Adopt the view—and we believe it correct—that the accusing girls were constitutionally endowed with fine sensibilities and special organisms and temperaments which rendered their bodies facile instruments through which unseen intelligences acted upon visible matter and human beings, the supposition that God made them capable of being good mediums—good instruments for use by other minds and wills than their own, and that their bodies, either apart from or against their own minds and wills, were concerned in the enactment of witchcraft, and then you may look upon each and all of them as having been as pure, innocent, harmless, sympathetic, and benevolent as any females in that or in this generation; and no descendant from them need fear the cropping out of specially bad and disreputable blood thence inherited, and each may regard his or her native spot as deserving to be consecrated rather than damned to fame, because there true, conscientious men fought manfully and legitimately for rescue of both their own homes and the community from direst of all conceivable foes, while living instruments of rare efficiency existed there, by use of which the Christian world was delivered from dwarfing and hampering slavery to a monk-made devil. What other battle, of any nature, ever fought on American soil, purchased choicer freedom, or effected mental emancipation more widely over Christendom, than did your fathers’ conflict with their devil? May the year 1892 deem the spot worthy of a commemorative monument!
Your last historian poetically says, that your “witchcraft darkness is a cloud conspicuous chiefly by the widening radiance itself of the morning on whose brow it hung.” Shining traits, qualities, and deeds of New Englanders in the seventeenth century, including the dwellers at the Village, no doubt gave widening radiance to the morning of our nation’s day; and the abiding brilliancy of that morning may be what makes your “witchcraft darkness” far more conspicuous than any in other lands. But it surely required far other than begulled fathers and begulling daughters to emit the rays of a morning of such widening radiance as would make darkness more conspicuous there than elsewhere. That morning owed its brightness to far other traits than beguiled and beguiling ones. Clear perceptions of the demands of a creed, of duty to God, of duty to one’s family; prompt, vigorous action in obedience to God’s direction and the king’s law when the devil invaded one’s home; fearless and untiring conflict with man’s most powerful and malignant foe;—these, and other powers, qualities, and acts kindred to these, emitted the radiance which made the blackness of witchcraft more conspicuous at Danvers than elsewhere in the broad world.
No. Witchcraft did not rage with most marvelous fierceness, end enact its death-struggle, on your soil because of the weakness, but because of the strength of your fathers; not because of their cowardice, but of their courage; not because of their heartlessness and barbarity, but of tenderness toward their agonized families; not because of lack of faith in God, but because of faith in him so strong that it could put humaneness down, and keep it down till God’s call to put a witch to death could be obeyed.
Such properties gave to the morning of the Village an inherent brightness which first extinguished witchcraft’s dismal day, and now harbingers a brighter one, in which, no civil law molesting, spirits hold mutually helpful communings with mortals. That momentous and most valuable privilege was essentially won on your soil in 1692. Nation after nation, taught by results at the Village, has repealed its obnoxious statutes, and broad Christendom is the freer and more elevated because of light widely radiating forth from your “witchcraft darkness.”
Methods of Providence.
Our planet, Earth, is yet crude. Its soil, products, emanations, and auras are coarse and harsh. Though meliorated much since it first gave birth to man, it is not now fitted to nurture beings as refined as it will be centuries hence. It is being constantly softened, and is ever progressing toward the present ripened condition of older planets, whose embodied inhabitants easily and constantly commune with wise departed kindred, from whom they receive such instructions and aids as cause them to live in close harmony with the laws of animal health, and therefore nearly free from sickness and pains, and, when ripened for release, to pass painlessly out from their grosser integuments. From the days of remotest history, and our world over, spirits have often been transiently visible and palpable by some mortals. But the atmosphere in which humans live is measurably uncongenial and oppressive to most, and especially to purer and more advanced spirits; still it becomes less so from century to century, is ever gaining such conditions as lift a little higher its incarnate inhabitants, and is less oppressive to those disrobed of flesh. Its modifications prophesy that time will be when mortals and spirits may here more comfortably than now intercommune constantly and with mutual benefit. Terrific mental conflicts—moral tornadoes, agitations to the depths of society, are used as instruments in advancing earth and its inhabitants to states which will permit spirits to be our constantly recognized attendants, and our helpful advisers and guides along the paths of spiritual progression. Progress is hastened through intense tribulations.
Great changes and advances of either a material, mental, political, social, or spiritual world are, like births, generally outwrought through anguish and sufferings. Even the entrance of spirits into mortal forms is usually painful to both parties. First and earlier reincarnations are almost necessarily attended by psychological action which forces spirits severally to manifest, and, moderatedly, to undergo, again their special sufferings during their last hours of earth-life. Mortals, too, shrink from, and are agitated by, and afraid of their nearest friends, if disrobed of flesh. Such fears are repulsive forces, making spirit approach arduous and often impossible. The boon of return, in most cases, is at the cost of suffering—but of suffering which pays well—suffering which purchases joy for both those who come and those who welcome them. Our earth and all who are born upon it receive or earn many of their greatest blessings through the sweats of convulsive throes or severe toil. The abolition of a wide-spread obnoxious creed was terrific in 1692.
In civilized lands extensively, and especially in Protestant Christendom, possibility of the return of departed good souls from their invisible abodes has for centuries been doubted. Therefore a most copious source of valuable instruction and help has been unused. Resort to it has, or had, become horrific; it has been deemed by men the devil’s pool exclusively. But not so by spirits. Wise and friendly ones, unseen, have long and often sought and labored for such recognition and welcome, by survivors on earth, as would render demonstration of spirit presence widely practicable. Spirits have sought this because they have been seeing that free and extensive intercommunings between dwellers in flesh and enfranchised ones might greatly facilitate the advance of both classes in beneficence and happiness. The immense aid which the earth-embodied living, and only they, can give to many unhappy ones whom they call dead, is not yet dreamed of by the public. Knowledge that many departed ones are obliged to get aid from earth ere they can make an efficient start up the ladder heavenward, opens a wide and interesting field of labor to those who have carefully sought to learn the mutual dependences of the seen and unseen worlds.
The possible advent of instruction from unseen realms is now for the first time receiving practical demonstration among a people, who, as a whole, are able and disposed to scan carefully the nature and qualities of the intelligences who impart it. Prior to 1692, the Christian world had long been shrinking from conferences with unseen colloquists, deeming all such diabolical in purpose and influence. Ignorance was mother of its fears. The present age, more enlightened, more disposed to investigation, more prone to believe in the reign of law always and everywhere, asks the hidden teachers who they are, and whence and why and how they gain access to our homes. Their responses affirm, and each lapsing year of non-refutation confirms the allegation, that they are spirits now, but once were mortals robed in flesh; and that they come, some from this motive, some from that,—some for fun, frolic, and even revenge and wrong; but more of them to give and to receive the pleasure and happiness which visits to their former homes and friends will generate, and especially to make known to their loved ones here the course of life which will best fit them for joy and happiness in the mansions and scenes of the world to which they all must come.