has run its course throughout the whole
world. It is still accepted by probably half the human race. In our own
country eminent men, not alone theologians, but doctors, lawyers,
statesmen, and men of letters, have given their solemn testimony in its
favour. Thousands of people have been bewitched, and their symptoms
described by thousands of others. More remarkable still, those accused
have often enough confessed their guilt. Every possible corroboration
has been given to this belief, and yet it is now scouted by educated
persons all over the civilised world. Even religious teachers accept the
explanation that these witchcraft cases were due to distinctly
pathological conditions, and to the power of suggestion operating upon
uninformed minds during an unenlightened age. But communications with
spiritual beings rest on no better foundation than communication with
Satan. Whether the alleged illumination be diabolic or angelic, the
evidence for either, or both, is the same. The testimony of a man like
the Rev. R. J. Campbell that he is conscious of a divine influence in
his life is of no greater value than that of the medieval peasant who
felt himself tormented by Satan. The one person is no better authority
than is the other on such a topic. Both are the heirs of the ages,
inheritors of a superstition that goes back to the most primitive ages
of mankind, only modified in its expression by the culture of
contemporary life.

There is nothing new under the sun, and human nature remains
substantially unchanged generation after generation. All the phenomena
on which the belief in witchcraft was based, remain. Cases of delusion
are common, and the power of suggestion is an established fact in
psychology. All that has happened is this: taking the facts on which the
belief was based, modern science has shown them to be explainable
without the slightest reference to the supernatural. And this is the
principle that must be applied in other directions. Old occurrences must
be explained in the light of new knowledge. This is the accepted rule in
other directions, and it is of peculiar value in relation to religious
beliefs. To know what religious people have thought and felt and said
gives us no more than the data for a scientific study of the subject. To
know _why_ they thought and felt and spoke thus is what we really need
to understand. But if we are to do this we must relate phases of mind
that are called religious to other phase