that the spirit of
darkness there exercises greater power, in proportion as the nations
we plunged in irregularity, and into deeper moral darkness. Louis
Vivez[437] testifies that, in the newly-discovered countries in
America, nothing is more common than to see spirits which appear at
noonday, not only in the country, but in towns and villages, speaking,
commanding, sometimes even striking men. Olaues Magnus, Archbishop of
Upsal, who has written on the antiquities of the northern nations,
observes that in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Finmark, and Lapland, they
frequently see spectres or spirits, which do many wonderful things;
that there are even some amongst them who serve as domestics to men,
and take the horses and other cattle to pasture.

The Laplanders, even at this day, as well those who have remained in
idolatry as those who have embraced Christianity, believe the
apparition of the manes or ghosts, and offer them a kind of sacrifice.
I believe that prepossession, and the prejudices of childhood, have
much more to do with this belief than reason and experience. In
effect, among the Tartars, where barbarism and ignorance reign as much
as in any country in the world, they talk neither of spirits nor of
apparitions, no more than among the Mahometans, although they admit
the apparitions of angels made to Abraham and the patriarchs, and that
of the Archangel Gabriel to Mahomet himself.

The Abyssinians, a very rude and ignorant people, believe neither in
sorcerers, nor spells, nor magicians; they say that it is giving too
much power to the demon, and by that they fall into the error of the
Manichaeans, who admit two principles, the one of good, which is God,
and the other of evil, which is the devil. The Minister Becker, in his
work entitled "The Enchanted World," (Le Monde Enchante,) laughs at
apparitions of spirits and evil angels, and ridicules all that is said
of the effects of magic: he maintains that to believe in magic is
contrary to Scripture and religion.

But whence comes it, then, that the Scriptures forbid us to consult
magicians, and that they make mention of Simon the magician, of
Elymas, another magician, and of the works of Satan? What will become
of the apparitions of angels, so well noted in the Old and New
Testaments? What will become of the apparitions of Onias to Judas
Maccabeus, and of the devil to Jesus Christ himself, after his fast of
forty days? What will be said of the apparition of Moses at