This personification, thus 'at once man's creature and his tyrant,' is
objectively a name. But as it has been invested with all that has been
most sacred, it is inevitable that any name raised against it shall be
equally associated with all that has been considered basest. This also
must be personified, for the same reason that the good is personified;
and as names are chiefly hereditary, it pretty generally happens that
the title of some fallen and discredited deity is advanced to receive
the new anathema. But what else does he receive? The new ideas; the
growing ideals and the fresh enthusiasms are associated with some
fantastic shape with anathematised name evoked from the past, and
thus a portentous situation is reached. The worshippers of the new
image will not accept the bad name and its base associations; they
even grow strong enough to claim the name and altars of the existing
order, and give battle for the same. Then occurs the demoralisation,
literally speaking, of the older theology. The personification reduced
to struggle for its existence can no longer lay emphasis upon the
moral principles it had embodied, these being equally possessed by
their opponents; nay, its partisans manage to associate with their
holy Name so much bigotry and cruelty that the innovators are at length
willing to resign it. The personal loyalty, which is found to continue
after loyalty to principles has ceased, proceeds to degrade the virtues
once reverenced when they are found connected with a rival name. 'He
casteth out devils through Beelzebub' is a very ancient cry. It was
heard again when Tertullian said, 'Satan is God's ape.' St. Augustine
recognises the similarity between the observances of Christians and
pagans as proving the subtle imitativeness of the Devil; the phenomena
referred to are considered elsewhere, but, in the present connection,
it may be remarked that this readiness to regard the same sacrament
as supremely holy or supremely diabolical as it is celebrated in
honour of one name or another, accords closely with the reverence
or detestation of things more important than sacraments, as they
are, or are not, consecrated by what each theology deems official
sanction. When sects talk of 'mere morality' we may recognise in
the phrase the last faint war-cry of a god from whom the spiritual
ideal has passed away, and whose name even can survive only through
alliance with the new claimant of his altars. While the new gods were
being called devils the old ones were becoming such.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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