For the conduct of life, while here in these bodies, we must confine our curiosity to fields of knowledge open to our natural and ordinary faculties, and embraced within the limits of the established condition of things.  Our fathers filled their fancies with the visionary images of ghosts, demons, apparitions, and all other supposed forms and shadows of the invisible world; lent their ears to marvellous stories of communications with spirits; gave to supernatural tales of witchcraft and demonology a wondering credence, and allowed them to occupy their conversation, speculations, and reveries.  They carried a belief of such things, and a proneness to indulge it, into their daily life, their literature, and the proceedings of tribunals, ecclesiastical and civil.  The fearful results shrouded their annals in darkness and shame.  Let those results for ever stand conspicuous, beacon-monuments warning us, and coming generations, against superstition in every form, and all credulous and vain attempts to penetrate beyond the legitimate boundaries of human knowledge.

The phenomena of the real world, so far as science discloses them to our contemplation; the records of actual history; the lessons of our own experience; the utterances of the voice within, audible only to ourselves; and the teachings of the Divine Word,—­are sufficient for the exercise of our faculties and the education of our souls during this brief period of our being, while in these bodies.  In God’s appointed time, we shall be transferred to a higher level of vision.  Then, but not before, we may hope for re-union with disembodied spirits, for intercourse with angels, and for a nearer and more open communion with all divine beings.

The principal difference in the methods by which communications were believed to be made between mortals and spiritual beings, at the time of the witchcraft delusion and now, is this.  Then it was chiefly by the medium of the eye, but at present by the ear.  The “afflicted children” professed to have seen and conversed with the ghosts of George Burroughs’s former wives and of others.  They also professed to have seen the shapes or appearances of living persons in a disembodied form, or in the likeness of some animal or creature.  Now it is affirmed by those calling themselves Spiritualists, that, by certain rappings or other incantations, they can summon into immediate but invisible presence the spirits of the departed, hold conferences with them, and draw from them information not derivable from any sources of human knowledge.  There is no essential distinction between the old and the new belief and practice.  The consequences that resulted from the former would be likely to result from the latter, if it should obtain universal or general credence, be allowed to mix with judicial proceedings, or to any extent affect the rights of person, property, or character.

The “afflicted children” at Salem Village had, by long practice, become wonderful adepts in the art of jugglery, and probably of ventriloquism.  They did many extraordinary things, and were believed to have constant communications with ghosts and spectres; but they did not attain to spiritual rapping.  If they had possessed that power, the credulity of judges, ministers, magistrates, and people, would have been utterly overwhelmed, and no limit could have been put to the destruction they might have wrought.