done such things, their spirits must have committed them," and they therefore confessed.
Many thousands of persons in former centuries concluded in the same manner that they had committed "the unpardonable sin"; while of these very few had any clear idea of what the sin is. The pressure of the doctrinal beliefs of the age upon morbid conscientiousness, with a natural distrust, antagonized all the promises of the Gospel, and they despaired.
Many abandoned persons who believed in witchcraft and sought to obtain the power could easily find coincidences seeming to prove the truth of their claims, and in this way thought themselves to be wizards and witches.
EXPLANATION OF PHENOMENA
In the progress of science principles have been established and illustrative facts accumulated whereby the greater part of the authentic phenomena can be fully explained. There was a large amount of fraud and jugglery. Dr. Hutchinson of England, the second edition of whose work appeared in 1720, has a chapter on "Seven Notorious Impostures Detected."
Seventy-eight years after the Salem witchcrafts, at Littleton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a case involving three children whose performances were fully as remarkable and mysterious as those of the Goodwin children attracted great attention. But several years later the oldest girl offered herself as a candidate at the Rev. Mr. Terrell's church in Medford. "Her experience was considered satisfactory, but the minister chancing to preach against liars" (though he had not the least idea that she was an impostor), his sermon so powerfully affected her that she went to him and confessed the whole imposture,
