ld be sold, bartered, or pawned". (1)
"There is", says J. M. Robertson, "no trace that the Protestant clergy
of Scotland ever raised a voice against the slavery which grew up before
their eyes. And it was not until 1799, after republican and irreligious
France had set the example, that it was legally abolished."

1 "Perversion of Scotland," p. 197. 2 "Capital and Wages ",
pp. 15, 16.

Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief, or rather
disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the brutality by
Christians towards those suspected of witchcraft, the hindrance to
scientific initiative or experiment was incalculably great so long as
belief in magic obtained. The inventions of the past two centuries, and
especially those of the 18th century, might have benefitted mankind much
earlier and much more largely, but for the foolish belief in witchcraft
and the shocking ferocity exhibited against those suspected of
necromancy. After quoting a large number of cases of trial and
punishment for witchcraft from official records in Scotland, J. M.
Robertson says: "The people seem to have passed from cruelty to cruelty
precisely as they became more and more fanatical, more and more devoted
to their Church, till after many generations the slow spread of human
science began to counteract the ravages of superstition, the clergy
resisting reason and humanity to the last".

The Rev. Mr. Minton concedes that it is "the advance of knowledge which
has rendered the idea of Satanic agency through the medium of witchcraft
grotesquely ridiculous". He admits that "for more than 1500 years the
belief in witchcraft was universal in Christendom", and that "the public
mind was saturated with the idea of Satanic agency in the economy of
nature". He adds: "If we ask why the world now rejects what was once so
unquestioningly believed, we can only reply that advancing knowledge has
gradually undermined the belief".

In a letter recently sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ against modern
Spiritualism, Professor Huxley declares,

"... that the older form of the same fundamental delusion--the belief in
possession and in witchcraft--gave rise in the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries to persecutions by Christians of innocent men,
women, and children, more extensive, more cruel, and more murderous than
any to which the Christians of the first three centuries were subjected
by the authorities of pagan Rome."

An