Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism

by Allen Putnam

The methods of Providence have ever been homogeneous; and now that they have brought peoples to the dawn of a day when human hospitality is entertaining angels, not always unawares, but often consciously and joyfully, the beneficence of the witchcraft scenes at Salem Village, whereby Christendom’s thralldom to a factitious devil was effectually broken up, becomes conspicuous. Lapsed time reveals probability that the barbarisms of that day were availed of as instruments for procuring the freedom which now permits instructive, helpful, and gladdening intercourse between millions of devout and truth-seeking mortals and bright, beneficent spirits. What though the agitation of Christendom brings its latent iniquities and impurities to the surface? What though the counterparts of publicans, sinners, and harlots float numerously into view? Ascent of dross and scum to the surface is usually the first product in processes of clarification. Inexperienced observers are very liable to regard the unsightly stuff as a sample of all that underlies it. Others, who better comprehend the cause and object of bringing impurities into view, observe such first results complacently, knowing that subsequent effects will be most beneficent—will present purified, and therefore more precious views of the divine methods of bringing men to righteousness, and will furnish more efficient helps to man’s upward progression than have been generally applicable heretofore.

Great reformatory truths have seldom been first offered to or received by the worldly-wise and prudent. Not rulers and Pharisees, but common people, fishermen, humble women, publicans, sinners, and harlots were numerous among the first followers of Jesus; and these were the ones who heard him gladly. Like causes which made it thus of old, operate to-day, and the supplemental revelations and revealers of our time meet with like reception as did those centuries ago. It is well. Wide popularity and affectionate fondling might sap an infant ism of its best health-giving and reformatory powers. Comprehensive wisdom lets it harden and strengthen through buffetings with the leaders of prevalent theological and scientific decisions, opinions, and fashions. The boundless intelligence, which ever acts for good, is patient and long forbearing. It waits for seeds of reforms to take deep root in the masses, and thence, in time, pushes onward the force which overturns dynasties, hierarchies, and all effete institutions, creeds, and customs which are no longer fruitful of food suited to cultured man’s existing needs.

Savage and barbarous nations, everywhere and always, attain to more or less faith in the presence and help of ancestral spirits; they seek instruction from the departed. Broad and perpetual belief in a particular fact is far from weak evidence of its positive existence. Uncultured minds admit witnessed facts to be positive occurrences, and affect no need to comprehend how they are produced before giving assent to their verity. But the cultured are prone to deny the manifestation of any events whose transpiration is not referable to the permission of some law whose operations are familiar. They cannot account for a fact, and therefore it does not exist, or, as Agassiz said, “it is not in nature.” The greatest of human scientists, however, falls far short of acquaintance with all the forces and permissions enfolded within boundless, unfathomable, incomprehensible nature. It is dogmatism—not science—which says that facts observed by the senses of man continuously from the birth of his race down to now, have had no positive existence.

Law reigns; and we know no law which permits return from beyond the grave; therefore departed spirits cannot revisit their survivors on earth. Such is often the position and argument of theology, science, and culture. But our question to them is, Are you sure that you are acquainted with all the laws, forces, agents, and permissions in the broad storehouses of nature? Have you explored all realms in the universe, and qualified yourselves to maintain that you have definitely learned that no forces anywhere exist by which things anomalous to human science can be manifested to human senses? Practically you say, Yes. And doing thus, you foster and fast extend belief in non-immortality.

Are the results of your course to be lamented? Perhaps not. The oozing out and disappearance of an old belief, and a consequent state of non-belief, may be arranged for in the methods of Providence, because the latter state may be the best possible for the induction of belief founded on demonstration, where one previously lived which rested upon dogmatic authority.

The skepticism of our generation pertaining to a future life is an offspring of general and advanced education which asks for proofs as the only proper foundation for belief. That education has fitted the thinking masses to demand that teachers shall grapple with and either refute or adopt sensible facts widely witnessed. Millions upon millions of Christendom’s inhabitants are having sensible demonstration, day by day and hour by hour, that the spirits of departed mortals make known their veritable presence among their survivors in mortal forms. They say to the world’s leading minds,—spirit return is a fact in nature: it is made manifest to our physical senses; we know it to be true. Therefore, ye sticklers for law and scientific methods, prove to us our mistake if we are dupes.

During more than five and twenty years we have been putting forth that call, and you have thus long omitted to give any other response than dogmatic assertion that the appearances we witness are the productions of fraud, fancy, delusion, and the like. That is not satisfactory. Our claim is, that departed spirits of men are working marvels on the earth. That claim is good till it be shown that the marvelous events witnessed are the productions of other agents. Each lapsing year strengthens that claim. And if a check to such materialism as argues that man is devoid of any property which will consciously survive the death of his body, and if a positive demonstration of man’s survival beyond the tomb, be matters which the methods of Providence are employed to advance, then the unwonted numbers of returning spirits recently and now, and the frequency of their advent, together with the consequent daily and palpable demonstration of a life beyond the present, come to man most opportunely—come to him both when vast masses of mortals are prepared so meet and welcome them as friends and kindred, and also, and significantly, when their presence impairs the power of bright and leading minds to cause the thinkers of our age to anticipate annihilation of themselves, their kindred, and their race, and to suffer loss of the incentives and joys which attend anticipations of a heaven in advance.

So welcome, efficient, and salutary an advent of invisible actors and teachers as we witness to-day, seemingly would have been impossible, had the witchcraft creed of our fathers retained abiding hold upon their descendants. The methods of Providence seem to have embraced both the abolition of that creed, and a sufficient lapse of time for the nurture and culture of a people up to such elevation that a large portion of it would be fitted and disposed to welcome back departed ones just when their proved presence would be the great fact at man’s command which would effectually deter advancing and beneficent physical scientists from inferring and teaching that life’s emigrants all take a plunge into the rayless abyss of nonentity.

A continuous thread of the methods of Providence seems traceable through many of the darkest and most shocking scenes of human history. Many of man’s greatest advances have been outwrought through anguish and tortures whose inflictors we reprobate. Is it too much to say that such a thread ropes in, as instruments of good, Pharaoh, Pontius Pilate, Witchcraft, and many other notable personages and scenes, which have been made to further the deliverances of oppressed and suffering mortals? Permission of sins, sufferings, and wrongs comes from the Infinitely Benevolent.

Fit instrumentality existed at Salem Village for demolishing that special creed of Christendom which closed and barred the gates that nature hinged for furnishing a way of egress back from beyond the grave; and wisest and kindest dwellers above were in mood then to let suffering and anguish enough come upon mortals there to awaken them out of their deep delusion, and sway them to set those special gates ajar. They broke the bars; but dust and rubbish long made a wide opening difficult and arduous. A century and a half was needed for such liberation of mortals from the crampings of delusion, and for such exercise of free thought in a land of free schools, as would educate a nation up to courage which could calmly ask any mysterious visitant whatsoever, who he was, whence he came, and what he wanted. In the fullness of time, this could be and was done. When culture and science were broadly producing conviction that there is no hereafter for man, one came forth from the land of the departed, knocked on cottage walls, gained the ear of common people, allured hosts of other spirits to follow him to human abodes; and the numerous band of returning ones is now the only host which can effectually stop the hope-crushing advance of materialism, and furnish the world palpable demonstration of an hereafter for the souls of men.