visibly, by the daimons themmust not be passed over, and which, being ap- selves, in many other portions of the New Testaparently the strongest, we have reserved to the ment. Thus, in the account of the Gadarene last. St. James says-Epistle ii. 19" The daimoniac already quoted, Mark v. 10, we read, devils [daimons] also believe, and tremble." This," He [the possessed] besought him much that he it cannot be denied, seems, at first sight, very would not send THEM [the daimons] out of the much opposed to the views we have been proposing; and yet, it is but a seeming opposition, which, upon consideration, entirely disappears, or rather is changed into a confirmation. For is not the apostle here alluding to the very belief and confessions made by the daimoniacs and pythonic spirits, both to our Lord and to St. Paul, as formerly noticed, and doubtless to the other apostles also, when sent forth to heal the sick and cast out daimons? And does not the trembling, spoken of by St. James, refer to that convulsive tremor and shuddering which was the unfailing indication and accompaniment of a paroxysm of the daimoniac disorder, which, it will be found, is the characteristic symptom of the approach of the afflatus to the Hindoo pythonics of the present day, and which is the common symptom attending the accession of epileptic, hysteric, and similar convulsive seizures? The history of the convulsionaries, and of the first quakers, [tremblers,] shows the invariable connec-acteristic of that condition; and the revelations of tion that exists between convulsive action of the body, and spiritual exaltation of whatever kind, whether hysteric, enthusiastic, or what the Jews considered daimoniac. After having witnessed the phenomena of Hindoo possession, and looking to the sense in which these words daimon and daimoniac are so invariably employed in the gospels, we believe the foregoing to be the true senseor, at least, a very probable explanation of the passage. And should this interpretation appear strange, as, doubtless, from its novelty it may, we would pray those who doubt its correctness to look into the church history of the first ages, to mark the importance attached-as in the case of SS. Gervasius and Protanius before alluded to-to the trembling, and convulsions, and horrified cries of the daimoniacs at the sight, or touch, or approach of relics, for the testing of which they were re country." But immediately afterwards, v. 12, the this condition-when man's own consciousness, turned back from and blinded to the relations of the outer world, and losing, or bewildered as to his own true identity, may only be the more awakened to an intuitive and perhaps painful perception of the reality of deity, and the awful beauty of holiness-the revelations of such a condition constituting, possibly, as we before suggested, as true, nay, more true and unexceptionable testimonies to the truth of the divine existence, than utterances proceeding from the angels of him who is the father of lies-spirits irreparably lost, and therefore irretrievably wicked; whose sole and eternal thought and feeling towards God and his beloved, must be hopeless hatred; whose eternal word, denial; whose eternal action, the endeavor to destroy his works, and mar the purposes of his love? But we do not wish, nor is it requisite, to press this point of critical interpretation any further. We our Lord himself, and probably by St. John `also, are profoundly impressed with the marked distinc- we feel strongly impressed; that even those of the tion, which is everywhere preserved in the original disciples, who followed the current belief among of the New Testament—as we imagine every the Jews, and believed these states of madness to Greek scholar must be-between the two terms, result from a foreign spirit predominating over the diabolos and daimon. We see in the former every- proper intelligence of the patient, always use daiwhere indicated a being, whose nature is morally mon, and its synonymes, "wicked spirit" and wicked; in the latter we see denoted-when not "unclean spirit," in this restricted sense, that is, applied by St. Paul, in the Greek sense, to the in association with human madness or derangemediate divinities worshipped, by the Gentiles, or ment, or disease of a convulsive character; that by him and the author of Revelations, to a similar wherever they designate an evil spirit by these worship revived in corrupted Christendom-that terms, they designate them, not as in their own state of man's altered consciousness, when he is essence, or abstracted from body, but as manifested said expressly to be beside himself, and an intel- in their effects in the sphere of living humanityligeuce different from his sane and ordinary self in the tremor and the palsy, the gnashing and the seems to direct his words and actions—a state foam, the convulsive action, the frantic gestures, which the heathens (as the modern Turks) looked the wild words, the terrible expression, the upupon as having something divine, or, as Plato turned eye, the death-like coma, the altered conwould express it, something daimoniacal in it;sciousness, and, occasionally, perhaps, the awakwhich the Jews, like the modern Hindoos, in one ened vision, or exalted faculties, of a man beside phase of their pythonic system-for in the other they resemble the Greeks and Romans-supposed to result from the indwelling of an evil spirit; but which medical men of the present day would pronounce to be epilepsy or lunacy, and which the express language of the gospels themselves warrants them in doing so. For, as already remarked, we have the boy who, in Matt. xvii. 15, is said to be 66 sore vexed," and whom, in Mark ix. 20, "the spirit tare," and out of whom the daimon, after having been rebuked by Jesus, departed, Matt. xvii. 18-this same boy is, in Matt. xvii. 15, called by his father, expressly, a "lunatic," or person afflicted with an affection depending on lunar influence, and immediately afterwards is described as The several passages of St. Paul, on the other being "cured." Again, we find the two ideas of hand, all of which, except one, refer expressly to the daimon and madness identified in John x. 20-the religious ideas prevalent among the Gentiles, "He hath a daimon, and is mad." himself. Our interpretation of the passage in St. James' Epistle is in accordance with this view, that he refers to the confessions made by daimonized man.* The same with our explanation of the three spirits of daimons in the Revelations that they refer to three forms of epidemic phrenzy or delusion, whether political, social, or spiritual, in its immediate character, which, propagated like a contagious madness on living man, shall hurry him [if they be not already doing so] into the great and final war, which shall constitute the catastrophe of his tragic history on earth. And the dif- and connected with their idol worship, and that ficulty of this language, which may to a European one, to a future departure or apostasy from the appear strange, and to present, as one, two utterly Christian faith, which shall be characterized by, different ideas, receives its full solution in the East, among other things, a return to Gentile doctrines where the identification between daimon-action and upon daimoniac intercession and worship, we are madness—and, indeed, all cerebral, nervous, and led, from a comparison of texts, and a consideranomalous disease—is rooted in the popular mind, ation of the profound harmony of the apostle's and has for centuries maintained the schools of ideas, to explain on another principle, which equalmedical exorcism presided over by the Bhuktus. ly excludes his intending by the word daimon a And lest any one should contend that this distinc- disembodied wicked spirit-namely, in that sense tion between the two terms, which our translation in which the Greeks themselves—with whose has confounded, is not one of character, as we philosophy and theosophic poetry he was manifestmaintain, but merely of dignity and degree; that ly conversant, and whom, be it remembered, he is diabolos, or "the calumniator," is a title limited addressing, whether still heathens like the Atheto the devil, i. e., to the fallen archangel-the au- nians, or recent Gentile converts like the Corinthor of evil and of death, the father of lies, and the thians and Colossians-understood the term, that accuser of man-whereas daimon is used to denote of a divine numen, superior to man and lower than any subordinate evil spirit, we would point to the the one supreme God, the Hypsistos and Agathos passage in St. John vi. 70, where our Lord, im--in a word, a secondary protecting power, or anputing moral guilt to Judas, calls him a devil-gelic mediator. And this Gentile explanation of "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you St. Paul's language affords a key to that passage is a devil?" in which not daimon, but this very in Revelations, where the word daimon is applied word, diabolos, or "calumniator," is used; where*This word represents far more justly the participle as, as above observed, when the Jews impute mad-dauoritoueros, employed in the original Gospels, than ness to our Lord, it is a daimon which they allege him to have. With the reality of this distinction, and that it is intentionally preserved throughout by the phrase "possessed by devils," used in our translation. There is nothing in the Greek term at all corresponding with, or suggesting the idea of, "possession," strictly speaking. in a precisely similar connection, to the same Gen- for aught we know, depend, even immediately, on tile daimon-worship and idolatry revived, in another causes far more spiritual than medulla, and nerve, form, in the corrupted Christian church. and blood-may arise, even according to the laws Yet, having thus done justice to very profound of material causation, as Bayle has well shown, distinctions, in the language even of the apostles, from the disorder introduced into these finer porand shown, from parallelisms of thought and ex- tions of our organization, by spiritual beings, pression current in the East, and from the deduc- armed with profound knowledge, and moving in tions of a higher synthetic criticism, that passages the most apparently opposed to the physical import of the word daimon as distinguished from the moral, and the view of possession which it will suggest, can be interpreted in the most perfect harmony with it, we do not desire to press this point further. 66 the minutest vehicles. They may, in a word, be real demoniac possessions in the most literal sense. And, truly, a close observation of the intrinsically evil character often exhibited by parties suffering under such afflictions-of the apparently immodest, as well as the malignant tendencies which For, admitting that our interpre- they sometimes evince-tendencies quite opposed tations were wholly wrong, and that the popular to the natural and sane dispositions of the suffersense of devil were the true one in every one of ers-may well have led thoughtful observers to these instances, in the Epistles and Revelations, recognize, in these manifestations, some influence it would only show, what we have already allowed, transcending the sphere of mere physical agencies; that the disciples themselves, or the greater num- in a word, some power of a moral kind, characterber of them, regarded these phenomena, like the ized by malignity of nature and depravity of senrest of their countrymen, as resulting from the ac-timent. "Many facts," says Schlegel, in his tual indwelling of foreign evil spirits. What we 'Philosophy of Life"-" many facts in medical mainly contend is, that our Lord himself never experience, and peculiar phenomena of diseaseapplies the word daimon to a morally evil spirit; as well as the loathsome generation of insects in for which, as we have seen, he ever employs the atmosphere, or on the surface of the earth, either "Satan," "diabolos," or "the wicked and many diseased states in both-appear to point one;" but to cases of epilepsy and madness, or rather to some intrinsically evil, and originally of some similar physical ailment or mental aberra- wild, demoniacal character in the sphere of nation-cases placed in juxtaposition with "dis- ture." The opinion thus modestly suggested by eases,' ," "sicknesses," and "infirmities;" which, the great modern German philosopher, is precisely like them, were brought to our Lord to be healed; that which was held as undoubted, and authoritawhich accordingly he "healed" and "cured;" tively maintained by the great lights of the church, and the casting out of which, in the commission during her conflict with paganism and the platonic given his disciples, is associated with the healing philosophy. The fathers abound with passages of the sick, the lame, and the blind. And, what attributing to "the blast of dæmons divers sickever the belief of the Jews, which, we never nesses and severe accidents, sudden and strange questioned, was similar to that of the Hindoos of extravagances, blight in the grain. taint in the atthis day, and whatever the belief and language of mosphere, pestilential vapors, foul madness, and the disciples thereon, so remarkable a reserve and manifold delusions"-especially those connected distinction in the language of our Lord himself, with "offerings to idols, the practice of magic, should not be wholly overlooked. and the deceits of a false divination." One of the But, although we are desirous of establishing, most curious passages on this latter subject is the what we are convinced is the truth, and will one following, from Tertullian, Apology, i. 18. It day be recognized as such, that the demoniac pos- indicates clearly the practice of mesmerism at the sessions in the Gospels, those among the Hindoos, time when he wrote that work, A. D. 198 to 202: and the exhibitions of peculiar forms of mania, "Moreover if magicians also produce apparitions epilepsy, hysteria,, chorea, &c. among ourselves, and disgrace the souls of the departed; if they are absolutely identical phenomena, between which entrance children to make them utter oracles," &c. no true line of distinction can be drawn, we by no It is not our purpose, however, as we have almeans wish, nor do we feel ourselves competent, ready stated, to offer here any decision upon the to pronounce on the real character of the phe-pythonic question, or pronounce upon the real nomena thus identified. On the one hand the character and causes of these phenomena of the pythonic spirits of the heathen nations, whether human system, which have existed in all ages and Greek or Hindoo, and the Jewish daimoniacs, countries, under different names, exhibiting conmay be simply epileptics, or the victims of other vulsive action of body in conjunction with a cerphysical disease, viewed through the media of tain derangement of the individual consciousness, those mythic, or superstitious notions, which pre- and an occasional exaltation of the mental powers. vailed in Greece and Syria, and which still prevail Our object is rather to furnish some additional in Hindostan. On the other, those perversions of materials to those which already exist, towards a the human reason, or consciousness, which mod-right solution of this question. Having, in our ern European medicine, influenced perhaps by the former paper, traced up to its origin the notion of rationalistic tendency of all modern science, pro- a twofold possession among pagan nations, to nounces to be mere results of the destruction or which we are led by philosophical reasoning upon derangement of physical parts or functions, may [the actual pythonic data which we have in India, No matter how important the business is either to 66 and upon the relation which natural phenomena | naming. If they promise to meet you at such an assume towards the human mind at different hour, they are never present till thirty minutes after. stages of man's spiritual progress, of which relation these data afford conclusive proof; such reasoning being the only guide we can follow, when the spiritual machinery introduced in this pythonic system, with its duality and antagonism, is manifestly false, and we can neither admit a possession genuinely divine, nor one harmoniously and consistently demoniac in its operations; and naving now brought before our readers the two different aspects in which these phenomena-divested of this false duality-divested also of the variety which they assume, from the different modes of belief, religious, superstitious, or scientific, prevailing in different countries and times, and reduced to one single class of facts, whether as presented in the Hindoo system of possession, or in the evangelical narratives, or in the records of medical experience of our own days, may be regarded by Christians; the purely spiritual aspect, which shall represent all such phenomena, as the immediate effect of a personal demoniac indwelling; or the mediate physical aspect, which, looking upon them still, indeed, as the effect of Satanic power, not in the former, personal, but in that, perhaps, far profounder, and more universal sense, in which death and disease, and all the bodily sufferings of man are the undoubted work of that old serpent, who was a murderer from the beginning, and who is expressly declared to have the power of death-presents them only as onethough, doubtless, a very peculiar—branch of that great upas-tree of disease and mortality, which spreads its shadow over the earth, giving the lie to every system of philosophic optimism, rebuking by its stern reality all the glorious dreams of poetry, all the sun-lit, cloud-built visions of romance, and standing upon our planet, the ever present record and proof of the rebel angel's conquest and dominion over fallen man, till that day when the Redeemer, whom the shepherd prince of Chaldea foresaw in his affliction, shall stand upon the earth, and the last enemy-death-shall be destroyed before him having thus brought before our readers all that we deem essential they should have present to their minds, to enable them to understand rightly, and judge comprehensively the novel facts upon which we are about to enter, we return from our long and discursive circuit, and shall, in our next, proceed to redeem the promise which we made at the close of our former paper, to illustrate the subject of Waren, or the divine afflatus of the Hindoos, by laying before them a series of pythonic sketches, drawn up on the spot several years ago, as memoranda of a system, the existence of which we discovered with some surprise, and the various ramifications of which, formed for some time a subject of interesting inquiry. TOO LATE.-Some men are always too late, and therefore accomplish through life nothing worth ENCOUNTER WITH A PRAIRIE WOLF.-I have never known these animals, rapacious as they are, extend their attacks to man, though they probably would if very hungry, and a favorable opportunity presented itself. I shall not soon forget an advenfrontiers of Missouri. Riding near the prairie borture with one of them, many years ago, on the der, I perceived one of the largest and fiercest of the gray species, which had just descended from the west, and seemed famished to desperation. I at once prepared for a chase; and being without arms, I caught up a cudgel, when I betook me valiantly to the charge, much stronger, as I soon discovered, in my cause than in my equipment. The wolf was half-way. I was soon disarmed, for my club broke in no humor to flee, however, but boldly met me full upon the animal's head. He then "laid to" my horse's legs, which, not relishing the conflict, gave a plunge, and sent me whirling over his head, and made his escape, leaving me and the wolf at close quarters. I was no sooner upon my feet than my antagonist renewed the charge; but being without terror, save through his imagination, I took off my weapon, or any means of awakening an emotion of large black hat, and using it for a shield, began to thrust it towards his gaping jaws. My ruse had the desired effect; for after springing at me a few times, he wheeled about, and trotted off several paces, and stopped to gaze at me. Being appreto the attack, and conscious that, under the comprohensive that he might change his mind and return mise, I had the best of the bargain, I very resolutely—took to my heels, glad of the opportunity of making a drawn game, though I had myself given the challenge.--Journal of a Santa Fé Trader. |