SKETCH OF BENJAMIN THOMPSON. 23 j 



power of Satan. Every form of disease might be produced by Satan 

 or his agents, the witches ; and none of the infirmities to which Luther 

 was liable were natural ; but his earache was peculiarly diabolical. 

 Hail, thunder, and plagues, are all the direct consequence of the inter- 

 vention of spirits. Many of those persons who were supposed to have 

 committed suicide had in reality been seized by the devil and stran- 

 gled by him, as the traveler is strangled by the robber. The devil 

 could transport men through the air. He could beget children ; and 

 Luther himself had come in contact with one of them. An intense 

 love of children was one of the most amiable characteristics of the 

 great Reformer ; but on this occasion he most earnestly recommended 

 the reputed relatives to throw the child into the river, in order to free 

 their house from the presence of the devil. As a natural consequence 

 of these modes of thought, witchcraft did not present the slightest 

 improbability to his mind. In strict accordance with the spirit of his 

 ao-e, he continually asserted the existence and frequency of the crime, 

 and emphatically proclaimed the duty of burning witches." 



We see what a loving obedience to the word of God led Luther to 

 recommend. That this spirit has died out, is wholly due to the 

 advancement of science and rationalism, and not to any change in 

 the religious spirit per se, or to any different interpretation of the 

 Bible. The witchcraft is there, as it was in the days of Luther, and 

 the injunction not to suffer witches to live is there, and neither has 

 been explained any better than it was in the middle ages. But 

 the researches of the investigators of Nature have gradually driven 

 these notions out of the minds of men, and stamped them with the 

 opprobrium of absurdities. 



Greeley, Colorado, February 14, 18*76. 



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SKETCH OF BENJAMIN THOMPSON (COUNT RUMFORD). 



IN his late work, " Recent Advances in Physical Science," Prof. 

 Tait, of the University of Edinburgh, has attempted a history of 

 dynamical' science, or rather of the doctrine of the conservation of 

 energy. Though this great doctrine is recent in its completer develop- 

 ment, Prof. Tait holds that it is implied in Newton's laws of motion, 

 and that Newton only failed to grasp it in its modern form for lack of 

 certain experiments. Where Newton broke down, there the subject 

 remained for more than a hundred years, no physicist appearing w r ho 

 could take up the research at that point and carry it on. Prof. Tait 

 says that "what Newton really w anted was to know what becomes 

 of work when it is spent in friction." The experiments thus needed 

 to open the way to a new era in the doctrine of forces were supplied 



