Dialogues With the Devil

  The young of Terra are, this very hour, asking that desperate question, and are wondering why they were ever born, and to what purpose. They call this wonder “the search for identity.” It is indeed a search for what you, and your cohorts on Terra, have denied them. But they will have it! They are turning troubled and thoughtful eyes on the temples which their indifferent fathers raised to God. Man’s questions invoke God’s answer, and it is always forthcoming. Empty days of happy irresponsibility—which the evil consider a very heaven for mankind—lead to the query: “But must I then die, when I have not really lived? What is this that trembles so hungrily in me, that I am not content? I have no cares and no anxieties, and all is planned and controlled for me. Why am I not happy? There is a longing in me which I cannot explain. But, if I have the longing then there is something which will satisfy me. There is never a question without an answer—and I will search for it.”

  You have told the young that their mission is to make the future even more desirable than the present for generations yet unborn. But the soul knows that its first responsibility is to itself, and its enlightenment, and its salvation. Though the young indeed do parrot the folly of the wicked—that the generations not yet born are even more important than themselves—they know it is a lie and the knowledge breeds wild discontent in them. For why should they learn and labor when they will never see the conclusion—if any? What is their knowledge worth, and their learning, if it must be smothered in an eternal grave? So, there comes to the young the desire for immortality, that all they have learned shall not be lost.

  They know, and observe, that life in flesh is trivial at the worst, and transitory at the best, that there is nothing new under the sun and at the last it is all vanity. Terra is no more man’s Kingdom than it was the Christ’s. His destiny and the destiny of his children are individually eternal, and not in some far-distant unborn generations who may—if you have your will—not come to birth at all. Nor can any man guarantee what he calls “the good life” to any other man, for man being mortal he is subject to all the agonies of the flesh, of secret thwartings, of illness and decay and age and death, of the inequalities inherent in his very genetic inheritance and intelligence. The years of youth are very few on Terra, roughly from the age of fourteen to the age of twenty-five. Before the first is the dim world of childhood, unformed and not understood. After the latter, age inexorably begins and the responsibilities of existence, and the decline of bodily vigor. Eleven years in seventy, to be young! On that passing moment in time the iniquitous base their argument for the earthly paradise, and many of the young, believing that the handful of years of their youth will be long—instead of the swiftly passing which they are—become the prattling prey of their deceivers.

  I have observed that on Terra there is much mad conversation on the “New!” But every age believed it was “new,” whereas all is old, all has been tried, all has been discarded, in ages past. The “new” man is as old as Nineveh, and all that he speaks has echoed against the pillars of Rome, the Pyramids of Egypt, the walls of Jerusalem, the purple gates of Athens. There has never been a “new philosophy of man’s destiny,” for man’s mind is limited. You will remember that it was St. Augustine who said that if a man wished to improve the world about him he must make himself a better individual—which is the most gigantic task any man ever faced, and the majority fail in it. For man has to struggle with his nature and subjugate that nature completely to God before he can improve the lot of a single brother.

  But who knows this better than you, Lucifer? You detest the man who prays, “Lord, give me the Grace and Gift of Faith, and lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil. With Your help, alone, I can do my part to make this a better world, a place of more justice and equity, of peace and harmony. Without You I am helpless.” You know, Lucifer, the man who prays so will be answered, and in the silence of his own conscience, and his labor thereafter will be gentle and kind and persuasive, and not riotous, violent, and noisy. Love for one’s fellows cannot be enforced by any law of the opportunistic and the fools and the hypocrites, no matter how brutal. Not only must man love his brothers because he sees God in them, but those who desire to be loved must also be lovable, and not revolting. Love moves on two paths at the same time, and it is a manly virtue and not the sickly platitudes of the present generations on Terra, who are perverse, and liars.

  Man is single, not collective, though ancient and tyrannical philosphies have attempted to enforce the unnatural latter. Man’s instinct can never be thwarted except through complete slavery—for which you and your earthly minions are working. It can be temporarily thwarted, but it cannot be killed, no, though generations upon generations of the enslaved may be born. Eventually a day arrives when that instinct reasserts itself, and woe be to your men of iniquity on Terra when again men say to themselves, “I am a man, and my life’s years are few on this planet, and without true significance. My destiny is in eternity, through God. My teachers had betrayed me!”

  You have raised up an anthropomorphic-centered philosophy called “Humanism,” which has declared that man is god, that man’s works are of everlasting importance on the planet, that he, himself, is his own saviour. This feeds his pride, especially if he is humble. But inevitably what he sees with his own eyes refutes Humanism: disease, age, death—the inexorable result of the scanty years of living. Especially death. No matter how long physicians labor to increase the span of life of man, the day arrives when he must confront the nothingness of Humanism, the grave and endless silence and darkness. Does he rejoice, in that hour, that “man is all”? I have seen among the blessed, and you have seen among your damned, that man knows in his heart that man, as simply man—no matter how wise, successful, and honored in his lifetime—is nothing. There is no consolation at the hour of death for those who have been denied a more dignified destiny in eternity.

  The purse of Humanism is very pretty on its surface, but there is no gold within it. It is flat with intrinsic emptiness. It contains no coin to buy peace at the end of life. It contains no key to anywhere. It is gaudy cloth and ravels in the hand which seized it.

  You have spread confusion among even the faithful lately, so that multitudes now question if the Christ ever was born, lived, was crucified and then rose from the dead. And ranks of the stupid—who call themselves wise!—are even declaring that certainly, they accept Christ—but not the Father Who sent Him, and that His Resurrection is only Symbolic. What a dinner of husks you have offered to replace the life-giving Bread! Yes, I know you only offer; it is the will of man to take or reject. The euphoria you have spread among the vociferous, the men of spittle and gesture, who noisily proclaim the Death of Our Father, is the worst madness I have ever observed on Terra, that grievous planet. But, as I have remarked before, you will not succeed. The callow-minded and the little of heart may bow down before you and worship you—though not recognizing you and not knowing you for what you are—but the faithful still live. Their lives will be somewhat less pleasant for what they will be forced to endure at the hands of the arrantly stupid, and they will be subject to ridicule and derision and contempt, and called dreamers or “anti-intellectuals,” and they will be accused of refusing “involvement in mankind,” and selfish and visionaries, and they will be maligned in multitudinous tongues and despised, and malice will be poured upon them—for do not those who proclaim the loudest that they love their brothers exhibit the most astonishing vindictiveness? But malevolence has the strangest property not only of stiffening resistance to lies and calumnies, but of strengthening faith and resolution. A truly good and faithful man is never crushed by malignance, even if he is murdered, and he stands as a refutation of evil and a light to those who wish to emerge from darkness. His memory may be no more immortal than the forgotten civilizations of Terra, but while he lives, and for a space after his flesh is dead, he has the most profound influence on his fellows.

  You may have noticed that the espousers of your doctrine, Humanism,
leave nothing at all but a vagueness which is not remembered. If intrinsically good men, they arrive in Purgatory—and great is their astonishment—and more their joy—when they discover that they are wrong! Their deepest regret is that they deprived their followers of the truth, and they confess that they spoke and wrote, not out of viciousness, but out of blindness. But there are others less harmless, as you know, and one was Michel Edgor who sits alone in the fiery dusk of one of your less attractive hells, and asks only for death. He has found the ultimate of what he spoke on earth, in hell, and finds it intolerable.

  You will remember that Our Father said that the fool says in his heart there is no God. Terra is now becoming a whole world-wide generation of fools. In that, you have succeeded. Far easier is it for a wicked man to turn from his wickedness, than a fool from his folly, for it is the divine life in man which can eventually make him revolt against evil. But a fool cherishes his foolishness, for it makes him appear, to himself, as of consequence. Pride again is the mightiest of the sins—as who should know it more than you?

  It is the fool who proclaims that the Triune God is “not relevant to this century.” Consider this century, of which he is so proud! It is the bloodiest of all the centuries of man, the most horrifying, irrational, the most repellent and hating. Its tyrants were not even men of stature and dignity and some grandeur. They have been squeaking dwarfs who can evoke only murder and madness in their fellows. When they speak, and have spoken, of the Manifest Destiny of their nations—and the leadership of the world—it would make angels laugh if they did not weep. No great man has appeared in this century, no man of valor, mercy, glory and tenderness, no man of inspiration. All are little—and the smallest among men are the most proud of their littleness. The century of the Little Man—how repulsive! For the first time in man’s murderous history the mediocre has been exalted, the great silenced or rejected. The scientist, who knows only his microscopic speciality, is received as the prophets of old should have been received, but were not. He elaborates on all things, when he leaves his laboratory, yet, if he had any learning at all he would know that he is making one of the most significant errors in logic. Few smile on Terra in these days when a physicist implies that he is an authority on the mind of man. But all nod solemnly when some unstable man, a pseudo-scientist called a psychiatrist, expounds on the meaning of men’s dreams and attempts, as men did in Sodom and Gomorrah, to fit all mankind to their neat little beds—and woe to that unfortunate whose head or feet extend beyond the beds!

  Alas, this century of which tiny men are so proud! Does it have the splendor of the minds of Greece, and the glory of the law which was Rome? Does it have the scientists of Egypt, the philosophers and the prophets of Israel? Does it have beauty and magnificence and aspiring minds? It stands in dust and war and dinginess, heaped with ugly cities and scarred with the barren wastelands of the stripped earth, its forests felled for the manufacture of trash; its great rivers yoked to yield power and water to crowded and meaningless communities, its silences blasphemed, its retreats and sanctuaries overrun, its countryside howling with drab streets and noxious towns. You and man together—you have done this thing to a world once beautiful and crowned with greenness and fragrance.

  You once accused me of a lack of humor, but who can gaze upon your princedom of Terra, and laugh? Yes, I hear laughter upon it, but it is unmanly or false or childish or bitter, or resembles the raucous cries of apes. I should not, in truth, malign the apes, for they are honest creatures, but you have rid Terra of honesty.

  I should not reproach you—for you are the servant of man as well as his prince. You do but his bidding. You and your demons are like the genii whom Solomon imprisoned in bottles and cast into the sea. Man invariably rescues them and the genii obey him. You think I should find this amusing. I find myself sorrowful for you, Lucifer, for you are the victim of your victims.

  But even in my sorrow I remember the quiet temples of India, filled with incense. I visit the sad land enslaved by its ferocious Mandarins, and watch men and women and children work silently for fear of their masters, but worshiping in their lonely hearts. I walk among the iron cities darkened by an ancient despotism which dares to call itself new—whereas it is as old as death, and I see the bowed heads of the faithful and watch the secret baptisms of the children, and hear the whispers of devotion in the night. I observe the hot green jungles of Africa and her noble white hills, and though plagued and confused the simple still live there and honor their old gods and consider the wonder of life. I see that all the sanctuaries and retreats and temples have not been destroyed, but remain like islands of light in the increasing gloom of Terra.

  A great and good man is as important to Our Father as a great and good world, and there are still some on your earths, and there are bountiful worlds on which your shadow has not yet fallen, or which have rejected you. Recalling this, I can indeed smile, thinking of happier things. In truth, I find considerable humor in this.

  Your brother, Michael

  Greetings to my brother, Michael, who is as opaque, concerning secrets, as one of Salome’s more diaphanous veils:

  So, it is true. You see portents in Heaven. Artless Michael, incapable of dissimulation! I thank you humbly. This will give me an opportunity to prepare. Terra is now almost completely mad; the mediocre pride themselves on their intellects; vile little minds speak of “expanding man’s consciousness”; the clergy have betrayed the faithful; the dull tyrants sit on thrones; the wise and reasonable and sensible have been silenced; the callow young have been exalted; the haters of their fellows speak loudly of their love for their brothers; freedom is almost extinguished everywhere; the fool is received as a prophet; the mentally illiterate crowd the fora of learning; lawlessness, in the name of “liberty,” has banished law; crime has succeeded against responsibility; the depraved and immature demand privileges which they have not earned, but which were earned by their superiors; love is given, not to the worthy who are the saviours of mankind, but to the unworthy; a man is reckoned great on Terra in proportion to his folly; men exult in raising rulers above them who are distinguished not for wisdom and prudence but for their silly “bold and imaginative ideas,” which once even children on Terra discarded on the occasion of puberty; truth is despised in favor of lies; facts are abolished in favor of dreams, all of them puerile. There is little virtue left on Terra and even that will soon be driven out. Men shout “Peace!” but they are warmakers in their tiny hearts. They “march for freedom,” but they are but troublemakers, overfed with food for which they did not plow, and with money and leisure sweated for by others.

  It is a hilarious spectacle. On other worlds, clothed in some fragment of majesty, I have had to contend with the minds of men. But on Terra excellent minds are singularly rare, and so despised. Therefore, I had only to stimulate the glandular systems of Terra’s men, and their little bestial instincts, to cause their coming destruction. Once I had more labor on Terra, in the days of Golden Greece, in the sobriety of the Republic of Rome, in the empires of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Persians, Chinese, in the theocracies of Israel, in the founding of the Republic of America. In short, it was difficult for me in the presence of aristocratic and justly revered minds, in the presence of honor and intelligence.

  But mankind, as always, persists in breeding from its worst and basest, and, in the end the worst and the base conceive of themselves as the best and most desirable. That is the very heart of the matter, especially on Terra. I need not destroy her overtly; I can accomplish that through her low-born, so that ultimate chaos will overwhelm that disastrous planet and what civilization she boasts of will revert to barbarism. I can still induce her mad to bring the holocaust on all men. You will discern I have several means of encompassing her death; it is a surfeit of riches. I must consider which to choose. Then, despite “portents” there will be no eye—in the true sense—to gaze on the Christ when He returns, and no ear—in the human sense—to hear His Words. It is a race bet
ween us—but I shall win! I almost invariably succeed among men. Terra will be the easiest of all to destroy. I could do it today, but I am fascinated by the spectacle of these ape-like creatures who are now considering themselves gods—as you remarked, yourself. I stand agape at idiots, pronouncing solemnly on the “glorious state of mankind.” I am sometimes incredulously mute before the circus of grave imbeciles speaking of the “marvelous destiny of man.”

  The fault lies with many of the past superior minds on Terra: they did not outbreed the baseborn and the vulgar and the stupid, though it was within their power. They were too gentle and too tolerant of the inferior. They refrained from reproducing, whereas the more apish reproduced in vast and multiplying hordes. They had no strong convictions, for they were dubious even of their own valid conclusions. Therefore, they abdicated to the mindless obstinacy of those who could reach no conclusions at all but the satisfaction of their animal instincts. What was more admirable in man, his rationality, his impulse to worship, his contemplative philosophy, his reverence for art, his passion for the true and beautiful, his awe before creation, his respect for the sanctity of the individual soul, his obedience to the laws of virtue and right conduct, has been obliterated in the vehement passion of the hordes for material gratification. For that, the best will not be held guiltless, I am certain, even by a compassionate God. In truth, I have a multitude of the just in my own domains, who plead that their abdication of responsibility was in the name of “tolerance!”