Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/190

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188
THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM

mouth. The unhappy woman soon died in extreme agony. The Soubervies confessed, and indeed, exulted in their act. At their trials they obtained the highest possible characters. It was shown that they had been actuated solely by superstition, and it was urged that they only followed the highest ecclesiastical precedent. The jury recommended them to mercy, and they were only sentenced to pay twenty-five francs a year to the husband of the victim, and to be imprisoned for four months. In 1850! !

A great many may remember the "Hex" murder case near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1930! This is scarcely different from an incident which had occurred in 1892 in Wemding, Germany: An hysterical woman was "exorcised" by the Capuchin Father Aurelian, who accused a peasant woman of bewitching him.


The foregoing has shown that witchcraft is not an isolated incident in the history of Christianity, as the ecclesiastics would have us believe, but is a vital part of their religion. Witchcraft bears' the same relation to Christianity that an arm bears to the body; neither can be removed without destroying the symmetrical aspect of the whole.

Witchcraft is an integral part of the Christian religion, but its falsity has become so obvious that even the most devout have had to abandon it. Yet the other precepts are still maintained; and in the Bible which is claimed to be infallible, something is forgotten and discarded, something is declared to be ridiculous. And yet they call the Bible infallible. Again, if witchcraft is given up, why not the chief witch of the Bible, the Devil? Yet if this be yielded, then the idea of Atonement, the central doctrine of the Christian Church, must also go.

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." If this be