Chapter C: W. Upham (12)

Indeed, modern thought has come very low down in its search for witchcraft's author. Turning from God and the devil, the reputed workers of great marvels in ages long past, our interpreters of America's earlier wonders have fancied that they find the former existence of little girls whose powers to sway the human mind and agitate a land, so approximated those of omnipotence, and whose malignities so perceptibly equaled his of Cloven Hoof, that they of their own wills concocted and enacted scenes of simulated pains, distortions, losses of sight, hearing, and speech; and also mimicked the movements of birds and beasts, and performed such impositions and tricks innumerable as made their homes and neighborhood a horrid pandemonium; in doing which they manifested such prodigious power, skill, and perfect acting, that these little untaught and untrained ones outled in skill, all the world's most expert tricksters, and, in malignity, the most devilish human monsters our world ever contained, in any age or land.

Somewhere between the extremes of strength and weakness, of benevolence and malignity, we perhaps can find beings more likely to have directly produced the marvels in question than either God, devil, or little girls. Consciousness and experience indicate to most persons that an all-dominating power exists, and bounds and hedges in the spheres of freedom and ability which are occupied by finite beings. Something above and beyond all finites says to each of them, "Thus far, but no farther, canst thou go." Within spheres thus limited there abide many grades of intelligent and affectional beings, ranging in differences of powers and dispositions as widely as any mortal's thoughts can conceive. Vast, countless hosts of intelligences, though vailed from our outer vision, may be, and evidences are very strong that such ever are abiding dwellers above, below, around, and in the midst of earth's corporeal inhabitants. Within their unperceived abodes such ones may actuate the forces which evolve many less marked events, as well as all special providences, special judgments--miracles so called, and such marvels generally as were formerly imputed to either God or the devil as _immediate_ author. We have no faith that either of the two had any closer or more special connection with witchcraft matters than with the ordinary doings of man.

The undefinable source of all things which are contained in the vast creation, emitted all forth subject to laws, and surrounded and infiltrated by forces which enable the world's progressing inhabitants, visible and invisible, to purchase, through study, toil, absorptions from enfolding auras, and other furnished helps, both knowledge and powers just as fast and great as their advancements and growing needs from time to time call for more light and for augmented powers.

Finite beings naturally gravitate to where every instrumentality needful to their highest well-being can be obtained by the co-operative efforts and aspirations of finites, seen and unseen, for learning laws and manipulating forces which pervade their places of residence. Generations upon generations, whose mortal forms long centuries ago moldered away, may still be active laborers in and about the men of to-day, and may be, and may always have been, the immediate manifesters of all supernal intelligence and marvelous force issuing from regions which the eye of flesh lacks power to scan. One of the old prophets of a prior generation made known to John the Revelator what he recorded; and agents of like nature, that is, departed human spirits, may have been the only revealers of supernal truths, facts, and visions to man, and the only workers of the signs or extra-marvelous manifestations of force and knowledge which have been deemed credentials from the Omniscient and Omnipotent. We believe in God and in the issuance of knowledge and force from him to man, but have not faith in his immediate personal putting forth of either, in accomplishment of such events as are often called special providences. Such events occur--they often come both uncalled for and in response to prayer--to yearnings "uttered or unexpressed;" but the prayers and yearnings reach, stimulate, and help both ambient forces and ascended spirits to let in or to confer the needed protection or restoration. The air all around us is alive with hearers of prayer, and no humble and fervent aspiration for help to come forth from the mystic abodes of spiritual beings and occult forces ever fails to bring aid and elevation. The purer and humbler the aspiration, the nearer does it penetrate toward the Great Source of being, life, and bliss, and the more powerful and beneficent are those whose responses and emanations can reach and aid the petitioner.

The same forces and laws which permit the sensible action of good spirits among men, just as freely and extensively permit the presence and action of malicious ones. God aids the good and restrains the wicked just as much and no more on the other side of the grave than on this. Freedom, whether to comply with or to contend against either natural or moral law, is as great in spirit spheres as in our midst on earth. Any spirit, either benevolent or malignant, is as free to use the forces and laws which permit spirit manifestations, as any navigator is, be he morally good or bad, to avail himself of winds, currents, tides, and the like, for passing over seas to a land not his own, and acting out his characteristic purposes there.

Our position, fortified by the facts and reasonings in the preceding pages, is, that spirits--departed human beings--generated and outwrought Salem witchcraft. That is our answer to the question of its authorship.

THE MOTIVE.

Thus far questions pertaining to the character of the main motives operating in the authors of acts called witchcraft, have purposely been avoided. The actors and their doings have been sought for, irrespective of morality. But the _cui bono_, the what good? must have been asked over and over again by the reader. Why did any intelligent being, whether mortal or spirit, thus woefully invade and disturb the homes of able, honored, worthy Christian men? and especially why perpetrate such agonizing cruelties upon bright, lovely, and promising children?

The spirit-world, as well as ours, holds inhabitants differing widely one from another in character, tastes, propensities, and occupations--it contains yearners to recommune with surviving kindred at the old material home--contains its rovers, its explorers, its scientists, its seekers after novelties, facts, and principles; after new places, scenes, and peoples to visit; after new routes and appliances for travel, and after new applications of known powers and forces. The motives for acting upon and through mortal forms may vary from worst to best, from best to worst.

The moral character of motives can neither invalidate nor confirm what has been adduced. The motives, having been either good or bad, may be ascribed to spirits as well as mortals, and to mortals as well as spirits, for both good and bad beings dwell in mortal forms now, and both classes have left their outer forms behind, and passed into the abiding-place of spirits--have become spirits, and that, too, without necessary alteration of their moral states. Motives in different cases and with different operators were doubtless quite varied. Correct presentation of their qualities in connection with the several cases adduced in the preceding pages is obviously beyond our power. Though conscious that we must probably be mistaken in some instances, we yet are willing to state some of the thoughts which facts and appearances have suggested.

Perhaps no unseen intelligences aided or acted through either Margaret Jones or Ann Hibbins; and, if any did, their performances in and of themselves were never perceptibly harmful to the public. We apprehend, however, that if the whole truth were known, man would now see that kind physicians, who had bid farewell to earth, continued to practice the healing art through the brain and hands of Margaret Jones.

The users of Ann Cole's vocal organs furnished no distinct indication that they were either specially benevolent or the reverse. We are constrained to regard them as having been low, ignorant, willing to excite consternation among men, and very willing to help the lewd Greensmiths on, by the halter's use, to speedy entrance into conditions in which themselves could confer with these debased ones more familiarly than was possible while they remained encased in flesh. Such a view need not imply that they were malicious. Desire to hold closer connection with one's affinities is natural, and not necessarily bad. Communicators from the other side of death's portals generally decline to call any spirits _bad_; they speak of many as being low, ignorant, benighted, undeveloped, &c., but seldom call any one bad. They seem to regard many much as we do green fruits. One omits to call the half-grown apple bad, however sour or crabbed, and says only that it is immature, unripe, &c., implying that, though in its present condition not good to eat, time may come when it will be palatable and nutritious.

Elizabeth Knap's visitant--the one to whom she said, "What cheer, old man?"--who presumably was the chief operator through and upon her form, and lingered about her for at least three years, we regard as a sort of recluse spirit, who kept mainly aloof from other disembodied ones, and found his chief enjoyment in retaining or resuming as close alliances as possible with the outer or material world, and from a selfish desire to secure permanent possession of this instrument, strove through torturings to reduce her to subjection; and this, perhaps, without desire to injure her, but mainly with a view to gratify his own selfishness. The other one--the pretty black boy--of a more lively disposition, found pleasure in playfully bantering the grave clergyman, and probably strove, in playful mood, to teach the honest and good man some lessons in charity and demonology. We see no reason why he may not be regarded as a genial good fellow, desiring to make some gloomy portion of mankind more cheerful and happy.

At Newbury there possibly was nothing more than a playful and self-gratifying exercise of constitutional powers by a band of spirit gymnasts--not malicious, but playful and rude; curious also, it may be, to see how far they might be able to frighten mortals and arouse consternating wonder, while they should be pleasurably exercising their own faculties. We view them as neither specially good or bad, but as heedless and rude in their frolic.

Appearances are different when we look at the Goodwin family. There an embodied old wild Irish woman's spirit was the first to put forth psychologizing power over the children. She was moved by anger, or resentment, or both; her guardian or kindred spirits no doubt helped her, and from motives like her own. Perhaps we may properly call both her and her aids bad. Yet we hear no call to apply that word emphatically. Little Martha had just charged the old woman's daughter with having stolen some of the clothes which the latter was employed to wash; and, if that charge was false, or even presumed by the old woman to be false, she, who was obviously fiery and ignorant, may not have been excessively diabolical in using any process of mental or emotional retaliation which was at her command. Perhaps ignorance and instinctive retaliation were quite as operative in her as malice.

Martha's form, subsequently, when she was residing with Cotton Mather, was often used by one or more spirits who seem to have been bent upon showing the learned man that sport might exist and be enjoyable beyond the confines of mortal life, and that denizens there were disposed to make some at his expense. They soon showed him that linguists unseen could comprehend his meaning, whatever the language he might use for expression of his thought; and also thumped the sectarian by disdaining to read books which he approved, and by reading with ecstatic delight such as he condemned. Nor was this all; they exhibited in his presence feats of strength and agility, and many marvelous antics, which were suited to cause a thinker and scholar to hold on to his belief that others than the guileless miss took part in the performance of such marvels. While amusing themselves, they were exhibiters of instructive facts. Nothing bad in their purposes becomes apparent.

The case of most special interest and chief importance pertains to Salem. Upham, vol. ii. p. 429, says, "If there was anything supernatural in the witchcraft of 1692, if any other than human spirits were concerned at all, one thing is beyond a doubt; they were shockingly wicked spirits." _Beyond a doubt?_ Perhaps not in some minds. But if any disembodied spirits whatsoever, even _shockingly wicked ones_, were mainly performers of the convulsing operations at Salem, the historian's theory of explanation is not only baseless, but is lamentably cruel and unjust toward the human instruments through whom the spirits acted. If specific doings prove their authors, if spirits, to have been shockingly wicked, the same having mortal authors, would prove the latter to have been just as shockingly wicked. We do not like to apply that defamatory phrase to all those girls and women who are set forth as the chief accusers. Were all those youthful females shockingly wicked? We hope not, and think not. God rules alike in the invisible and visible world, and often moves in mysterious ways for executing benevolent designs.

The motive of Tituba's "tall man with white hair," whom we regard as prime mover in the most momentous witchcraft scene the world has ever witnessed, is difficult to comprehend satisfactorily. The deliberateness indicated both by his visit to Tituba five days in advance of practical operation, and by his then appointing a special time and place for entering upon his intended processes, bespeaks a definite and abiding motive of some marked quality. Judging from the earlier and more perceptible effects of his doings, the world must almost necessarily regard him as a deliberate tormentor of innocent children; as a disturber of domestic, social, religious, and civil peace; as an immolator of the innocent and the virtuous; as hell's sovereign acting out his fiendish pleasure upon the inmates of a Christian fold. Infernal malignity, at the first glance, seems to have actuated this intruder at the parsonage. World-wide experience, however, has learned that many things are "not as they seem." We have been taught to recognize One being, and there may be many others in spheres unseen, in whose sight "a thousand years are as one day." Teachings of history and observation show that the overruling power is attended and guided by far--very far--reaching prescience; and also that many of man's greatest blessings are educed from temporal evils of vast magnitude. The malice of man nailed Jesus to the cross. What wears every appearance of wicked motive is often used as helpful, if not needed, instrumentality in procuring man's deliverance and redemption from debasement and oppression.

When John Brown made his raid across the border line of freedom, not only the invaded South, but a large portion of the North regarded him as a ruthless and malicious invader of the rights of our fellow-countrymen, and therefore worthy of a felon's doom. A cannon soon sent to Fort Sumter the comments of the South upon what Brown had done, and war, carnage, and horrors of varied forms and vast dimensions soon spread over the broad nation, from the St. John to the southern gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. John Brown was no felon, no malicious invader, but a philanthropic planner to strip the chains of slavery from four millions of his brother men; and his step, though a seeming evil then, led directly on to the emancipation of all for whose good he went forth in seeming malice.

When plagues of various kinds were invoked and brought upon the Egyptians by and through the mediumistic Moses and Aaron, what Egyptian would have deemed that the motives of the unseen intelligence who counseled and controlled them could be benevolent? Plague, pestilences, and sore afflictions for a long time, and finally death of the first born, were imposed upon each Egyptian household. The motive to those inflictions is deemed to have been deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage. Egyptians being judges, it must have been a shockingly wicked spirit who acted upon them through Moses and Aaron.

History, on most of its pages, shows that war--war,--that ruthless trampler upon the innocent scarcely less than upon the offending, has ever been a very common, if not the chief, instrument by which oppressed people have gained deliverance, and through use of which the depressed have come up to higher stand-points. If our world has, through all its past ages, been wisely and beneficently managed by some intelligence higher than man, then far-reaching wisdom--supernal wisdom--has often seen that the good of the many--nay, the good of _all_--required the coming of suffering, sacrifice, and anguish upon the few. Has the Great Permitter of the many sufferings which war has engendered been "shockingly wicked"?

The chains of old enslaving errors often become invisible and unfelt by those on whom they were early placed by a mother's kindly hand, and the like to which all associates wear as supposed helps, and never as suspected hindrances, to expansion and health of mind and heart. Nothing short of a most strenuous conflict--nothing short of a struggle for life and all that makes life valuable and dear--is competent in some cases to awaken perception that such chains are and ever have been cramping their wearers, and holding them back from such expansion and freedom as their Maker fitted men to attain to and enjoy. We regard the witchcraft creed as having been such a chain.

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 God 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 amusement, and little else perhaps, may be furnished by presentation of what a spiritualist's fancy, prior to careful study of facts narrated by Tituba, 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 gods 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 Tituba 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 circumstances allowed. It having been discovered that Tituba's form was a portal for spirit return, fancy saw the spirits of her ancestral race, and hosts of ascended aborigines of Massachusetts 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 assailants. 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 harassed 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 emancipation 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 Tituba and started Salem witchcraft. He had not. Had he met Tituba? "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 Tituba 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 Tituba. 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 Tituba 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 Tituba, 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 Tituba, 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, Tituba 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 Tituba 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 unimpassioned 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 compassionate 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 God 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 title. 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 class 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 homoeopathic--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 Tituba 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 prone 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 passed on to realms above, hold blissful and uplifting communings with them, and learn their justification of the wonderful ways of God 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 nobler 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 damned to fame; damned, 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 noble, 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 circumstances 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 Tituba, that personal participator 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 passed 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 assumptions, that the accusing girls, by study and practice, rendered themselves able to concoct and enact the vast and bloody 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. God 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 God and the deliverance of their families from mundane hells, 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 encasement 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 God--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 God 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 God 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 constitutionally 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 God 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 damned 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 emancipation 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 God, of duty to one's family; prompt, vigorous action in obedience to God'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 God, but because of faith in him so strong that it could put humaneness down, and keep it down till God'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 coarse 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 pass 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.