commanded here I would have that child thrown into
the Moldau, at the risk of being its murderer. But the Elector of Saxony
and the princes were not of my opinion."

Here is a case in which the Doctor of Divinity, though naturally a
kind man, is quite ready to take human life at the behest of a
devilish superstition, while the less fanatical laymen shrink from
such inhumanity. The only devil in this story is the devil of fearful
ignorance and misbelief in Brother Martin. He it was who needed the
exorcist, although the truth would have greatly surprised him. Carlyle
may use his snarling muscles at the "apothecary's apprentice" who is
able to give a scientific explanation of Luther's visions; but, after
all, the unfortunate persons whom Luther would have murdered by mistake
might be pardoned for preferring the apothecary's apprentice to the
Protestant Pope. The fact is, the doctrine of devils, of demoniacal
possession, of incubi and succubi, and of sorcery and witchcraft, was
not fostered by laymen so much as by the clergy. Lecky remarks that
"almost all the great works written in favor of the executions were
written by ecclesiastics," and Tylor asserts that "the guilt of thus
bringing down Europe intellectually and morally to the level of
negro Africa" lies mainly upon the Church, Protestant being as bad as
Catholic, for they vied in outraging and killing those who were doomed,
by the ghastliest of superstitions, to be "for life and death of all
creatures the most wretched." Eternal honor to Luther for the heroism
which sent him to Worms, and made him exclaim to his dissuaders: "I will
go if there are as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the
roofs of the houses." But eternal hatred and contempt for the Creed
which degraded heroes into Jack the Rippers. I say _the Creed_; for
Christianity cannot be exculpated. Witchcraft, possession, and sexual
intercourse between human and superhuman beings, are distinctly taught
in the Bible; and if there were no other indictment of Christianity, the
awful massacre and torture of millions of helpless women and children
would suffice to damn it everlastingly.

BIBLE ENGLISH.

Turning over the pages of Coleridge's "Table Talk" recently, my
attention was arrested oy several passages I had marked, many years ago,
in that suggestive book. Two or three of these, referring to the _style_
of the Bible, resuscitated some reflections I made on the first reading,
and which I n