became formidable to religion; for now it was urged
that, since Moses was in error about the reality of witchcraft, his
legislation could not have been inspired.

What are we to say to this?

In the first place it must be observed that the existence of a sorcerer
is one thing, and the reality of his powers is quite another. What was
most sad and shameful in the mediaeval frenzy was the burning to ashes of
multitudes who made no pretensions to traffic with the invisible world,
who frequently held fast their innocence while enduring the agonies of
torture, who were only aged and ugly and alone. Upon any theory, the
prohibition of sorcery by the Pentateuch was no more answerable for
these iniquities than its other prohibitions for the lynch law of the
backwoods.

On the other hand, there were real professors of the black art: men did
pretend to hold intercourse with spirits, and extorted great sums from
their dupes in return for bringing them also into communion with
superhuman beings. These it is reasonable to call sorcerers, whether we
accept their professions or not, just as we speak of thought-readers and
of mediums without being understood to commit ourselves to the
pretensions of either one or other. In point of fact, the existence, in
this nineteenth century after Christ, of sorcerers calling themselves
mediums, is much more surprising than the existence of other sorcerers
in the time of Moses or of Saul; and it bears startling witness to the
depth in human nature of that craving for traffic with invisible powers
which the law prohibited so sternly, but the roots of which neither
religion nor education nor scepticism has been able wholly to pluck up.

Again, from the point of view which Moses occupied, it is plain that
such professors should be punished. They are virtually punished still,
whenever they obtain money under pretence of granting interviews with
the departed. If we now rely chiefly upon educated public opinion to
stamp out such impositions, that is because we have decided that a
struggle between truth and falsehood upon equal terms will be
advantageous to the former. It is a subdivision of the debate between
intolerance and free thought. Our theory works well, but not universally
well, even under modern conditions and in Christian lands. And assuredly
Moses could not proclaim freedom of opinion, among uneducated slaves,
amid the pressure of splendid and of seductive idolatries, and before
the Holy Gh