Satan boit, et, pris de colique, Le Diable est mort, le diable est mort. Il est mort! disent tous les moines; Il est mort! disent les chanoines; Le Diable est mort, le diable est mort. L'Amour sert bien moins que la crainte; Dieu sera plus grand que le pape. Ignace accourt: Que l'on me donne, Tous de s'écrier: Ah! brave homme! Le Diable est mort, le diable est mort. [I sing today a lay of lays, A glorious miracle you'll see, Old Nick went out one day to dine, Alas! He's dead-the friars said, Love is not half so strong as fear, Ignatius came-"Let me but take Both north and south-where'er I tread; "Come, blessed one," they uttered, "come, I heard a choir of angels tell Their sympathies for man, they said, The Devil's dead--the Devil's dead!"] L'ANGE EXILE (1828) Béranger, however, could aiso speak of Satan seriously. In this poem addressed to a young woman, in whom our author believes to have discovered an angel exiled from Heaven, the legend of the fall of the angels is treated seriously. Among the legions of Lucifer was an angel who repented of his sin. The Lord brought him up from Hell to pass a period of probation on earth. This exiled celestial moves among men with his divine lyre to charm away their sorrows and to comfort them in their afflictions. As soon as he redeems himself in the eyes of God, he will be recalled to Heaven. According to another version of the legend,' the angels who were not hurled into the bottom of Hell but banished to our earth had maintained a neutral position in the rivalry between the Lord and Lucifer. It is not so generally known that during the war in Heaven the angels were not wholly divided into two opposing camps. There were many spirits who, untouched by partisan passions, remained aloof from the conflict and refused to don the uniform. They demanded their right of keeping out of a war which they did not bring about and in which they had no interest whatever. When the Lord defeated his enemy and cast him and his legionaries into the abyss, he did not hurl also the neutral angels into Hell, but, in order to give them another opportunity to choose between him and his rival, cast them down to the earth to which the scene of the battle 7 This legend is an attempt at a reconciliation of two contradictory passages relating to the punishment of the revolting angels; cf., Rev. xii., 9 and xx., 3. had been transferred. From these angels, who married mortal maidens (cf. Gen. vi., 1), there has developed a race which has always shown a striking contrast to the human family. It has furnished humanity with its prophets and poets, with its reformers and revolutionaries. All great men at all times and in all places have belonged to this mysterious race which does not proceed from father to son, like other races, but appears here and there, at recurring intervals, in the families of mankind. The descendants of this union between the sons of God and the daughters of men have always stood in the first ranks of those who seek peace and abhor murder. They have proven valiant warriors in the eternal conflict between the Good and the Evil for the mastery of the world. They have long ago redeemed themselves, but they will not return to Heaven until they have also redeemed all men. IT THE BHAGAVAD GITA, OR SONG OF THE BLESSED ONE BY FRANKLIN EDGERTON CHAPTER IV PREHISTORY OF THE GOD OF THE BHAGAVAD GITA T COULD hardly be expected that the popular consciousness would be gripped by Upanishadic thought. It was too intellectual, too impersonal, to appeal to any but a small proportion of the population. The great mass of mankind demanded, as always, a personal, quasi-human god or gods to worship: it could not be satisfied by a refined, mystic contemplation of a nameless Soul, even if it be the Soul of the universe. Some more acceptable outlet for the religious feeling of the people had to be provided; and there is good reason to believe that it was provided. Unfortunately, the evidence about it is mostly indirect and secondary. We can judge of it, for the most part, only from its traces in such later works as the Bhagavad Gītā, which clearly presuppose a considerable development of popular religion, distinct from the higher thought of the Upanishads but contemporary therewith. In the Gita these two streams are blended. We have no records that show us the popular beliefs of that period in a pure form. For this reason, it is scarcely possible to attempt any extensive reconstruction of those popular beliefs. The principal thing to be said about them is that they were certainly theistic, and presumably tended towards a monotheism, of a more or less qualified sort. That is, presumably various local or tribal deities were worshipped in different parts of India, each occupying a position somewhat similar to that of Yahweh among the Jews—each being regarded as the chief |