do. Facts were in no way related
to each other. God, governed by infinite caprice, filled the world with
miracles and disconnected events. From the quiver of his hatred came the
arrows of famine, pestilence, and death.

The moment that the idea is abandoned that all is natural; that all
phenomena are the necessary links in the endless chain of being, the
conception of history becomes impossible. With the ghosts, the present
is not the child of the past, nor the mother of the future. In the
domain of religion all is chance, accident, and caprice.

Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were written by the
cotemporaries of these historians.

The same idea was applied to law. It was believed by our intelligent
ancestors that all law derived its sacredness and its binding force from
the fact that it had been communicated to man by the ghosts. Of course
it was not pretended that the ghosts told everybody the law; but they
told it to a few, and the few told it to the people, and the people, as
a rule, paid them exceedingly well for their trouble. It was thousands
of ages before the people commenced making laws for themselves, and
strange as it may appear, most of these laws were vastly superior to the
ghost article. Through the web and woof of human legislation began to
run and shine and glitter the golden thread of justice.

During these years of darkness it was believed that rather than see an
act of injustice done; rather than see the innocent suffer; rather than
see the guilty triumph, some ghost would interfere. This belief, as a
rule, gave great satisfaction to the victorious party, and as the other
man was dead, no complaint was heard from him.

This doctrine was the sanctification of brute force and chance. They had
trials by battle, by fire, by water, and by lot. Persons were made
to grasp hot iron, and if it burned them their guilt was established.
Others, with tied hands and feet, were cast into the sea, and if they
sank, the verdict of guilty was unanimous,--if they did not sink, they
were in league with devils.

So in England, persons charged with crime could appeal to the corsned.
The corsned was a piece of the sacramental bread. If the defendant could
swallow this piece he went acquit. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the time of
Edward the Confessor, appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow it
and was choked to death.

The ghosts and their followers always took delight in torture, in cruel
and unusual