Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism Part 24

Looking carefully at the methods by which the power that overrules all terrestrial affairs has almost invariably led man to break away from thralldom and oppression, can one reasonably entertain belief that any purely peaceful measures, any preachings, arguments, appeals to the reason of men, could have brought Christendom, at any time after the twelfth or thirteenth century, to perceive that its witchcraft creed was enslaving its mind, and thwarting its proper expansion heavenward? We apprehend not; and also we surmise that in 1602 supernal intelligence saw that opportunity and power existed, which, if then availed of, could put mortals into a conflict which would reveal to them the inherent falsity and barbarity of the witchcraft creed, and thus let such light into their minds as, in time, would lead them to cast off the chains in which they were bound, attain to clearer and more accurate views of their relations to G.o.d and the spirit-world, and rise to higher and freer manhood.

If such were the case, we can readily conceive that supernal wisdom and benevolence might permit and foster the oncoming of an appalling and terrific struggle which should bring into vigorous action man's every latent energy, sweep away in its course many erroneous beliefs, hampering customs, and ruts of thought, and thoroughly overturn much which had long been deemed immovable truth. Such a course might be the most beneficent possible, even though it involved destruction of the comfort, peace, and lives of many innocent and most estimable inhabitants at the place and vicinity where the battle should be waged, and that, too, whether the war itself should be the ostensible offspring of revenge and malice, or a brave conflict for preservation of one's altars and fireside in peace.

Some amus.e.m.e.nt, and little else perhaps, may be furnished by presentation of what a spiritualist's fancy, prior to careful study of facts narrated by t.i.tuba, had become accustomed to deem not only possible, but probable.

She was a slave dwelling among oppressors of her kindred and race--oppressors of the negro, the Indian, and of those generally who were "guilty of a skin not colored like their own," and of worshiping G.o.ds different from their own. What more natural than that departed ones, whom the whites had defrauded, injured, and oppressed while dwellers here, and whose surviving kindred were still being treated in like manner, should embrace an opportunity which the mediumistic qualities and the abode of t.i.tuba furnished, for perpetrating retaliation whence woes had been received? True Christian morality may denounce such action as being "shockingly wicked," but the more prevalent morality in the world--in the more resolute portions of it at least, and especially in the less enlightened--may be as ready to commend as to condemn it, and to applaud as to censure those whose fire and pluck induced and enabled them to pay over upon their oppressors wrong for wrong, even augmented with interest at the highest rates which their altered circ.u.mstances allowed. It having been discovered that t.i.tuba's form was a portal for spirit return, fancy saw the spirits of her ancestral race, and hosts of ascended aborigines of Ma.s.sachusetts soil, eagerly coming back through her helping properties, disposed and eager to cast their impalpable arrows and tomahawks at any members of the wronging race who might be vulnerable by such weapons.

Scouts swiftly and widely spread over the spirit hunting-grounds knowledge of the glorious opportunity for retaliation and revenge which had come, and hosts of volunteers rushed thence with lightning speed to the alluring scene. Quick havoc ensued, and the great consternation, bewilderment, devastation, slaughter, disturbance of peace, and agonizings of terror and awe, which the invasion produced, gave keenest pleasure, satisfaction, and joy to the a.s.sailants. Possibly Indian spirits might then begin to cherish hopes of expelling all whites from the land of their fathers, and of re-acquiring and leaving the whole a legacy to red men's heirs.

But the whites, not less than the darker-skinned, were under the supervision of spirit guardians, friends, and helpers, who, though probably taken by surprise and at disadvantage, were by no means disposed to leave their wards, kindred, and loved ones to be long thus hara.s.sed and abused. Invisible hosts soon mustered, and warred against other invisible hosts over and around the Village; and when the struggle had been waged far enough to sever witchcraft's chains, the laws of the _Highest_ permitted the guardians of the Christians to conquer a lasting peace whose balm would heal the wounds inflicted, and whose fruits would be emanc.i.p.ation from cramping errors, and consequent expansion and elevation of mental powers.

As, perhaps, appropriate sequent to our fanciful views, we next present something which was not born in our own brain, and which may or may not be statement of ancient facts. We have devoted but little time to directly seeking information from spirits relating to the subject upon which we are writing, and yet have seldom entered into conversation with any good clairvoyant, at any time during the last year or two, without receiving description of one or more spirits then in attendance, and manifesting desire to have us recognize them. In most cases they have shown their names. In this manner Cotton Mather, more than any other one, signifies that interest in our present work draws him near to us. Mather's mother, also Martha Goodwin, Rebecca Nurse, and others, have presented their cards through persons ignorant that individuals bearing such names ever lived.

But Mather has done more. On two or three occasions, using a medium's organs of speech, he has entered into conversation with us upon his connection with witchcraft. He is not now well pleased with his blindness when in his physical form, and urges us to be more severe in our criticisms upon his course than historic facts permit us to be.

February 9, 1875, he was in control of a medium, and we inquired as to his present views of George Burroughs. At once and cordially he described Burroughs as one of the brightest of all spirits whom he had seen, and as "illumining whatever sphere he enters." We asked Mather if he had ever learned who the spirit was that came to t.i.tuba and started Salem witchcraft. He had not. Had he met t.i.tuba? "Yes." "Can you not," we asked, "find him through her?" "Probably," was his response; "and will try, if you wish it." "Well, then," we said, "two weeks from this day and hour we will meet you at this place." This was arranged through an _unconscious_ medium, who never receives into her consciousness any knowledge of what her lips utter while she is entranced, and she was on that occasion. We did not inform her, nor did any other mortal than ourself know, that we arranged for a subsequent meeting with Mather.

We called upon the medium February 23, when forthwith, in her normal and conscious state, she said that she was then seeing at our side two spirits of very strange aspect, and of race or races unknown to her. One of them she described as a male, uncouth in aspect, having large piercing eyes, a very wild look, and as being clothed in a sort of blouse, beneath and below which were short pants tucked into the shoes; also his teeth were very large. The other was a female of unknown race, and of a race different from that to which the male belonged; her complexion was dark, but she was neither negro nor Indian, and exhibited the letter T.

This medium may have known, and probably did, that we were engaged in writing upon witchcraft; but she is not conversant with its history, nor did she know the names of individuals concerned in it, nor the parts any had severally performed.

Very shortly after having given the above description, the medium was entranced; soon Cotton Mather, speaking through her, signified that he had brought with him both t.i.tuba and her nocturnal visitant when she was slave of Mr. Parris; also, he stated, that, since they were not accustomed to giving utterance through borrowed lips, he proposed to speak for and of them. The statement relating to the man was substantially as follows:--

"His name was Zachahara; he was of Egyptian descent, but a Ninevite, or dweller in Nineveh. His time on earth was somewhat before that of Moses.

Not long after his death, he, a spirit, observed that a spirit by the name of Jehocah--not Jehovah--was working strange marvels, and enacting cruelties among the race from which himself had sprung, through one Moses, and was thereby acting out a spirit's purposes toward man through a mortal's form. At once he, Zachahara, felt strong inclination and desire to exercise his own powers in the same mode. The desire clung to him tenaciously, and ever kept him alert, to find a mortal whom he could use with efficiency rivaling that which Jehocah manifested through Moses. No one of his many trials, however, was very successful until he put forth his skill and power upon and through t.i.tuba. His ruling motive was desire to ascertain how far he, being a spirit, could get and keep control of a mortal form, and what amount and kinds of wonders he could perform with such an instrument. The motive was devoid of either malice or benevolence; it essentially was that of the scientist seeking new knowledge of nature's permissions. To keep t.i.tuba in good humor with himself, he freely made promises to bestow upon her many fine things; and, to please her, he would say and do anything he thought might add to his power over her, and, through her, over other mortals."

Such was the account; and, while it was coming upon our ears, it carried us back to familiar accounts of marvels of old, and we felt that the acts of Jehocah through Moses, and those of Zachahara through t.i.tuba, bespoke motives so much alike in apparent barbarity, that, if either actor was blameworthy, it might be difficult to see why equal blame should not be meted out upon the other.

Mather, speaking of and for t.i.tuba, said, that "when the man first came to her and sought her service and aid, he was very bright and pleasant; but that, when she declined to comply with his wishes and demands, he became awfully dark and terrible." Briefly, t.i.tuba herself managed the medium's vocal organs, furnished a simpering confirmation of Mather's statement, and said, with a shrug and shiver, "he was awful! awful!"

Subsequent conversation at the same seance elicited from spirits their belief, that, as soon as a door of access to men through t.i.tuba was discovered, numerous Indian spirits were able and eager to rush through and lend a helping hand to the old Ninevite, and were devoid of any strong desire to help gently; indeed, they were very willing to molest the whites on their own responsibility. Soon, when unimpa.s.sioned search for knowledge of what ability spirits possessed or might acquire to revisit and again act amid terrestrial scenes was too much attended by agents willing to enact, and actually enacting, havoc too severe to be longer tolerated, wise and compa.s.sionate spirits brought power to bear which soon put a stop to what was producing most agonizing consequences. Spirits claim that they did much in the way of changing the views of mortals, and preventing a renewal of prosecutions at the next term of court. Perceiving that enough cruelty had been enacted to make mortals ready to ask whether both humanity and G.o.d were not belied by the creed Christians were enforcing, they turned the minds of men to more rational and humane views.

Some time during the winter of 1874-5, Rev. G. Burroughs having poured out, through a medium's lips, a few sentences redolent with charity and heavenly grace, we asked him what he now deemed the motive which primarily induced some spirit to inaugurate the operations which brought himself and many others to untimely end? His response was, "I suppose it was the natural and proper desire of some spirit to resume communion with its dear ones on earth." No spirit has ever indicated to us a suspicion even that the spirits whose acts evolved witchcraft were either malevolent, censurable, or in any sense _shockingly wicked_.

Did supernal prescience select and post agents peculiarly fitted to perform the witchcraft tragedy? Perhaps so: and possibly Sir William Phips was not governor by mere chance. Some statements by Calef indicate that Sir William when young, perhaps while but a learner of ship-carpentry in Maine, received a written communication which led him to go to Europe and obtain means whereby to seek for a wreck, the finding of which brought him fortune and t.i.tle. He long and carefully preserved the prophetic paper, and, when flush in means, paid the writer of it more than two hundred pounds. From the same or a similar source he fore-learned his becoming a commander, governor of New England, and other events of his life.

Information of that kind usually comes to such as are mediumistic enough to be susceptible of guidance, or at least of swayings, by the intelligence from whom the prophecy issues. Sir Phips may have been himself mediumistic. The probable fact that the accusing girls named the governor's wife as one from whom they received annoyance bespeaks probability that she too had place in the cla.s.s of impressibles.

Therefore, one inclined to prosecute such speculations is here furnished with a basis on which to argue that the Infinite Prescience which permitted the advent of Salem witchcraft, also embraced fit instruments in fit position for controlling its course, and also for putting a stop to it as soon as it should have outwrought enough of seeming evil to beget the good which Infinite Benevolence purposed to bestow upon mortals. Spirits take to themselves much credit for the part they performed in changing the opinions and course of the authorities and people here in the autumn of 1692, and the early months of the following year.

The adjournment of the court, and no law permitting another session for months, gave opportunity for reflection. Also the actual and contemplated arrests of many of high standing and most estimable character were matters of sobering influence, so that reason resumed its sway; no more were tried for witchcraft, and all prisoners were set free. This may have occurred either with or without special action of spirits upon the public mind.

We now regard the primal motive as nearly or quite devoid of moral quality. It probably was either a natural and proper desire to get access to dear ones left on earth, or some experimental or some scientific impulse to test the power which a spirit could exercise over those encased in mortal forms. When, before the days of ether, good Dr. Flag had fixed his forceps firmly on our raging tooth, and given a long, strong pull till out of breath, our pains, our agony, our heavy blows upon his hand and arms, failed to make him let go. He was shockingly wicked at that moment, for he not only held on and kept us in torture, but pulled again without success; and even then he would not let go, but pulled yet once more, and the tooth came out. Spirits, getting access to mortals, may have judged that only through transient evils and sufferings could man get relief from severe chronic maladies, and that, when opportunity occurred, their kindest possible treatment of men was h.o.m.oeopathic--was the curing like with like--curing evil by inflicting evil. They may have been so shockingly wicked as to do that.

Spirits may often, and generally explore and operate from motives not perceptibly different from such as actuate their human counterparts. The devoted vivisectionist seldom shrinks from entering upon, or gives up pursuit of, knowledge because the scalpel agonizes his living subject. So, too, a spirit in pursuit of knowledge--if, either casually or by intended experiment, finding himself controlling the will and organs of t.i.tuba or some other impressible mortal, and thus opening up a new field for exploration--might be strongly inclined to see how far and efficiently he could wield forces of nature so as himself to sway the forms and affairs of embodied men. Each gain in power or skill for acting amid terrestrial beings, scenes, and objects, would naturally thrill him with pleasure, and incite him to follow up researches in the spirit of science. That spirit is p.r.o.ne to look upon sufferings which its own processes occasion, as but temporary incidents, and of little account in comparison with the beneficent results which its triumphs will procure. Extension of their own fields of knowledge and influence was perhaps among the chief motives which prompted spirits to perform the wonders that startled, frenzied, and agonized the subjects and observers of their operations in 1692. Another may have been self-gratification by revisiting well-known scenes; and yet another, beneficence to man by opening for his use a new source of knowledge and wisdom.

Realms unseen are the abodes of sympathetic as well as of scientific beings; and as soon as a false creed had been forced to disclose its falsity, the former may have seen occasion to dissuade the latter from acting further upon benighted dwellers in mortal forms, until time should bring man to calm reflection and retrospection, and to possession of such mental freedom as would embolden him to meet unawed, strange visitants from unseen realms, and extend to even such a friendly hand. The lapse of a hundred and fifty years brought such mental freedom to us, purchased by the sufferings of our fathers, that, undeterred by fears of the halter, we now can invite to our earthly homes the loved and saintly ones who have pa.s.sed on to realms above, hold blissful and uplifting communings with them, and learn their justification of the wonderful ways of G.o.d both to and through the children of men and in all nature.

Whatever the ruling motive of the chief direct producer of Salem Witchcraft may have been, the resistless power which moves all things, including malignant motives, onward toward the production of ultimate good, caused the fierce conflict we are considering to soon put an effectual stop to prosecutions for witchcraft throughout all Christian lands, and shattered to fragments a pernicious creed which had long enslaved the Christian mind. Costly as that struggle was in pains, sicknesses, tortures, anguish, physical exhaustions, domestic distresses, social alienations, church discords, languishments in prison, fears, frenzies, and even life, the price may not have been high for the wide-spread and abiding blessings of mental freedom which it obtained.

LOCAL AND PERSONAL.

_Members of the First Parish in Danvers, and all residents on the soil of Salem Village_:--

About three years since it was my privilege to speak briefly concerning the marvels of 1692, on the spot where they transpired. Courtesy then required brevity, and some vagueness of statement resulted: my remarks on that occasion are embraced among the addresses appended to Rev. Charles B.

Rice's admirable "History of the First Parish in Danvers, 1672-1872"--a production of much more than ordinary merit.

The present occasion is embraced to point out a misprint. On pages 186 and 187 of those bi-centennial offerings, I am made to say that "the little resolute band of devil-fighters here in the wilderness became, though all _unwillingly_, yet became most efficient helpers in gaining liberty for the freer action of n.o.bler things than any creed," &c.--I never cherished a thought so derogatory to them as that they _unwillingly_ became efficient helpers in gaining liberty. My spoken words were, that they _unwittingly_, that is, without knowing it, were being made instrumental in gaining mental freedom, or deliverance from the chains of error; and I believe that a large part of the preceding pages tends to make the truth of my actual statement apparent, while it shows the falsity of the one imputed to me.

The soil beneath you long has been and long will be either consecrated or d.a.m.ned to fame; d.a.m.ned, hereafter, if prevalent modern views of former actors there be correct; consecrated, if the ostensible actors be viewed as chosen combatants and instruments on witchcraft's last and most widely renowned battle-field.

Many of you know that I first drew breath and also received my earlier training and unfoldment on the soil of your town. My relations to witchcraft soil were not of my own choosing, and I feel no responsibility for them--feel no sense of gratulation, and none of shame, because of them. Still, no doubt, they increase my desire to set forth the merits of former dwellers at the Village as having been as great and n.o.ble, and their faults as few and small, as authenticated facts fairly demand; and this not because of anything done or suffered by any one of my personal ancestors, no one of whom, so far as I have learned, was either accuser, accused, or witness in any witchcraft case. There, however, has been transmitted orally from sire to son what possibly indicates that one of them was exposed to arrest. Immediately after the prosecutions ceased, Joseph Putnam, father of General Israel, was a firm and efficient opponent to Mr. Parris's retaining position as minister at the Village. Tradition says that when rage for arrestings was high, he, being then only twenty-two years old, and his still younger wife, kept themselves and their family armed, their horses saddled and fed by the door, day and night for six months. This was preparation for either resistance or flight, as circ.u.mstances might render expedient in case an arrest should be attempted there. Opposition to prevalent beliefs, therefore, may not be a new feature in the family history. The heretic to the notions of many to-day, may have had an ancestor heretical to the witchcraft creed in 1692.

But if heresy has come by inheritance, charity combines with it; for my heart is gladdened by each newly discovered indication that Joseph's elder half-brother, Thomas Putnam, the great and impartial prosecutor, and Ann, daughter of Thomas the great witch-finder,--also that Mr. Parris and many other former villagers,--never, any one of them, acted any part in relation to witchcraft that was not prompted by devotion to the relief and good of their families and neighbors, or forced upon them by unseen and irresistible agents.

Your trusted teachers upon the subject--Upham, Fowler, Hanson, and Rice, all well informed in most directions, and well-intentioned--have severally favored the view that neither supermundane nor submundane agents were at all concerned in producing your witchcraft scenes. Their course throws tremendous and most fearful responsibilities upon both the fathers and daughters of a former age; and not responsibilities alone, but also accusations of deviltry upon the children, and of stupidity and barbarity upon the fathers, which make them all objects of aversion, and a stock from which any one may well blush to find that he has descended.

No one of these teachers went back to the commencement of the strange doings, and scanned the testimony of t.i.tuba, that personal partic.i.p.ator in them, and the best possible witness. No one of them used, and probably none but Upham had at command, her simple but plain statements, that a spirit came to her and forced her to help him and others pinch the two little girls in Mr. Parris's family, at the very time when their mysterious ailments were first manifested. The keen and exact Deodat Lawson states that the afflicted ones "talked with the specters as with living persons." Mention of spirits as being seen attendant upon the startling works is of frequent occurrence in the primitive records.

Therefore, facts well presented and authoritative have been left unadduced by your teachers. They, however, are a part, and a very important part, of things to be accounted for. Any theory of explanation that fails to embrace such is essentially faulty, misleading, and not worthy of adoption. Fair respect for historic facts, and especially for the reputation of those men and young women who were prominently concerned in its scenes, very properly and forcefully demands a widely different and less humiliating and aspersory solution of your witchcraft than such as has been proffered in the present century.

My reading in preparation for this work failed to meet with either distinct mention of any meeting of a circle at Mr. Parris's house, or with any statement which had seeming reference to the existence of such a one, till I got down to Upham, who dwells much upon it and its influences, but omits mention of the source of his information. Since the publication of his Lectures upon Witchcraft, many writers have followed his lead.

Knowledge of the locality and of the relative positions of the homes of those girls, and of their positions in those homes, is perhaps kept more steadily in view by a writer whose young days, and parts of his manhood, were pa.s.sed there, than by others not so long familiar with the region; and perhaps he holds firmer conviction that gatherings, with the frequency and to the extent which are claimed, for the purpose of learning the arts of necromancy, magic, and spiritualism, under the roof of such a man as Mr. Parris, were very much nearer to an impossibility, than most others do who have of late had occasion to consider _who_ enacted Salem witchcraft.

If current a.s.sumptions, that the accusing girls, by study and practice, rendered themselves able to concoct and enact the vast and b.l.o.o.d.y tragedy imputed to them, and if their own minds and wills were properly authors there,--if the prevalent explanation of witchcraft be much other than fanciful,--then the magical skill and powers, and the brutal acts there manifested, loudly call for admission that wolfish fathers had begotten foxes, and were beguiled and spurred on by their own wily vulpines to commit such horrid havoc as must fix unfading and ineffaceable stain of infamy upon the spot where they prowled.

The blackest smooch on the pages of your history was dropped from the pen which virtually made the Village daughters incarnate devils, and their fathers gullible, stupid, and brutal mistakers of what their own girls performed for the marvelous doings of agents possessing more than mortal powers. G.o.d save the parish soil from the stain which modern fancy's course tends to impress upon it! Its men were never beguiled and aroused to perpetration of monstrous barbarities by the self-willed actings and words of their daughters. But genuine and mysterious afflictions of their children found the sires ready to fight manfully and unflaggingly for G.o.d and the deliverance of their families from mundane h.e.l.ls, and that, too, with such force and persistency as never before was equaled in witchcraft's long history, and with such success that no extension of that sad volume has since been possible.

That was most emphatically a time that tried men's _souls_; and the souls then there proved to be brave enough to wage conflict against the mightiest and most formidable of possible enemies, and strong and persistent enough to force him to such struggle as strained his vitals, and paralyzed his power to molest grievously in any future age. The Unique Devil of Witchcraft left that field of fight a Samson shorn of his locks; the source of his strength was there cut off, for the intensely indurated encas.e.m.e.nt of the delusion which centuries before had begotten him, and had ever since been feeding him abundantly, was then so thoroughly cracked, that its contents went the way of water spilled upon the ground, and he famished.

Blush not for the fathers. They were heroes, true to their creed, their families, and their neighbors; true servants of their G.o.d--true foes to their devil. And their fight purchased the freedom which lets me now speak in their defense, devoid of any fears of the hangman's rope; and purchased, too, your no less valuable freedom to let me now speak without molestation,--which would be impossible were the creed of the fathers now prevalent, and if you equaled them in devotion to _Faith_,--because then my methods and processes for gaining knowledge would require you to hang either me or those through whom loved and wise ones speak back from beyond the grave, impart their hallowing lessons of experience in bright abodes, and their instructions in righteousness. Thank G.o.d yourselves that you hold no creed calling you to perpetrate such barbarity! Hutchinson's statement, that our witch-prosecutors were more barbarous than Hottentots and nations scarcely knowing a G.o.d ever were known to be, involves a very significant comment upon the witchcraft creed. That creed made our fathers more barbarous than any tribe of men outside the Christian pale; and were that creed yours to-day, and were you true to it, you would be equally barbarous as they. Their struggle purchased for you and all Christendom exemption from their direful condition.

Adopt the view--and we believe it correct--that the accusing girls were const.i.tutionally endowed with fine sensibilities and special organisms and temperaments which rendered their bodies facile instruments through which unseen intelligences acted upon visible matter and human beings, the supposition that G.o.d made them capable of being good mediums--good instruments for use by other minds and wills than their own, and that their bodies, either apart from or against their own minds and wills, were concerned in the enactment of witchcraft, and then you may look upon each and all of them as having been as pure, innocent, harmless, sympathetic, and benevolent as any females in that or in this generation; and no descendant from them need fear the cropping out of specially bad and disreputable blood thence inherited, and each may regard his or her native spot as deserving to be consecrated rather than d.a.m.ned to fame, because there true, conscientious men fought manfully and legitimately for rescue of both their own homes and the community from direst of all conceivable foes, while living instruments of rare efficiency existed there, by use of which the Christian world was delivered from dwarfing and hampering slavery to a monk-made devil. What other battle, of any nature, ever fought on American soil, purchased choicer freedom, or effected mental emanc.i.p.ation more widely over Christendom, than did your fathers' conflict with _their_ devil? May the year 1892 deem the spot worthy of a commemorative monument!

Your last historian poetically says, that your "witchcraft darkness is a cloud conspicuous chiefly by the widening radiance itself of the morning on whose brow it hung." Shining traits, qualities, and deeds of New Englanders in the seventeenth century, including the dwellers at the Village, no doubt gave widening radiance to the morning of our nation's day; and the abiding brilliancy of that morning may be what makes your "witchcraft darkness" far more conspicuous than any in other lands. But it surely required far other than begulled fathers and begulling daughters to emit the rays of a morning of such widening radiance as would make darkness more conspicuous there than elsewhere. That morning owed its brightness to far other traits than beguiled and beguiling ones. Clear perceptions of the demands of a creed, of duty to G.o.d, of duty to one's family; prompt, vigorous action in obedience to G.o.d's direction and the king's law when the devil invaded one's home; fearless and untiring conflict with man's most powerful and malignant foe;--these, and other powers, qualities, and acts kindred to these, emitted the radiance which made the blackness of witchcraft more conspicuous at Danvers than elsewhere in the broad world.

No. Witchcraft did not rage with most marvelous fierceness, end enact its death-struggle, on your soil because of the weakness, but because of the strength of your fathers; not because of their cowardice, but of their courage; not because of their heartlessness and barbarity, but of tenderness toward their agonized families; not because of lack of faith in G.o.d, but because of faith in him so strong that it could put humaneness down, and keep it down till G.o.d's call to put a witch to death could be obeyed.

Such properties gave to the morning of the Village an inherent brightness which first extinguished witchcraft's dismal day, and now harbingers a brighter one, in which, no civil law molesting, spirits hold mutually helpful communings with mortals. That momentous and most valuable privilege was essentially won on your soil in 1692. Nation after nation, taught by results at the Village, has repealed its obnoxious statutes, and broad Christendom is the freer and more elevated because of light widely radiating forth from your "witchcraft darkness."

METHODS OF PROVIDENCE.

Our planet, Earth, is yet crude. Its soil, products, emanations, and auras are coa.r.s.e and harsh. Though meliorated much since it first gave birth to man, it is not now fitted to nurture beings as refined as it will be centuries hence. It is being constantly softened, and is ever progressing toward the present ripened condition of older planets, whose embodied inhabitants easily and constantly commune with wise departed kindred, from whom they receive such instructions and aids as cause them to live in close harmony with the laws of animal health, and therefore nearly free from sickness and pains, and, when ripened for release, to pa.s.s painlessly out from their grosser integuments. From the days of remotest history, and our world over, spirits have often been transiently visible and palpable by some mortals. But the atmosphere in which humans live is measurably uncongenial and oppressive to most, and especially to purer and more advanced spirits; still it becomes less so from century to century, is ever gaining such conditions as lift a little higher its incarnate inhabitants, and is less oppressive to those disrobed of flesh. Its modifications prophesy that time will be when mortals and spirits may here more comfortably than now intercommune constantly and with mutual benefit.

Terrific mental conflicts--moral tornadoes, agitations to the depths of society, are used as instruments in advancing earth and its inhabitants to states which will permit spirits to be our constantly recognized attendants, and our helpful advisers and guides along the paths of spiritual progression. Progress is hastened through intense tribulations.

Great changes and advances of either a material, mental, political, social, or spiritual world are, like births, generally outwrought through anguish and sufferings. Even the entrance of spirits into mortal forms is usually painful to both parties. First and earlier reincarnations are almost necessarily attended by psychological action which forces spirits severally to manifest, and, moderatedly, to undergo, again their special sufferings during their last hours of earth-life. Mortals, too, shrink from, and are agitated by, and afraid of their nearest friends, if disrobed of flesh. Such fears are repulsive forces, making spirit approach arduous and often impossible. The boon of return, in most cases, is at the cost of suffering--but of suffering which pays well--suffering which purchases joy for both those who come and those who welcome them. Our earth and all who are born upon it receive or earn many of their greatest blessings through the sweats of convulsive throes or severe toil. The abolition of a wide-spread obnoxious creed was terrific in 1692.