Show decay in mth tiie e belief of witchcraft A doctrine the denial of which two cent urias ago would have been considered proof positive of infidel tendencies and a long stride towards a doctrine which the most eminent divines identified with a standing or falling bible which was commended to favor by the almost concurrent voices of the learned of preceding christian ages which bishops and councils had bad stamped with a solid approval on the ground of which aich death had abeen inflicted on thousands upon thousands thousand of men and eind women 2 especially from the thirteenth century onwards this doctrine has now disappeared it 1 alien to our consciousness it Is no longer included in the stock of religious bel bei beliefs fefe lefe the first skepticism respecting it wo was a resented d and taj soll agn asa ata sa 98 4 wnm ar dence of the degeneracy of the he present age ake that bad present age which good men in every gen n n bralon U exve 6 tia than any other before it the first of the du ancient clent belief were observed with dismay by sincerely pious ploua meu men who rallied for the 06 4 the faithe faith and grasped the ark more Lenac tenaciously lousy the more they saw at to boari be in danger they hurled their proof texts I 1 thou tho shall not mot buffer a witch to levei live they spurned the novel interpretations which made the i twitch to be a mere juggler they shouted sadducee sadducee they scattered their sarcasms on the effrontery of the new I 1 lights who fancied them themselves selves on a loftier pinnacle than the generations erat ions lons before them all was in T yain ain sin the obsolescent belief soon eoon became ccase obsolete the eighteenth smiled at the credulity of the tho seventeenth and the nineteenth century does the same witchcraft along in it has vanished the devils devilb who helped their human allies to pinch and prick sleeping children sometimes to poison cattle and upsel upset milk palls pails have taken their flight salem is quiet from the incursions out of it is actually aa as well aa as nominally a city ot of peace gradually and yet rapidly men came camb to disbelieve what they had haa before believed emancipated from the old tenet they began to deride it as a weak spasmodic efforts to fave save bave the decaying doctrine proved provid us useless eless eleEs even the potent voice of wesley fellan fell feli on listless ears prof george P fisher in sunday afternoon for january |