passions."

"Yes, that seems to be very reasonable," said Dulcibel. "Every sinful
act seems to me a yielding to the evil one, and such yielding becoming
common, he may at least be able to enter into the soul, and take
absolute possession of it. Oh, it is very fearful!" and she shuddered.

"But I find one opinion almost universal in Salem," continued Raymond,
"and that is one which I think has no ground to sustain it in the
scriptures, and is very mischievous. It is that the devil cannot act
directly upon human beings to afflict and torment them; but that he is
forced to have recourse to the agency of other human beings, who have
become his worshipers and agents. Thus in the cases of these children
and young girls, instead of admitting that the devil and his imps are
directly afflicting them, they begin to look around for witches and
wizards as the sources of the trouble."

"Yes," responded Joseph Putnam earnestly, "that false and unscriptural
doctrine is the source of all the trouble. That little Ann Putnam,
Abigail Williams and the others are bewitched, may perhaps be true--a
number of godly ministers say so, and they ought to know. But, if they
are bewitched, it is the devil and his imps that have done it. If they
are 'possessed with devils'--and does not that scripture mean that the
devils directly take possession of them--what is their testimony worth
against others? It is nearly the testimony of Satan and his imps,
speaking through them. While they are in that state, their evidence
should not be allowed credence by any magistrate, any more than the
devil's should."

It seems very curious to those of the present day who have investigated
this matter of witch persecutions, that such a sound and orthodox view
as this of Joseph Putnam's should have had such little weight with the
judges and ministers and other leading men of the seventeenth century.
While a few urged it, even as Joseph Putnam did, at the risk of his own
life, the great majority not only of the common people but of the
leading classes, regarded it as unsound and irreligious. But the whole
history of the world proves that the _vox populi_ is very seldom the
_vox Dei_. The light shines down from the rising sun in the heavens, and
the mountain tops first receive the rays. The last new truth is always
first perceived by the small minority of superior minds and souls. How
indeed could it be otherwise, so long as truth like light always shines
down from