Part 34

Are the results of your course to be lamented? Perhaps not. The oozing out and disappearance of an old belief, and a consequent state of non-belief, may be arranged for in the methods of Providence, because the latter state may be the best possible for the induction of belief founded on demonstration, where one previously lived which rested upon dogmatic authority.

The skepticism of our generation pertaining to a future life is an offspring of general and advanced education which asks for proofs as the only proper foundation for belief. That education has fitted the thinking masses to demand that teachers shall grapple with and either refute or adopt sensible facts widely witnessed. Millions upon millions of Christendom's inhabitants are having sensible demonstration, day by day and hour by hour, that the spirits of departed mortals make known their veritable presence among their survivors in mortal forms. They say to the world's leading minds,--spirit return is a fact in nature: it is made manifest to our physical senses; we know it to be true. Therefore, ye sticklers for law and scientific methods, prove to us our mistake if we are dupes.

During more than five and twenty years we have been putting forth that call, and you have thus long omitted to give any other response than dogmatic assertion that the appearances we witness are the productions of fraud, fancy, delusion, and the like. That is not satisfactory. Our claim is, that departed spirits of men are working marvels on the earth. That claim is good till it be shown that the marvelous events witnessed are the productions of other agents. Each lapsing year strengthens that claim. And if a check to such materialism as argues that man is devoid of any property which will consciously survive the death of his body, and if a positive demonstration of man's survival beyond the tomb, be matters which the methods of Providence are employed to advance, then the unwonted numbers of returning spirits recently and now, and the frequency of their advent, together with the consequent daily and palpable demonstration of a life beyond the present, come to man most opportunely--come to him both when vast masses of mortals are prepared so meet and welcome them as friends and kindred, and also, and significantly, when their presence impairs the power of bright and leading minds to cause the thinkers of our age to anticipate annihilation of themselves, their kindred, and their race, and to suffer loss of the incentives and joys which attend anticipations of a heaven in advance.

So welcome, efficient, and salutary an advent of invisible actors and teachers as we witness to-day, seemingly would have been impossible, had the witchcraft creed of our fathers retained abiding hold upon their descendants. The methods of Providence seem to have embraced both the abolition of that creed, and a sufficient lapse of time for the nurture and culture of a people up to such elevation that a large portion of it would be fitted and disposed to welcome back departed ones just when their proved presence would be the great fact at man's command which would effectually deter advancing and beneficent physical scientists from inferring and teaching that life's emigrants all take a plunge into the rayless abyss of nonentity.

A continuous thread of the methods of Providence seems traceable through many of the darkest and most shocking scenes of human history. Many of man's greatest advances have been outwrought through anguish and tortures whose inflictors we reprobate. Is it too much to say that such a thread ropes in, as instruments of good, Pharaoh, Pontius Pilate, Witchcraft, and many other notable personages and scenes, which have been made to further the deliverances of oppressed and suffering mortals? Permission of sins, sufferings, and wrongs comes from the Infinitely Benevolent.

Fit instrumentality existed at Salem Village for demolishing that special creed of Christendom which closed and barred the gates that nature hinged for furnishing a way of egress back from beyond the grave; and wisest and kindest dwellers above were in mood then to let suffering and anguish enough come upon mortals there to awaken them out of their deep delusion, and sway them to set those special gates ajar. They broke the bars; but dust and rubbish long made a wide opening difficult and arduous. A century and a half was needed for such liberation of mortals from the crampings of delusion, and for such exercise of free thought in a land of free schools, as would educate a nation up to courage which could calmly ask any mysterious visitant whatsoever, who he was, whence he came, and what he wanted. In the fullness of time, this could be and was done. When culture and science were broadly producing conviction that there is no hereafter for man, one came forth from the land of the departed, knocked on cottage walls, gained the ear of common people, allured hosts of other spirits to follow him to human abodes; and the numerous band of returning ones is now the only host which can effectually stop the hope-crushing advance of materialism, and furnish the world palpable demonstration of an hereafter for the souls of men.

In 1692, an unprecedented strain in its application effectually broke up Christendom's long cherished and indurated delusion that devils unfleshed and devils incarnate are the only beings who can act and commune across the line dividing this from the life beyond. That rupture set Christians free to learn that duty called them to "try the spirits." In time a generation came who met that duty. Spirits of God--good spirits--as well as others visit human abodes, and their presence itself is proof positive of man's survival beyond the grave. Their widely conceded advent seems divinely opportune, for it occurs when their presence tends forcefully to check, and promises to stop the prevalent strong tendency of science and culture to divine that man's doom is drear annihilation. The beneficent intensity of a special strain upon a specific delusion, nine score years ago, is due to the strength of faith, character, and action, and to the unwonted extent and excellency of medianimic instrumentality then existing at Salem Village, whose conspicuous action and use there made that spot lastingly memorable; and we deem it just to regard it as a point from which influences emanated whose fruits to-day are eminent blessings to the Christian world. The methods of Providence often educe choicest good from most direful evils.

APPENDIX.

CHRISTENDOM'S WITCHCRAFT DEVIL.

Christians, when New England witchcraft occurred, generally believed that it originated with, emanated from, and was controlled by _one_ vast malignant personality, possessing frightful powers, aspects, and efficiency. A fair comprehension of what that being was then conceived to be is needful to anything like accurate knowledge of the origin, growth, sway, exit, and genuine character of occurrences which outwrought as dire strifes, horrors, bloodshed, and heart-wrenchings, as any courageous, intelligent, and conscientious people ever sided forward or suffered under.

Christendom, in the day of our Puritan forefathers, believed in a devil peculiar to a few centuries--in one who was of more modern birth than the Bible or other ancient histories--who was very different from any being characterized in either Jewish or heathen records of antiquity, and has no parallel, we trust, in any creed to-day.

Probably many malicious, as well as benevolent, unseen personages exist, who may often act upon men and their affairs. There may be powerful _evil ones_, in realms unseen, who there rule over hosts of like dispositions with themselves. Neither the existence of many devils, nor intermeddling by them with man's peace and welfare, is called in question.

Authors of the Bible, when using the terms devil, Satan, and others of similar import, generally designated, as our own age extensively does, beings very unlike _such_ a devil as was conceived of and dreaded by Christendom from two to five hundred years ago. Prior to and during the days of Jesus and his apostles, such terms were often applied to whatever, in either the visible or the unseen world, tempted or forced men to wrong-doing, or hindered their progress in goodness. Jesus said to a disciple, "Get thee behind me, _Satan_;" and this, simply because Peter was giving him advice more carnal than spiritual, and which was designed to dissuade Jesus from following the course which his conscience was prompting him to pursue. The mere giving of unwise advice made Peter _a Satan_. Turning to 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, you may read that the LORD, being angry, moved David to number the people. Turning again to 1 Chron. xxi. 1, you will find a description of the same transaction, in which it is said that "_Satan_ ... provoked David to number Israel." Therefore, in biblical language, even the LORD, when angry, was equivalent to Satan. Any accuser, in a court of justice or equity, might properly have been called a Satan, in the days of the prophets, for then that term was applicable to any adversary or opponent, of whatever grade or nature.

Very much later than David's day the word _devil_ frequently had a much softer meaning than it usually bears now. Jesus said (John vi. 70), "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is _a devil_?" Having previously called Peter "Satan," Jesus here called Judas a _devil_. Thus highest Christian authority spoke of unwise and treacherous men as being Satans and devils, and thereby showed that those words anciently were sometimes applied, by the pure and wise, to other beings than one special great malignant spirit. The devil of modern _witchcraft_ was unknown by Jesus and by all biblical authors.

Whence, then, since not from the Bible,--whence did Christians of the seventeenth and some earlier centuries obtain those peculiar conceptions of him, which made the devil almost counterbalance, in malignity and monstrosity, the benignity and beauty of the Infinite God? Where did they find him? So far as we perceive and believe, his like was never recognized, either outside of Christendom, or prior to the dark ages. No being verily like him was ever dreaded as an enemy by any other people than Christians, and not by them till within the last thousand years. About all that we know is, that he had become huge and frightful at the time of the Reformation; and our belief is, that morbid fancy, in the cloisters and monasteries of Europe, through several centuries plied her limnistic verbal skill, and thereby outlined and blackened piecemeal her most _outre_ conceptions possible of the lineaments and expressions of a being as monstrous in shape, as powerful, wily, and malicious, as imagination could fabricate, and thus gave the Christian world a monk-made devil--a hideous personification of evil. Lapsing time eventually caused this cloister-born scarecrow to be looked upon as vitalized malignity incarnate--as an immortal, ubiquitous personality--as a living fiend of awful sway and force, who should be watched, feared, and fought by every God-serving man. We look upon him as a production of human fancy. But not so did our predecessors. They assigned to their devil of horrid form and huge dimensions a very different origin and nature.

Where born, and what his nature, according to the belief of those who imported him to New England shores, are important questions the appropriate answers to which must be comprehended before one can obtain just appreciation of the position in which their creed placed our forefathers, and the direction and force it gave to their action whenever seeming diabolism not only fearfully disturbed private firesides and social relations, but threatened tenure of lands, and continued existence of church and state throughout the colonies.

Their Author of witchcraft was conceived of, believed in, and set forth in language, as having been heaven-born--a glorious angel once, but apostate and banished from his native skies;--as one mighty, malignant personality, almost ubiquitous, almost omniscient, second in power to Almighty God alone, and nearly His equal. As quoted by Upham, vol. i. p. 390, Wierius, a learned German physician, described the devil as being one who "possesses great courage, incredible cunning, superhuman wisdom, the most acute penetration, consummate prudence, an incomparable skill in vailing the most pernicious artifices under a specious disguise, and a malicious and infinite hatred toward the human race, implacable and incurable."--"He was," says Appleton's N. A. Cyc., "often represented on the stage, with black complexion, flaming eyes, sulphuric odor, horns, tail, hooked nails, and cloven hoof." Many of us now living have seen him pictured nearly thus in some old illustrated editions of the Bible.

But the gifted Milton's comprehensive fancy and lofty diction, exempted, under poetic license, from adherence to fact or creed, or other enfeebling restraint, put forth, in masterly and acceptable manner, lineaments and features appropriate to an embodiment of his highest possible conceptions of combined majesty, might, and malignity, and thus allured his own and future ages to bow in awe before a devil who in grandeur far surpassed any which monkish powers had been able to fabricate and describe. He imputed to Satan "eyes that sparkling blaz'd; his other parts, besides prone on the flood, extended long and large lay floating many a rood," ... "unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield," ... "resolve to wage by force or guile eternal war, irreconcilable to our grand foe, ... ever to do ill our sole delight, as being the contrary to his high will whom we resist; If then his providence out of our evil seek to bring forth good, our labor must be to prevent that end, and out of good still to find means of evil." Such was the great poet's "Archangel ruined;" nearly such was the prevalent perception of him by the general mind of Christendom. He was one mighty Evil Spirit--monarch of all fiends, and an untiring operator for harm to both the body and soul of man.

Such conceptions were general alike in Europe and America. But still another view, quite as appalling as any of the foregoing, and appealing more directly to the temporal interests of men, operated in _America_, and made it specially needful for all property holders here to contest the devil's advances. Cotton Mather called the arch mischief-worker "a great landholder;" and he was spoken of as though conceived to be temporal as well as spiritual ruler over all Indian tribes and their lands, and also as being a contester against God and Christ for empire over each and every part of the American continent where Christians encroached upon his sable majesty's domains. God and devil--each was a vast and powerful spirit, exercising sway and dominion widely, as the other would let him; and these two mighty spiritual Rulers were often struggling in sharp conflict of doubtful issue for empire over particular portions of the earth. The Devil--and such a devil too--occupied much space not only in the theology and philosophy of the learned, but also in the daily and worldly thoughts of the common colonists.

Upham has forcefully and truthfully said (vol. i. p. 393), that our fathers "were under an impression that the devil, having failed to prevent progress of knowledge in Europe, had abandoned his efforts to obstruct it effectually there; had withdrawn into the American wilderness, intending here to make a final stand; and had resolved to retain an undiminished empire over the whole continent and his pagan allies, the native inhabitants. Our fathers accounted for the extraordinary descent, and incursions of the Evil One among them, in 1692, on the supposition "that it was a desperate effort to prevent them from bringing civilization and Christianity within his favorite retreat; and their souls were fired with the glorious thought, that, by carrying on the war with vigor against him and his confederates, the witches, they would become chosen and honored instruments in the hands of God for breaking down and abolishing the last stronghold on the earth of the kingdom of darkness."

This mighty Devil, commander-in-chief of the countless hosts of all the devils, demons, satans, Indians, heathen, sinners in, above, upon, or around earth,--this mighty contester for dominion with God and Christ and all good Christians, was conceived to be author of all works called witchcrafts, producing them through human beings who had voluntarily made a covenant to serve him, and who resided in the midst of the people whom he molested; for we shall soon see that the philosophy of those times permitted him no other possible access to man than through persons who were in covenant with himself.

Any covenanter with such a devil, that is, any wizard or witch, could be regarded by the public as nothing less formidable than a voracious wolf burrowing within the Christian sheepfold, who, if not at once unearthed and slain, would either actually devour, or frighten away from their pasturing grounds, all those with their descendants who had crossed the ocean to feed on the hills and vales of America. Our fathers felt that the possession and value of their homes and lands, as well as the temporal peace and prosperity of the community, its religious privileges, and the salvation of human souls, were at stake in a witchcraft conflict. Their faith, their interests temporal and spiritual, their manhood, and all that was brave, strong, and good in them, called upon them to face boldly even such a devil as has been described above, and to fight him by any processes which had been tried and approved in Europe; the chief of which was, to seize his covenanted servants--his guns--and silence them promptly and permanently. Witches must die!

LIMITATIONS OF THE DEVIL'S POWERS.

Creed-makers before the Reformation conceived, what is probably true, that natural barriers at all times have effectually debarred even the mightiest devil, as well as each and all of his disembodied imps, from coming directly into such close contact with a human body, or any other material object, as enabled them to produce effects perceptible by man's physical senses. Being themselves spirits, whether primarily earth-born or foreign, devils could effect direct access to, and could harm the minds and souls of men, and, unaided by mortals, could incite human beings to evil actions and self-debasement, while yet, so long as they were unaided by voluntary human alliance, they were absolutely unable to act upon matter--unable to subject human forms to fits, twitchings, tumblings, transformations, sicknesses, pains, &c., such as the bewitched of old experienced, and such as await many mediumistic persons to-day. Devils, formerly, and spirits now, to make the effects of their powers observable, or to make themselves felt by men's external senses, usually must act first and directly upon the equivalent to such nervous fluid or aura as enables man's mind to actuate his own body. Any disembodied spirit, of whatsoever grade or character, may be, and probably is, seldom able to command that intermediate aura--or that _something_--excepting when in or near an animal organism which possesses those properties or conditions, whatever they are, which render a person mediumistic. Constructors of the witchcraft creed probably had learned that nature always and everywhere makes matter intangible by spirit directly, and they thence inferred that the devil could never get into close contact with human bodies without the aid of some spirit, or of appendages to some spirit, who holds living alliance with matter, and consequently has in or around itself nervous fluid, or its equivalent, which is usable by mind not its own--is loanable, or at least liable to be abstracted.

Transpiring observation now quite distinctly perceives that control of human organisms by disembodied spirits is usually attended by conditions fundamentally analogous to an antecedent covenant. The old creed-makers may have reasoned from facts of experience and observation much more generally and logically than the present age imagines. No special desire is felt, and we do not see that any special obligation rests upon us, to palliate the doings of those monastics who in dark ages both fabricated and shackled the devil of witchcraft. Still we do not begrudge them such justification as may flow out that passing facts. We have already stated the probability that nature makes physical man intangible by spirits directly. Because of protracted observations of their doings, we assume that spirits are able to read at a glance the properties of each form to which they give special attention, and are at no loss to determine what organisms are controllable by them when conditions are all favorable. One and an important condition is, absence of resistance to control by the mind to which the susceptible organism pertains. The genuine owner generally _can_ withhold his or her nervous fluids, or auras, or those properties, of whatever kind or name, which a spirit must use in the controlling process; and, consequently, _a quasi agreement_, amounting at least to acquiescence on the part of the medium, is generally a necessary preliminary to any modern spirit-manifestation, especially with mediums not much accustomed to be controlled.

When and where belief prevailed that all disembodied spirits who ever actuated human forms were the devil or his imps, the inference that those whom he and his controlled had entered into an agreement with _him_, was natural and almost necessary. For an agreement or consensus between a controlling spirit and the will of the person controlled is very common now, and, no doubt, has been in all past ages. The assumption, however, which seems to have been prevalent formerly, that such consensus involved eternal reciprocal obligation between the devil and a human soul, or the sale of that soul to the Evil One, could not be required or suggested by any facts perceivable by modern observation. No doubt each successive use of properties of a particular body by an intelligence from outside itself, generally enables the foreign spirit subsequently to manage that body with increasing ease to itself, and with more satisfaction probably to both

## parties; and the practice, if mutually pleasurable, renders prolonged

co-operation probable; but co-operation for a time imposes no obligation or necessity that the parties shall remain forever conjoined. Common use of the same magnetism, nervous elements, or whatever they use in common, may tend to make a spirit and a mortal assimilate in their tastes, emotions, motives, and characters. This co-operation may evoke such sympathy between them, that each may often be drawn to the of other's aid, and conjointly they may manifest both physical and mental powers which neither could put forth alone. And it is possible that a liberated spirit may be so linked in sympathy with numerous other spirits, that the joint powers of many are at his service, so that through a single human form there may be manifested to the outer world the effects of the combined forces of legions of ascended spirits, either good or bad, in one accordant band.

Obviously, spiritual beings, of whatever quality, are generally dependent, for any manifestation to the outer world, on one or more of a class of mortals possessing special properties or susceptibilities. Nature seems to impose such necessity. She does not let even man's own spirit act upon his stable body directly, but through something evanescent before microscope and scalpel.

COVENANT WITH THE DEVIL