THE SABBATH. 35 



craft, in the midst of all their agonies, felt themselves 

 God-forsaken, and saw before them instead of the 

 glories of heaven the infinite tortures of hell. Not to 

 the fall of Sarmatia, but to the treatment of witches in 

 the seventeenth century, ought to be applied the words 

 of your poet Campbell : — 



Oh 1 bloodiest picture in the book of time ! 



The mind sits in sackcloth and ashes while contem- 

 plating the scenes so powerfully described by Mr. Lecky 

 in his chapter on Magic and Witchcraft. But I will 

 dwell no further upon these tragedies than to point out 

 how terrible are the errors which our clergy may com- 

 mit after they have once subscribed to the creed and 

 laws of Judaism, and constituted themselves the legal 

 exponents and interpreters of those laws. 1 



Turning over the leaves of the Pentateuch, where 

 God's alleged dealings with the Israelites are recorded, 

 it strikes one with amazement that such writings should 

 be considered for a moment as binding upon us. The 

 overmastering strength of habit, the power of early 

 education — possibly a defiance of the claims of reason 

 involved in the very constitution of the mental organ — 

 are forcibly illustrated by the fact that learned men are 

 still to be found willing to devote their time and en- 

 dowments to these writings under the assumption that 

 they are not human but divine. Claiming the same 

 origin as other books, the Old Testament is without a 

 rival, but its unnatural exaltation as a court of appeal 

 provokes recoil and rejection. Leviticus, for example, 

 when read in the light of its own age, is full of interest 



1 The sufferings of reputed witches in the seventeenth century 

 a3 well as those of the early Christians, might be traced to panics 

 and passions similar in kind to those which produced the atrocities 

 of the Reign of Terror in France. 



