had put away those which had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land; but that when the host of the Philistines was gathered together against him, and "he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled," and he had inquired of the Lord, and the Lord answered him not, he desired his servants to seek him a woman that had a familiar spirit, that he might go and inquire of her. Such a woman was found in a place called En-dor. But the Hebrew in-ny does not appear to be adequately represented in our English version; for it is not likely that the learned men who so admirably executed the authorized version in the year 1610 were aware of a custom which will presently be mentioned. The Hebrew speaks of a mistress or woman who possessed ōв; but what was this ōB? They who know the native dialects of Egypt say that in that country the same word, or one very near it, signifies a serpent. If it had this meaning among the wizards of Palestine, the Hebrew text would signify a woman possessing a serpent. Now the writer well remembers that about thirty years ago he frequently heard of such a woman then living on the island of St. Vincent, and understood that many Negroes, called ōbi-men and ōbi-women, also kept live serpents, paid them religious reverence, and used them for purposes of divination. They were indeed masters and mistresses of ōB.

With cold and wanton malignity, they exerted a terrific sway over their fellow-Negroes. Their system was by no means esoteric. No refined science demanded study, nor was their black art in any branch of it occult. Divination was taught freely; but witchcraft was more valued as being a more effective instrument of power. An ōbi-man supposed to bewitch a neighbour was said to "do him bad," and so proved himself most thoroughly maleficus. One frequent method of perpetrating injury was by the deposition of an ōbi-bag, filled with such ingredients as a bit of red rag, the head of a rusty nail, or paring of a toe-nail, and a paring of a fingernail, human hairs, the feather of a white fowl, the tip of the spur of a fighting-cock, a bit of egg-shell, a splinter of broken glass, a twig of tamarind, and a splinter of calabash, and no doubt other articles which the lapse of thirty years must have stolen from the writer's memory. The whole was put into a small bag, tightly sewed up, and laid in a bed, or dropped on the floor of a hut, hidden in the thatch, or otherwise deposited. Every object touched by such a bag was thought to be tainted by an infernal touch-every person conscious of the least contact with it was fancied to be brought under the spell of demons, or, to borrow their name, jumbies. We well remember one instance of the terrible effect produced. A fine young Negress of robust frame and high spirits, whose gaiety was exuberant, and whose health had never been disturbed, touched a concealed ōbi-bag, and, startled at the touch, recoiled with horror. From that instant she believed herself beset with jumbies, of whose implacable hate she was doomed to be the victim; and when at night she flung her weary limbs upon her bed, seeking sleep, sleep would not come, or, if it did come, it was but in intermitted snatches, bringing ghastly dreams. Feverish and languid, she went next morning to the place of accustomed labour, but with no heart for it; and many little mischances, consequent on languor

and distraction, were taken to be so many proofs of diabolical possession. The slightest incident, so interpreted, aggravated the horrible persuasion that she was persecuted by the powers of hell. Every night was thenceforth spent in a distressing alternation of wakeful terror and demoniac visions-every day she was oppressed by the condolences of mock friends, or abandoned to an awful solitude by former companions who now dreaded intercourse with one whom heaven abandoned and whom hell claimed. Her extremely sensitive nervous constitution rapidly gave way, and the shadows of an empty terror daily thickened, deeper and deeper, into substantial misery. Soon emaciated, her very limbs testified to herself that some one had done her a mischief never to be undone. She did not even remember that Jesus Christ had often cast out devils; nor yet reflect that, even if all the powers of darkness were arrayed against her by their chief, the Saviour of men, who came into the world to destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil, could overcome them all. She sank too low to rally, and died a pitiable victim of delusion; and it is not likely that one of her sable country folk doubted what she so fatally believed. The person reputed to have made the bag, and others thought to have aided him, with some that had essayed, by the same art, to counterwork the spell, were brought up for examination at a Leaders'-Meeting, proved guilty, and expelled from communion with the church. Such was African witchcraft; but, like all other deeds of darkness, it is passing away before the light of Gospel truth. The fantastic power of death wanes before the substantial power of the Prince of life.

Material aids to supernatural faculties were supposed to abound everywhere, and to place those who used them in correspondence with the invisible world. Jumbies "thronged the air and darkened heaven," and to see them required not so much any peculiar keenness of spiritual perception as the employment of a mechanical method. If the tear-drop hanging in the corner of a horse's eye were used to anoint the organ of human vision, jumbies would be seen. After night-fall, Negroes would steal into stables, and with the tips of their fingers moisten their own eyelids with horse-tear, and then spend hours gazing on the clouds which rolled across the sky, and listening to the sounds of waves breaking on the shore and insects chirping in the forests, until supernatural figures would seem to crowd upon their sight, and supernatural voices commune with their entranced imagination. But the jumby is a spirit of evil; its ministrations are evil, and the anointed vision of its votaries discerns not any trace of Divine benevolence and purity. They are "afraid for the terror by night, and for the arrow that flieth by day; for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and for the destruction that wasteth at noonday."

* Psalm xci. 5, 6. The Septuagint version of this passage indicates the presence of a similar superstition in the mind of the translator: Οὐ φοβηθήσῃ ἀπὸ φόβου νυκτερινοῦ καὶ δαιμονίου μεσημβρινοῦ. Thou shall not be afraid of nocturnal terror -and noon-day demon.

Ever lurking in the most deeply benighted portions of the human family, this witchcraft presents itself next among the Jews; and we gather information concerning it from the highest sources, inasmuch as the reputed "guides of the blind, lights of them that are in darkness, instructers of the foolish, and teachers of babes," were themselves under the delusion.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century, Rabbi Bechai wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch, which is much esteemed by the Jews. It contains, in two places, statements of the Jewish notions concerning our present subject. "Witchcraft (5) is the conjunction of things which differ from one another; and just as these things are joined together here below, even so are joined and mingled confusedly those things which are above, whence follows a wonderful and strange effect." What this effect is he tells more fully in another place. "Our Rabbies ask why those persons are called wizards. Because they cause the family above to lie. This comes to pass when a man here below mixes things which are contrary to the simple powers decreed by the motions of the heavenly spheres, and by the decree of the watchers, that is to say, the angels who move the spheres, they being as the souls of the spheres. And these angels are called 'the family above.' For man is bound to let the course of the world proceed according to its own custom and nature, which is the will of the Creator." Maimonides, one of the most learned Jews, writing about the same time, agrees with Bechai; * and indeed this appears to be a fair exposition of the generally prevalent opinion.

Like other ecclesiastics whom we shall have to mention, the members of the great Sanhedrim addicted themselves to the study of astrology, enchantment, divination, and witchcraft, that they might be competent to sit in judgment upon persons accused of practising those arts. But as the study of "the Fathers" has made some Papists, so the study of witchcraft made many wizards, and not a few of the reverend senators of the Sanhedrim became notorious for proficiency. Such an one was Rabbi Joshua, who so far excelled another practitioner, that, by dint of his craft, he drowned his antagonist in the sea. Such were some who could raise tempests, bring down rain in torrents, and wake up the thunder. Of course the common people followed the example of their teachers; and so abundant are the vestiges of their superstition, that anything like a full account of it would be insufferably tedious. The Talmud would yield ample instruction for the recovery of witchcraft if it were a lost art; but we suspect that little would thus be added to the store of science possessed by living witches in our own country. We might quote passages which tell of the skin stripped from a dead man's head,—such as we remember to have seen in possession of a bad man in London, not a Jew,-of shreds of grave-clothes, and of amulets charged with names of devils; and might cover many pages with tales of idle superstitions like those which furnish table-talk in many an English cottage, for want of better, by simpletons who are beyond suspicion

* Buxtorf. Lex., Heb., Rab., et Talm., 1102,

of any malevolent intention. In olden time, as already intimated, persons accused of injuring others by this craft were liable to be put to death; and no doubt such executions were frequent. Rabbi Simeon Ben Shetach, if we may believe the Gemara, detected and hung eighty witches at once, in Ascalon; being determined to terrify, by a great example, the women of Jewry who were generally reputed guilty.* If there was ever any intrinsic power in their art, it must have consisted in the drugs employed, and secretly administered: hence the Greek Jews very significantly called them druggists, (papμakoì,) and their art pharmacy. So, indeed, did all the Greeks.

Having spoken of Romans, Arabs, Moors, Africans, and Jews, we now draw nearer home, staying but for a moment to observe that this vice of Paganism has ever found a congenial soil in the north of Europe. So the cunning Laplander carries a cord about him with three magic knots. To raise a gentle breeze, he unties the first-for a gale, the second-for a tempest, the third; and therefore the sailor, if he can but find a witch, may buy a wind. So the Greenlander recites mysterious verses to provoke the elements to pour vengeance upon those he hates. So the Swedes once boasted that, arming themselves, by aid of witches, with raging winds, they had repelled the Danish invaders from their shores. But now all those Northmen have welcomed Christianity; and under the healing influences of the Gospel their enmities are softened, and the remains of Paganism are comparatively harmless.

The mention of Christianity now summons our attention to the malefic art in relation to the Divine system of truth and life which bears this venerable name. That witchcraft, as mentioned in the Old Testament, the Talmud, and the Koran, must be regarded as a part of Paganism, is obvious enough; but if demonstration be required, we can produce it from authentic records, which also disclose the origin of Christian legislation against it, a legislation which soon became disgraceful to its authors. The earliest examples of such legislation are collected in the Theodosian and Justinian Codes; whence we extract three laws,-a few similar ones, less relevant to our present subject, being omitted.

1. A law of Constantine the Great against enchantments, A.D. 321.

"The science of those persons is to be punished, and deservedly put down by the severest laws, who addict themselves to magic arts, or are detected in contriving against the health of men, or exciting the minds of the chaste to immodesty. But no charges are to be admitted against those who seek remedies for the persons of the sick, or who, in country-places, employ innocent suffrages (or magic verses) by which no one's health or character is injured, to save the ripe vintage from unseasonable rains, or from damage

* The curious may find more than they can digest in Otto's Lexicon RabbinicoPhilologicum, under the words amulet, animal, and magiu; in Lightfoot's Chorographical Century, Ascalon; but most of all in Wagenseil's Sota, pp. 44, 521, 961, et seq. These authors speak chiefly of the modern Jews.

by heavy hail-storms; and who thus perform good service, that the gifts of God and labours of man may not be wasted."

2. A law of Constantius and Julian prohibiting all curiosity in divination,

A.D. 357.

"Let no one consult a haruspex, or mathematician, (astrologer,) or hariolus. Let the depraved utterances of augurs and prophets be silent. Let Chaldeans, and magians, and others whom the common people call 'malefics,' (wizards,) because of the very mischievous tricks they perform, do nothing more of the kind. In all persons let the curiosity of fortunetelling be for ever silent; for whosoever shall refuse obedience to these our commands shall fall under the avenging sword, and lose his head."

3. A law of the same against magic arts, a.D. 357.

"Many have presumed to disturb the elements by magic arts, and do not hesitate to put in peril the lives of unoffending persons, and, calling up the dead, dare to pretend that anyone may make an end of his enemies by evil arts. Because such persons are enemies of humanity, let them die the death of beasts."*

Other laws under the same title (Cod. Theodos., lib. ix., tit. 16) contain allusion to the same branch of Pagan superstition; but these three are abundantly sufficient to show that the early Christian Emperors perfectly agreed with their predecessors, and with Julian the apostate, in acknowledging the power of the Pagan Priests to do either good or evil by their arts, allowed such ceremonies as they had been hitherto accustomed to perform for the sake of doing good, and only prohibited such as were intended to do mischief. Thus, among many other errors of those imperial converts to the profession of Christianity, must be counted that of a belief in the efficacy of those "black arts" which they should either have prohibited altogether, or suffered to expire under the prevalence of the Gospel, and under the weight of contempt, which would have done more than the severest legal penalties. But witchcraft was too much honoured by dread of its power. Emperors were not yet instructed in the rudiments of Christian faith; their laws only tended to perpetuate what they were meant to abolish; and, when the highest earthly authority was pledged to the suppression both of heresy and witchcraft, their penalties insured the perpetuation of them both. Civil and ecclesiastical laws were, nevertheless, continually issued, but for many ages were but repetitions of those last cited; and the same historical induction, which sets the successive laws before us, also discovers that the stamp of Paganism became scarcely less distinct in those who punished witches than in the witches themselves.

With regard to our own country, the respect involuntarily rendered to those troublesome persons was nothing weakened by the introduction of an

* So Gothofredus, the learned editor of the Theodosian Code, understands the last clause, which is very difficult. Hos, quoniam naturæ peregrini sunt, feralis pestis absumat.