e
that there was no fraud:" that they should arraign miserable old women by
scores, and hang them by dozens: and that Baxter should gravely argue for
the validity of ghosts and spectres on the plea that "various Creatures
must have a various Situation, Reception, and Operation: the Fishes must
not dwell in our cities nor be acquainted with our affairs"--strikes me
chiefly with amazement at the marvellous imbecility of superstition. It is
well for the leaders of sects to bid us cast down our reason before blind
faith; for, assuredly, our reason, which is the greatest gift of God,
pleads loudly against the follies of belief and the vital absurdities into
which religionists fall when unchecked by common sense. It was only the
"Atheists" and "Sadducees," as they were called, who at last managed to
put a stop to this hideous delusion: all the pious believers upheld the
holy need of searching for witches, and of not suffering them to live
wherever they might be found. All sects and denominations of Christians
joined in this, and found a meeting-place of brotherly love and concord
beneath the witches' gallows. And though one's soul revolts most at the
so-called "Reformed Party," because of the greater unctuousness of their
piety, and their mighty professions, yet they were all equally guilty, one
with the other; all equally steeped to the lips in insanest superstition.
The temper of the times has so far changed now that men and women are no
longer hung because they have mesmeric powers, or because hysterical and
epileptic patients utter wild ravings: but the thing remains the same;
there is the same amount of superstition still afloat, if somewhat altered
in its direction; and modern Spiritualism, which has come to supersede
Witchcraft, is, when it is true at all and not mere legerdemain, as little
understood and as falsely catalogued as was ever the art of magic and
sorcery.

THE HUNTINGDON IMPS.

In another very scarce tract by "J. D." (John Davenport) "present at the
trial," we come to a strange and mournful group of judicial murders that
took place in Huntingdon, 1646. First, there was Elizabeth Weed, of Great
Catworth, who confessed that twenty-one years ago, as she was saying her
prayers, three spirits came suddenly to her, one of which was like a man
or youth, and the other two like puppies, of which one was white and the
other black. The young man asked her if she would renounce God and Christ:
to which she assented