CHAPTER XX.

THE HOLY GHOST.

A Hanover relic--Mr. Atkinson on the Dove--The Dove in the Old
Testament--Ecclesiastical symbol--Judicial symbol--A vision of
St. Dunstan's--The witness of chastity--Dove and Serpent--The
unpardonable sin--Inexpiable sin among the Jews--Destructive
power of Jehovah--Potency of the breath--Third persons of
Trinities--Pentecost--Christian superstitions--Mr. Moody on the
sin against the Holy Ghost--Mysterious fear--Idols of the cave.


There is in the old town of Hanover, in Germany, a schoolhouse
in which, above the teacher's chair, there was anciently the
representation of a dove perched upon an iron branch or rod; and
beneath the inscription--'This shall lead you into all truth.' In the
course of time the dove fell down and was removed to the museum; but
there is still left before the children the rod, with the admonition
that it will lead them into all truth. This is about as much as for
a long time was left in the average christian mind of the symbolical
Dove, the Holy Ghost. Half of its primitive sense departed, and there
remained only an emblem of mysterious terror. More spiritual minds
have introduced into the modern world a conception of the Holy Ghost
as a life-giving influence or a spirit of love, but the ancient view
which regarded it as the Iron Rod of judgment and execution still
survives in the notion of the 'sin against the Holy Ghost.'

Mr. Henry G. Atkinson writes as follows: [113]--'My old friend
Barry Cornwall, the fine poet, once said to me, 'My dear Atkinson,
can you tell me the meaning of the Holy Ghost; what can it possibly
mean?' 'Well,' I said, 'I suppose it means a pigeon. We have never
heard of it in any other form but that of the dove descending from
heaven to the Virgin Mary. Then we have the pretty fable of the dove
returning to the ark with the olive-branch, so that the Christian
religion may be called the Religion of the Pigeon. In the Greek Church
the pigeon is held sacred. St. Petersburgh is swarming with pigeons,
but they are never killed or disturbed. I knew a lady whose life
was made wretched in the belief that she had sinned the unpardonable
sin against the Holy Ghost, and neither priest nor physician could
persuade her out of the delusion, though in all other respects she
was quite sensible. She regarded herself as such a wretch that she
could not bear to see herself in the glass, and the looking-glasses
had all to be removed, and when she went to an hotel, her husband had
to go first and have the looking-glasses of the apartments covered
over. But what is the Holy Ghost--what is its office? Sitting with
Miss Martineau at her house at Ambleside one day, a German lady, who
spoke broken English, came in. She was a neighbour, and had a large
house and grounds, and kept fowls. 'Oh!' she said, quite excited,
'the beast has taken off another chicken (meaning the hawk). I saw
it myself. The wretch! it came down just like the Holy Ghost, and
snatched off the chicken.' How Miss Martineau did laugh; but I don't
know that this story throws much light upon the subject, since it
does but bring us back to the pigeon.'

It would require a volume to explain fully all the problems suggested
in this brief note, but the more important facts may be condensed.

It is difficult to show how far the natural characteristics and habits
of the dove are reflected in its wide-spread symbolism. Its plaintive
note and fondness for solitudes are indicated in the Psalmist's
aspiration, 'Oh that I had the wings of a dove, then would I fly
away and be at rest; lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in
the wilderness.' [114] It is not a difficult transition from this
association with the wilderness to investment with a relationship with
the demon of the wilderness--Azazel. So we find it in certain passages
in Jeremiah, where the word has been suppressed in the ordinary
English version. 'The land is desolate because of the fierceness
of the dove.' 'Let us go again to our own people to avoid the sword
of the dove.' 'They shall flee away every one for fear of the sword
of the dove.' [115] In India its lustres--blue and fiery--may have
connected it with azure-necked Siva.

The far-seeing and wonderful character of the pigeon as a carrier
was well known to the ancients. On Egyptian bas-reliefs priests are
shown sending them with messages. They appear in the branches of the
oaks of Dodona, and in old Russian frescoes they sometimes perch on
the Tree of Knowledge in paradise. It is said that, in order to avail
himself of this universal symbolism, Mohammed trained a dove to perch
on his shoulder. As the raven was said to whisper secrets to Odin,
so the dove was often pictured at the ear of God. In Nôtre Dame de
Chartres, its beak is at the ear of Pope Gregory the Great.

It passed--and did not have far to go--to be the familiar of kings. It
brought the chrism from heaven at the baptism of Clovis. White
doves came to bear the soul of Louis of Thuringia to heaven. The
dove surmounted the sceptre of Charlemagne. At the consecration of
the kings of France, after the ceremony of unction, white doves were
let loose in the church. At the consecration of a monarch in England,
a duke bears before the sovereign the sceptre with the dove.

By association with both ecclesiastical and political sovereignty,
it came to represent very nearly the old fatal serpent power which
had lurked in all its transformations. When the Holy Ghost was
represented as a crowned man, the dove was pictured on his wrist like
that falcon with which the German lady, mentioned by Mr. Atkinson,
identified it. But in this connection its symbolism is more especially
referable to a passage in Isaiah: [116] 'There shall come forth a rod
out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots;
and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom
and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of the
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.' The sanctity of the number
seven led to the partition of the last clause into three spirits,
making up the seven, which were: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel,
Strength, Knowledge, Piety, Fear. In some of the representations
of these where each of the seven Doves is labelled with its name,
'Fear' is at the top of their arch, a Psalm having said, 'The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' When the knightly Order
of the Holy Ghost was created in 1352, it was aristocratic, and,
when reorganised by Henry III. of France in 1579, it was restricted
to magisterial and political personages. With them was the spirit of
Fear certainly; and the Order shows plainly what had long been the
ideas connected with the Holy Ghost.