LETTER V.
The evidence deduced from her predictions.
Dear Sir:—I must now ask your attention to the arguments furnished by her predictions.
She foretold what the opinion and conduct of mankind would be with regard to her, and the ill treatment which Mr. Blaisdel’s family would receive on her account. She not only declared the necessity, but foretold the certainty of the marriage, at an hour when both the parties and both their families opposed it, if there was any thing to be known by the harmony of words and actions; yet the attachment of the parties seems to have been mutual from first to last. The pasara of the paradox is future: for mankind have more than one character, and the alector of Æsop will despise what a jeweller would prize.
She not only predicted the prosecution, but named a particular person as one who would certainly be present at the court for a witness, eleven months before these events took place.
She named another particular person, as one who should be present at the trial by the Grand Jury, and foretold what kind of language he would utter in their presence, eleven months before the accomplishment.
In about a month after, that is, ten months before the accomplishment, an oath of its existence was given before a magistrate. The person too, who is the subject of this prediction, and fulfilled it, was never a friend, but invariably the foe of the Spectre from first to last. She foretold to forty people the issue of that trial, eleven months before the accomplishment. To the genuine friends of literature in this place, who were sincerely opposing superstition and legerdemain, this prediction was made known.
They were warned of the disadvantage which they must suffer, if they persisted.
They disbelieved the prediction, despised it, and became the involuntary subjects of its fulfillment at the time appointed. Within thirty hours after Mrs. Butler’s marriage, the Spectre predicted that she would become the parent of but one child and then die. Ten months after this her child was born, and she died the next day. The safe return of one bound to the West Indies was also foretold and accomplished.
These predictions are all fulfilled and were previously and sufficiently known in this vicinity for evidence that they were such. She uttered several other predictions now accomplished. But as these events might possibly be foreknown or strongly conjectured by other means, the mention of them is omitted. Not only her words but her behaviour too, manifested the spirit of prophecy. The reinterment of the child was a practical oath, and never would have been thought of but for her direction. Friends and foes were all in one condition—all unable to conceive or even to conjecture the design of it, till it was manifested eighteen months afterwards, by certain, special, unexpected events of divine Providence. If then we take an impartial and connecting view of these and all the preceding evidences, how absurd is the hypothesis that all these evidences could be the effect, either of imagination or artifice! How much more rational is the opinion which has obtained credit in all ages and nations, that the spirit of deceased persons do sometimes appear, however incapable we are of learning all the purposes for which such events are designed!