A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and EssaysBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought
David is alleged to have written several Psalms. In one of these he
addresses God in the phraseology of a member of the P. R. praising Deity
that he had smitten all of his enemies on the cheek bone and broken the
teeth of the ungodly. In these days, when "muscular Christianity" is
not without advocates, the metaphor which presents God as a sort of
magnificent Benicia Boy may find many admirers. In the eighteenth Psalm,
David describes God as with "smoke coming out of his nostrils and fire
out of his mouth," by which "coals were kindled." He represents God as
coming down from heaven, and says "he rode upon a cherub." The learned
Parkhurst gives a likeness of a one-legged, four-winged, four-faced
animal, part lion, part bull, part eagle, part man, and if a cloven foot
be any criterion, part devil also. This description, if correct,
will give some idea to the faithful of the wonderful character of the
equestrian feats of Deity.
In the twenty-sixth Psalm, the writer, if David, exposes his own
hypocrisy in addition to his other vices. He has the impudence to tell
God that he has been a man of integrity and truth; that he has avoided
evildoers, although if we are to believe the thirty-eighth Psalm, the
vile hypocrite must have already been subject to a loathsome disease--a
penalty consequent on his licentiousness and criminality. In another
Psalm, David the liar tells God that "he that telleth lies shall not
tarry in my sight." To understand his malevolent nature we can not do
better than quote his prayer to God against an enemy (Psalm cix, 6-14):
"6. Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right
hand.
"7. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer
become sin.
"8. Let his days be few: and let another take his office.
"9. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
"10. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek
their bread also out of their desolate places.
"11. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath: and let the strangers
spoil his labor.
"12. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be
any to favor his fatherless children.
"13. Let his posterity be cut off: and in the generation following let
their name be blotted out.
"14. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord: and
let not the sin of his mother be blotted out."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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