assemblages of witches were held once a year. To these they rode from
great distances on brooms and dogs, and there they did homage to the
prince of hell and offered him sacrifices.

In 1836 the populace of Holland plunged into the sea a woman reputed to
be a sorceress, and as the miserable woman persisted in rising to the
surface, she was pronounced guilty, and was beaten to death. It was
believed that the devil could transform people into any shape he
pleased, and whoever denounced this idea was denounced as an Infidel;
that the believers in witchcraft appealed to the devil; that with the
devil were associated innumerable spirits, who ranged over the world
endeavoring to torment mankind; that these spirits possessed a power
and wisdom transcending the limits of human faculties. They believed
the devil could carry persons hundreds of miles in a few seconds; they
believed this because they knew that Christ had been carried by the
devil, in the same manner, into a high mountain, and placed upon a
pinnacle. According to their account, the prince of the air had
absolutely taken the God of this infinite Universe, the Creator of all
its shining, wheeling stars--he had been absolutely taken by the devil
to a pinnacle of the temple, and there had been tempted by the devil to
cast himself to the earth.

Take from the church itself the threat and fear of hell and it becomes
an extinct volcano. With the doctrine of hell taken from the Church,
that is the end of the fall of man, that is the end of the scheme of
atonement. Take from them the idea of an eternal place of torment, and
the Church is thrown back simply upon facts.

And Dean Stanley, the leading ecclesiastic of Great Britain, only the
other day in Winchester Abbey, said science will be the only theology
of the future. Morality is the only religion of the years to come.
Not withstanding all the infamous things laid to the charge of the
Church, we are told that the civilization of today is the child of what
we are pleased to call superstition. Let me call your attention to what
they received from their fears of these ghosts. Let me give you an
outline of the sciences as taught by those philosophers. There is one
thing that a man is interested in, if he is in anything, and that is in
the science of medicine. A doctor is, so to speak, in partnership with
Nature. He is a preserver if he is worthy of the name. And now I want
to show what they have gotten from th