Of course, one of the younger lads became curious. “Of what nature is this wonder and delight you speak of, Lord, which could delay our return to our households?”
“Ah,” I said, “it is but another shadow of evil. Let us not discuss it. You are men; you are strong. And you have your honor to guard—in the shape of your wives.”
It is not sensible, as you know, Lucifer, to describe a handsome man to a woman or a lovely woman to a man, human nature being what it is, even on the Eden which is Pandara.
“We will guard our honor and the honor of our households and the safety of our children and the purity of our wives!” shouted the innocent ones, raising their fists high in a solemn oath. “Ever shall we be watchful of our women, understanding their weaknesses and their frail natures and their susceptibilities to temptation!”
I gave them my blessing and departed. They have been warned. Suspicion has been introduced into the turquoise daylight and the silver and lilac nights. But was not fear of the Forbidden Tree introduced on Terra? Even in Heaven the dread of transgressing the Law is with us—for we have free will. There are times, I am afraid, Lucifer, that I sympathize with your plaint that men were also given free will, but as they are of the essence of the Father they could not, in consistency, have been denied. In Heaven we are unequally perfect, in accordance with the ability to be perfect inherent in our natures. And that brings me to another subject you discussed in your last letter: Equality, which pervades hell.
In Heaven, there is Equity, which is an entirely different matter.
The laws of men are harsh and inflexible, especially those on the fallen planets. The same crime brings the same punishment, allegedly to all men, though I have noticed that it depends on the influence or the treasure the accused man possesses in entirely too many instances, or whether his appearance is or is not pleasing to a jury of his peers—a word that strikes ill on my ear because no man has peers. But I digress. The same situation prevails in hell—equality of treatment no matter the soul. However, in Heaven, as I have mentioned, there is Equity, based on the Natural Law that some men are superior to others, and some angels less than others, in virtue, in devotion, in piety, in dedication, love and courage and goodness. Equity does not abolish law; it intelligently deals with it, and its inflexibility.
Therefore, spirits in Heaven, angel or man, are rewarded in direct ratio to their accomplishments, which are governed by their will. Man, as we know, cannot earn merit during his lifetime on the grosser material of the planets, unless he has not fallen. But fallen men are incapable of earning merit, for their sin has thrown a wall of human impotence between them and their Creator. Only the Grace of Our Father can give merit to fallen men, and that merit is given by the men’s own acts, through their faith and their desire to receive Grace, through their repentance and their penance, through their acceptance of Grace, itself. You know this; it is a matter which has enraged you through time, so I beg your forgiveness for boring you.
The saved among men, who desired to be saved and therefore had placed themselves in a position to receive Grace, differ enormously in the degree of their natures and their virtues, as well as in their wills and their sins. A murderer in hell, and a wanton thief, are treated equally with the pains and the uselessness of existence. But in Heaven a saint is worthier than a man of merely mild virtues, for the saint has labored long and hard in the stony fields of his life and has loved God more than himself, and the lives of his fellow sufferers more than his own. A man who has valiantly struggled with temptation during his lifetime and has contemplated all the worldly delights you have offered him, Lucifer, and has even desperately yearned for them, but who has gloriously resisted you in his soul and in his living, is worthier of more reward in Heaven than a man who has been merely mildly tempted by you or through some accident has not been much tempted at all, or lacked the terrible vitality to sin, or was afraid of the consequences on his own world. The first man is a hero; the second man is one who has had little opportunity to be either a hero or a sinner. Our Father takes note of the human weaknesses of His creatures. He will not permit you to tempt a man beyond his total ability to resist, but He does permit you to tempt His saints more fiercely and more insistently because they are men of greater valor and nobler mind. Our Father, as we have observed before, does not create men equal, but He has established Equity, based on the Natural Law which He ordained Himself. There is no injustice in Him Whom we both love so passionately, and you have never denied your love nor can you destroy it.
Were you the ruler of Heaven the saint and the weaker man would receive equal reward, but that is manifestly unfair. Archangels, who have vaster powers than angels, are more in possession of free will and therefore the temptation to use that will in defiance of God is infinitely higher in degree than in the lesser angels. Archangels are given enormous responsibilities and thrones and crowns throughout the endless universes, because of their nature, and it is they who see the Beatific Vision more frequently than the lesser spirits, and the spirits of men. “To each according to his merits,” is the Law of Heaven, whereas on Terra, and other darkened worlds, there appears to be some mangling of the moral law to the effect “to each according to his material needs.” And that, we know, is infamy, injustice, cruelty, and a display of malice to the more worthy. Greed is the ugliest of the detestable sins, for it feeds on its own appetite and is never filled, and its rapacity is increased by its rapaciousness. It gives rise to the other sins, envy, theft, sloth, lies, adulteries and murder, and gluttony.
There is happiness in Heaven, as you know, but that happiness is in degree, except for the knowing that God loves completely to the extent of an angel’s or man’s worth. That happiness is compounded by labor, for none are idle in Heaven, and there is a task for all. That, too, is Equity.
While each task is approached with joy and with the hope—but never the absolute surety—that it will be completed, its completion, when accomplished, leads to higher tasks, worthy of a tempered spirit. There is always a progression in the Hierarchy of Heaven. No spirit remains as it was. And, always, there is a possibility, constantly reiterated, that as the spirit retains its free will, it can will to sin. This is something the theologians, in their little darkness on their worlds, have never understood or acknowledged—that there is always the hazard that a spirit may fall to you, even in the golden light of Heaven. For God does not remove free will from His creatures, no matter their degree. If He did so, He would abrogate their individuality, their very existence, both of which are eternally precious to Him, for they are of His own Nature and Essence.
Enough. You know all these matters. You have asked me if God pursues the lost soul in your hells. That I cannot and will not tell you. Is it possible for the lost to feel repentance? You have said not—but do you know all minds?
I am not taunting you, Lucifer, and that you know.
Your brother, Michael
Greetings to my brother, Michael, who believes that he has circumvented me on his new worlds:
No doubt you heard my laughter when I read your letter. Do not be complacent. Damon and Lilith will make their appearances on Pandara in due course, if not to this generation there, then to their sons and daughters. For though this generation may tell their children of what they know, and of what they have seen, and what they have learned, it is in the nature of men to say, “Our parents love legends and tales and strangenesses, but we have not seen the Archangel Michael with our own eyes, nor have wondered at his countenance. Our parents tell us that it was the will of God that he appeared only to our forefathers, but not to us, and that is most peculiar, indeed, for are we not more sophisticated than our fathers, and our daughters more knowledgeable than their mothers? Do we not dwell in cities, whereas they dwelt in the fields and the forests? Have we not learning and understanding, greater than our forebears? Do we not have magnificent temples of wisdom, and do we not stream through the heavens like birds and through the waters like fish, and is there aught we do not know of thi
s world of ours, or are there wonders as yet undiscovered? Are we, then, not wise and therefore more worthy to gaze upon this Archangel Michael, and would we not apprehend his words with more clarity and more subtlety? Why this coyness, that he hides from us—if he exists at all? It is folly. There is no such an archangel, and therefore what our parents have told us has no verity.”
You have heard thoughts like these on innumerable planets, among the worldly children of men who believe they have conquered all things and are capable of comprehending everything. That is my opportunity. For though the generations of Pandara may not yet have fallen, pride in their accomplishments will spur that fall, and pride in their own will will assure their destruction. I will not only send them Damon and Lilith, and say to them, “Do not deny your natural appetites, for all appetite is good, for is it not your nature?” but I will say, “Your parents were simple and mere children in their souls, and had no real will of their own for they were enamored of a fantasy. Have you not failed to discern the reality of Michael in your scientific instruments, and have you found God, of whom your parents speak, in the watches of the night or in your affairs? If there is an angel at all, it is in your capacities, and if there is a God, you are that god, and you must deify yourselves for naught exists in those gigantic universes you catch in your mirrors but your own being. You are the center, the heart, of all mindless creation, and only you have sentience. If you doubt me, show me the proof to the contrary.”
That is an argument few men have ever disputed, for the proofs of your existence, and the Existence of Our Father, lie not in the grosser matter but in the towers of the soul. But they will know that I exist! For I will give them delights and conceits and arrogances, and the ecstasy of defying the laws of their fathers, which were the Laws God gave to them. Nothing so exalts a man as rebellion, as we have remarked before, and nothing increases his vanity so much as coming to a wrong conclusion, which he believes is correct. Assure a man that he is wise and knows all things, and that only he exists, and there is no end to his exultant rapture. Even when the men of Pandara become so suddenly aware of the fact that in some strange way death and disease and age and loss have come among them—when once they were absent—they will say, “But this is the inevitable course of nature, and was to be expected! There is a time for living and a time for dying and always it was so, though we have not known it before.” You will understand that men have explanations for everything, and the more absurd the more they are accepted. When they discover that the incorruptible has put on corruptibility, the immaculate has become stained, the eternal has become mortal, they will nod their heads solemnly and say, “It is natural—we just had not lived long enough, but time is inexorable. Let us, then, devote our lives to the search for happiness and for personal fulfillment, and not dream as our forebears dreamt, but be courageous men who live that we may die and strive while we can.”
They will see my face in their own and will adore me, for am I not the reverie of men, even those not yet fallen?
Why do men prefer to believe there is no God? Is there a fatal flaw even in the unfallen, as it was in me and my angels? You will say that there is, indeed, that “flaw” and you will repeat that it is free will. Nonetheless, men prefer to believe there is no God. God restrains and all chaff at virtue and constraint and the necessity to obey and love. (But many resist the temptation, as you will tediously point out to me. That is beside the argument.) Once God is removed from the belief of men, then they can truly live as they believe the gods live: Enjoying existence, relieved of duty and responsibility, delighting in each hour, acquiring their miserable riches as they will, disobeying even good laws, exulting in violence and bloodshed, exercising power over their fellows—and always for their fellows’ own good, you will observe—and committing all vileness in the serene conviction that there is no good and no evil, but only a man’s desire and a man’s needs. Above all, there is no accounting, for the One who accounts does not exist. So man, they will conclude, is truly free to “live according to his innate nature.” All their wars will be holy, all their excesses but an exaggeration of good, all their errors correctable through new laws which they will profusely pass, and all their hatreds righteous. But still there is the inborn, the endowed, craving for perfection, and they will say that man is perfectable.
So they will strive for perfection, which is beyond their earning and they will seek for merit among the applause of men like themselves, rather than in the smiles of God. They will chase up the mountains of their lives for perfect-ability, and always there will be the descent on the torrid opposite side, but again they will climb with their banners and their slogans, and always they will fall. They cannot resist the desire for true perfection with which God sadly endowed them—and He cannot withdraw His gift, but they will distort it and in seeking they will never find.
Despair will sit at their right hand and death will dine with them, and decay and grief will be their bed, and sorrow their song, and all that which their darkened souls desired with a hunger that comes from God will never be their own.
And they will descend to me, and will ask again that disgusting question, “If you exist, then God must exist also?” And I will reply as ever, “It does not follow. I am the god you made, and you are mine.”
Will the Sacrifice on Terra save these men also? You continually refuse to answer that question, but my curiosity grows with the refusal. In the meantime my hells fatten with the hosts of the damned—who willed their own damnation.
I do not know why I hover so often over Terra, where the immortal Crime was committed—and to what purpose? I watch my legions of demons at work, and I smile at their industry. They hope by pleasing me that I will grant them death and oblivion. You will see that they have much more faith in me than they ever had in God.
Terra is doomed. I watch the progress to annihilation with the only pleasure of which I am capable. Then the memory of the Sacrifice will be obliterated, and there will be no remembrance at all in men, not even of the myth which they declare it is. I will be vindicated, even before His Eyes. He will be forced to admit that I was right and He was wrong. In His second death on Terra the first will be lost, and all men will be mine, even to the farthest planet.
There will be the peace of nothingness, thereafter, and is that not to be desired?
Your brother, Lucifer
Greetings to my brother, Lucifer, who was so roundly defeated recently by a soul of Terra, and who must, despite his angry countenance, be secretly elated:
(Strange how your thoughts hover over Terra, that little world, and cannot be free of her! Yet, it is not strange, for God chose her for His Sacrifice, as we have observed before.)
We have watched, you and I, a certain soul on Terra utterly without merit or Grace for many years, until its flesh was old and scored with living. Even on Terra it is unusual to find so abandoned a soul, so completely faithless, so totally in denial of God and man, so ruthless and depraved. In very childhood, that man was a monster of wickedness and cruelty, though endowed with superior intelligence. In very childhood he was an exploiter of the goodness or innocence of others, and rejoiced in the exploitation. In youth his mind was busy with plots for riches and powers and aggrandizement. He was among the proudest of men, the least faithful, the most cynical, the completely debased. Because of his intelligence and his native gifts, and his magnificent appearance, he found it easy to seduce and betray for his own advantage, and to gather millions of adherents who praised him even while they suffered because of him.
His parents cursed the day of his birth, his wife the hour of their marriage, and his children prayed for his death. Yet never did a man have more devoted friends, for his smile was angelic and his conversation witty and urbane. In short, he was you in miniature, Lucifer, though this remark will enrage and insult you.
The soul had never suffered want or pain or struggle in his earthly existence, had never endured injustice or betrayal or the general sorrows of mankind. Therefore,
he was a veritable beast of prey, and his hardness of heart must have astounded even your own demons when they chanced on him. Is it not odd that the soul which has never endured misfortune is the least sympathetic and the least kind?
This man had never once, even in his tenderest years, acknowledged or believed in Our Father, though his parents and his mentors had tried exhaustively to penetrate that alert resistance and to inculcate faith in it. He laughed secretly at their efforts, and despised them, though in his public life he solemnly—and with a laugh in his heart—assured other men of his trust and his belief. Above all things, he was a liar of much genius and accomplishment, and he never spoke truth if he could avoid it or if it could not serve him. Though his parents after their death prayed for him, and though angels and saints when appealed to tried to permeate that adamant and vicious spirit, it seemed hopeless. This man, beloved of his fellowmen, and powerful in public affairs, seemed damned almost more completely than any other soul I have perceived in any world, not to mention Terra.
But he awoke one early morning, and did not know that he was dying. He rose and went to his windows and saw the first light and the first glow of the rising sun. He had seen ten thousand such, and never had he been stirred before. But as he saw the sun touch the height of the trees and the light flow from the sky, he was struck to the heart, and he fell on his old knees and cried aloud, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
What shaft had pierced his soul at last, what revelation of himself and Our Father? You do not know, nor do I. But he threw himself upon the floor and groaned in an awful agony of spirit and hated himself—and believed. He knew penitence such as even few of the just know it—absolute and without question. He lay in his groaning and he wept the first honest tears of his life and said to himself, “Surely I am damned, for I rejected both God and man, and I brought evil where there had been goodness, and darkness where there had been light, and sorrow where there had been joy. I am rich beyond counting, but I am truly a beggar, naked and alone. No man has ever lived more deserving of eternal hell than I, and I shall not regret it but will rejoice in its pains, for it is all I deserve. Yet—God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
Dialogues With the Devil Page 6
