MENTAL EPIDEMiaS: 
 
 Cto0 "^tttnxt^ 
 
 — y*^ 
 
 DELIVERED TO THE 
 
 YOUNG IfEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION INNAAS. 
 
 REV. J. S: GILMORE 
 
 EECTOS OF RATH-atOilE. 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 EDWAED PONSONBY, 116, GEAFTON-STJBEETf 
 
 AND SOLD BY H.'GEEEK, BELFAST. 
 1868. 
 
 Price One ShiUiug. 
 
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 DUBLIN: 
 
 ^rintetf at t\)t ^anifaersiip ^rcss, 
 
 BY M. H. GILL. 
 
 OltQU. LIBRARY 
 
These two Lectures are printed in compliance with 
 the unanimous request of the audience before which 
 they were delivered. Some notes are added which I 
 thought might be interesting to such as care for mat- 
 ters of this kind. Those whose attention has been 
 directed to the subjects here brought forward will 
 readily appreciate the difficulty I have experienced in 
 abridging the accounts given of these occurrences, so 
 as to bring them, in an intelligible form, within the 
 limits at my disposal ; and they will also, I hope, look 
 with an indulgent eye on the many defects they will 
 find in the following pages. 
 
MENTAL EPIDEMICS. 
 
 LECTUKE I. 
 
 It has been remarked by the greatest of living historians that 
 it is very difficult to conclude a historical narrative, since 
 human events never end definitely, but pass off, and melt, as 
 it were, into others ; and so the termination of every history 
 must be, at best, like the abrupt ending of figures on a has- 
 relief. It is not merely in historical events that such an en- 
 chainment presents itself, it pervades all God's creation. We 
 see here a tree with all the complication of vegetable life, and 
 there an inert mass of rock. What objects can be more un- 
 like ? And yet there is a point of contact between the mine- 
 ral and vegetable worlds, in which they so blend and shade 
 off into one another that the most powerful microscope can- 
 not detect where the one ceases and the other commences. 
 The same observation holds good with regard to the vegetable 
 and animal creation. What more dissimilar than man, the 
 lord of creation, and the tree that possesses the highest vege- 
 table organization? And yet we all know that there is a 
 division of Natural History which comprises the Zoophytes, or 
 plant-animals, where vegetable and animal life blends so in- 
 sensibly that it is impossible for the ablest microscopists to 
 say precisely where the one ends and the other begins. It is 
 obvious that the regions of Nature where these transitions 
 take place must be realms of wonder, as they lie beyond the 
 reach of accurate observation ; and it is thus impossible to 
 
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 arrange and classify their phenomena, and so to become fami- 
 liarized with them. For, after all, it is merely the fact of the 
 frequent and regular occurrence of any striking phenomenon 
 that places it without the limits of the marvellous : and again, 
 a moment's reflection will prove to us the truth of the school- 
 men's maxim — " All things end in mystery." Thus, then, we 
 see that in the Mineral, the Vegetable, and the Animal Crea- 
 tion, Nature has left no gaps — has made no abrupt transitions. 
 But in man, all fearfully and wonderfully made, there is a 
 still higher existence — the Spiritual. The attempts made by 
 Materialists to reduce the faculties of the soul — the intellect, 
 the reason, the will— to mere manifestations of animal life, 
 are, indeed, futile. Nor, on the other hand, can we adopt 
 the opinion of the opposite school of thinkers called Idealists, 
 which dwells too exclusively on the supremacy of man's im- 
 mortal spirit, and would teach us that not only is IT the crown- 
 ing point of God's creation, but that the soul alone EXISTS, 
 and that everything else possesses but a shadowy being pro- 
 jected from it. No, we hold that in man there is both a body 
 created from the dust of the earth and an essence, a soul, a 
 spirit, made in the image of God : we believe further, that the 
 point of contact between soul and body has been fixed by the 
 Creator in mysterious depths of our being, to which the 
 sounding-line of investigators — Physiologists or Psychologists, 
 — never has penetrated, and never can reach ; and that this 
 obscure region has been in all ages the seat of disorders, pre- 
 senting symptoms at once of mental and bodily derangement — 
 of phenomena sometimes occurring in individuals,* sometimes 
 propagated, like mere bodily epidemics, from man to man, 
 that baffle all human attempts to explain them. 
 
 It is to a few recorded facts of this latter class, which I have 
 named Mental Epidemics, that I purpose directing your at- 
 tention. The subject may, indeed, seem not very appropriate 
 
 * See Note A at end. 
 
( 7 ) 
 
 to an occasion like the present ; and some of the followino- 
 details are anything but amusing. Yet the time during which 
 I shall claim your attention may not be misspent, for I feel 
 convinced that a more general acquaintance with such matters 
 might have obviated many sad results, both in former centu- 
 ries and in our own time. I would first remark, that when 
 we read of such occurrences in the narratives of eye-witnesses, 
 or in the valuable compilations of Hecker, Calmeil, Maury, 
 Madden, and others, they are naturally invested with a mar- 
 vellous, an inexplicable character. Whilst those who have 
 not been in the habit of pursuing such researches, and who 
 hear of these things for the first time, are often tempted to 
 treat them as mere fables, deriving their origin from credulity 
 and imposture. I may here state that in this paper I will 
 bring forward no detail that I do not believe fairly supported 
 by documentary evidence ; and that if any of you should feel 
 a farther interest in these matters, I shall most willingly sub- 
 mit to such the authorities of which I have made use. Need 
 I add that I attempt no explanation of the phenomena ; and 
 that the words which will of necessity be used, such as " men- 
 tal epidemics," " hysterical or nervous affections," " cata- 
 lepsy," " ecstacy," are merely employed for want of better, 
 and are not designed by me to establish any theory, but solely 
 as " symbols to denote an unknown fact underlying appear- 
 ances ?"* 
 
 The first of these epidemic disorders we find recorded is 
 one that seems to have arisen chiefly from a morbid state of 
 the mind, and to have been completely under the control of 
 the will. We are told by Plutarch, a pagan author of the 
 first century, that many years before his age a desire of self- 
 destruction seized the young women of Miletus like a plague. 
 I shall read to you the old English version of the passage, 
 making one or two alterations : — " A certain dreadful dis- 
 
 * See Note B at end. 
 
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 temper did seize the Milesian maids. It is most likely the 
 air having acquired some infatuating quality, that did in- 
 fluence them to this alienation of mind ; for all at once an 
 earnest longing for death, with furious attempts to end them- 
 selves, did attack them, and many of them did privily ac- 
 complish it. The arguments and tears of parents, and the 
 persuasion of friends, availed nothing ; but they circum- 
 vented their keepers in all their contrivances, still murdering 
 themselves. The calamity seemed to be beyond human help 
 until the counsel of a wise man was passed into an Act of the 
 Senate, viz. : — ' That those maids that destroyed themselves 
 should be carried ignominiously (gumnas) through the market- 
 place.' This law did not only inhibit, but quashed their de- 
 sires of destroying themselves." A similar mania is reported 
 by the celebrated Naturalist and traveller, Pallas, to have taken 
 place, about 1770, among the Katschinzes, a people of Sibe- 
 ria. " For the last few years (he writes) a species of insanity 
 has made its appearance among their young girls. When 
 they have these fits they run out of their villages, scream, and 
 behave with the greatest wildness, tear their hair, and endea- 
 vour to destroy themselves. These attacks usually last for 
 some hours, and occur when their sympathy has been excited 
 by the sight of other girls in a similar condition." 
 
 When such suicidal manias, however, have prevailed, they 
 seldom betrayed their presence by demonstrations like these. 
 "A moping melancholy and moon-struck madness " more 
 usually prompted the deluded victims to rush thus unbidden 
 into the presence of their Creator. In a valuable biography 
 recently published, "The Life of Las Casas, the Apostle of the 
 Indies," by A. Helps, we find a sad instance of this kind re- 
 corded, which I shall give as nearly as possible in the words 
 of the accomplished author. On the conquest of Cuba by the 
 Spaniards, early in the sixteenth century, their yoke was so op- 
 pressive on the unfortunate natives that they committed suicide 
 by wholesale, "entire families doing so together, and villages 
 
( 9 ) 
 
 inviting villages to join them in departing from a world noAv 
 no longer tolerable to them : some hanged themselves, and 
 others drank the poisonous juice of the Yuca." In fact the 
 whole island was in danger of being depopulated, when one 
 of the Spaniards hit on a successful expedient for putting 
 self-destruction out of fashion. Coming upon a number of 
 his slaves who were making preparations to destroy them- 
 selves, he exclaimed, " Get me a rope, too, for 1 must hang 
 myself with you." The Indians paused, and sought an ex- 
 planation of the order, when their master " gave them to un- 
 derstand that he could not live without them, as they were so 
 useful to him, and that he must go where they were going. 
 They believing that they would not get rid of him even in a 
 future state of existence, agreed to remain where they were, 
 and with sorrow laid aside their ropes to resume their labours." 
 Nor has this suicidal mania been confined to ancient times 
 or remote places ; for in one of the campaigns of the first Na- 
 poleon a rage for self-destruction so pervaded the Grand Army, 
 that every call of the muster-roll exhibited frightful gaps in 
 the ranks. Other means failing, the Emperor issued an Order 
 of the Day, in which he appealed to the feelings of his soldiers, 
 telling them that it was a shame for men whose prowess no 
 foe could withstand to show themselves unable to bear the 
 home-sickness and annoyances that winter quarters entail. 
 This appeal was quite successful, and the plague was stayed. 
 
 The last instance of this kind I shall mention to you oc- 
 curred nearly at the same time in British territory. At that 
 period the African slave trade was sanctioned by law, and the 
 mortality among the negroes imported to the West Indies 
 was frightful, by a species of suicide that need not be de- 
 scribed ; suffice it to say that it is peculiar to the African race, 
 and that no human vigilance can prevent it. As the value of 
 each slave was something about that of a good hunter with 
 us, the consternation among the slave-owners was naturally 
 great. At last Governor Hislop of Trinidad devised a re- 
 
( 10 ) 
 
 medy. It was ascertained that the poor creatures imagined 
 that after death they would return to their native country 
 and friends ; and as their race is proverbially vain of their 
 personal appearance, the Governor caused a large number of 
 them to be collected, and solemnly in their presence had 
 several dead bodies of the suicides decapitated, and the heads 
 and trunks buried separately ; declaring that such a penalty 
 was in store for every one that would destroy himself. The 
 notion of presenting an appearance thus mutilated was too 
 strong for the African mind, and suicide was speedily checked 
 among them. 
 
 We now proceed to notice another species of mental hal- 
 lucination which engaged the body also in a disgusting ser- 
 vitude. A character introduced in one of Virgil's poems 
 declares that he has himself seen a comrade change his form 
 into that of a ivolf, by means of magic drugs, and, as such, 
 betake himself to the woods. We will be less disposed to 
 smile at this poetic licence, when we remember that a belief 
 in such changes of form was universal in ancient Italy, and in 
 Greece, where it was old, Herodotus tells us, in his time ; 
 and where it prevails extensively to the present day. But, 
 stranger and sadder still is the fact, that, under the name of 
 Lycanthropy, it so possessed men's minds epidemically on 
 the Continent of Europe, that numbers died at the stake for this 
 imaginary crime so late as the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies; and we find aFrench Judge named Boguet boasting in a 
 work he published in 1606, that he had convicted and burned 
 many on this charge. I shall first read to you the quaint ac- 
 count given of it in that repertory of curious information, Bur- 
 ton's " Anatomy of Melancholy :" — " Men run howling about 
 graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded butthat 
 they are wolves, or some such beasts. Donatus saith that he saw 
 two of them in his time. Wier tells a story of such a one in 
 Padua, 1541, who would not believe but that he was a wolf. 
 Forest confirms as much by many examples—one among the 
 
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 rest, of which he was eye-witness at Alcmaer — a poor hus- 
 bandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in church- 
 yards, of a pale, ugly, and fearful look. Nebuchadnezzar, as 
 some hold, was only troubled mth this kind of madness. This 
 disease, perhaps, gave occasion to the bold assertion of Pliny, 
 that "men sometimes became wolves, snnd vice versa ;^^ and to 
 the fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten years a wolf, 
 and afterwards turned to his former shape. This malady, 
 Avicenna saith, troubleth men most in February ; and is now- 
 a-days frequent in Bohemia, Hungary, . . . and Livonia. They 
 lie hid, most part, all day, and go abroad in the night, bark- 
 ing and howling at graves and in deserts." It will be seen, 
 by these instances, what a firm hold this delusion once had 
 on the minds of men. Indeed in the sixteenth century many 
 voluntarily gave themselves up as men-wolves, though aware 
 that the doom awaiting them was death at the stake. Thus, so 
 late as 1619, a young man at Besan^on, in France, came for- 
 ward of his own accord and confessed "that he had sold him- 
 self to a fiend called ' the lord of the forest ;' that they both 
 assumed the form of wolves, and prowled about the fields at 
 midnight, strangling the watch-dogs, and destroying the flocks, 
 and howling with delight as they mangled their victims." In 
 the year 1573, a man named Garnier was condemned at Dole, 
 in France, on his own confession, and on the testimony of 
 fifty witnesses, for taking at night the form of a wolf, and 
 killing little children. The sentence passed on this wretched 
 man affords an instance of that kind of cruelty old Fuller calls 
 "killing a cripple with his own crutch ;" it ran thus : " that 
 by the executioner the said Garnier be tied to a stake and 
 burned alive. The court further condemns him, the said 
 Garnier, to the costs of this prosecution." 
 
 This species of lunacy was more mildly treated in our own 
 country, if the following fabulous narrative has reference to 
 this belief I must ask your indulgence for bringing it before 
 ^^ou at some length, my apology being, that the name of our 
 
( 12 ) 
 
 country will not again occur in this paper. And surely we 
 have reason to feel proud that Ireland has never been sullied 
 by any of those judicial butcheries in which God's creatures 
 have been roasted at a stake under the names of heretics or 
 sorcerers ; and that the expression, " Brent quick," "burned 
 alive," so often found at the end of Scotch criminal trials, is 
 with us quite unknown. We are not indeed in the habit of 
 concealing our faults, for Dr. Johnson has declared that " the 
 Irish (as contrasted with the Scotch) are a fair people, be- 
 cause they never speak well of one another ;" and we have 
 faults and errors enough to confess in our annals ; so much 
 so that Moore declares he was all but deterred from writing 
 his History of Ireland, by the suggestion of a friend, that he 
 would find " the lies regarding it bad, but the truth still 
 worse." Some obstinate Irishmen, however, have been found 
 to maintain that the reason of this has been very much be- 
 cause men of Anglo-Norman extraction have been for cen- 
 turies the chief actors in, and writers of our history. The 
 first of such authors was an ecclesiastic named Gerald De 
 Barri — Giraldus Cambrensis — who came over here in 1185, 
 as preceptor to John, son of Henry II. — the young prince, 
 who (as you may recollect) enlivened his first levee by 
 plucking the beards of the Irish chiefs. Giraldus has left us 
 two very interesting works on Ireland, in which he is cer- 
 tainly severe on the natives : thus, he charges them with 
 having no martyrs of their own to point to ; though he con- 
 fesses that on this subject he was rather taken aback by 
 the reply of one of their bishops, viz.: "That the Irish had 
 heretofore looked on their clergy as appointed for other uses 
 than to be murdered ; but that by the arrival of the Normans 
 there was a prospect of other views being introduced" (the 
 latter having recently murdered, and then worshipped their 
 Archbishop, Thomas a Becket). Giraldus also censures the 
 Irish for their backwardness in paying tithes ; (we read of 
 one Irish bishop whose revenue Avas limited to the milk of 
 
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 three cows presented by his flock) ; and, after imputing to 
 them domestic habits, perhaps as objectionable as those Lord 
 Macaulay attributes to another portion of Great Britain five 
 centuries later, Giraldus thus sums up his estimate of the 
 Irish character : " Where they are bad, you will find none 
 worse ; and where they are good, none better." 
 
 We now turn to the account given by him, which seems 
 to refer to Lycanthropy, and which I shall abridge, though 
 using as far as possible his own words. He tells us that he 
 was invited by the then Bishop of Meath to attend a Synod 
 of bishops and abbots met to consider the following case : — ■ 
 A priest in Meath had one night been accosted by a wolf, 
 which in very orthodox language requested him to administer 
 the last rites to the wolf's wife, then in a dying state. The 
 priest was naturally reluctant ; but, on arriving at the patient, 
 the male wolf, to assure him, tore with his paw the skin from 
 her breast, which resembled that of an old woman. He re- 
 lated also their history in these words : "The two were of 
 the race of these inhabitants of Ossory, who, through the 
 curse of one Natalis, saint and abbot, are compelled every 
 seven years to put off the human form, and assume that of 
 wolves. At the end of seven years, if they survive, two 
 others being substituted in their stead, they return to their 
 native place with their human shape." The priest complied 
 with their earnest request, and afterwards laid the matter 
 before the bishop. Giraldus tells us he was himself prevented 
 by urgent business from attending at this Synod ; but as he 
 was already acquainted with all the facts of the case, he was 
 enabled to submit his views by letter ; in accordance with 
 which (I use his own words) "the bishop and Synod ordered 
 the priest to appear before the Pope, with letters from them 
 setting forth what had occurred, with the priest's own con- 
 fession ; to which instrument the bishops and abbots present 
 affixed their seals." As I have said already, this coagulum 
 of fable seems to have reference to the belief in Lycanthropy, 
 
( w ) 
 
 of which we hear so much in these old times. Wolves, we 
 must remember, were numerous during the middle ages in 
 countries where they have been long since extirpated ; and 
 their ravages in severe winters were sometimes frightful, 
 especially where war had spread its chronic devastations and 
 famines. It was among peoples thus circumstanced that 
 Lycanthropy, or the superstition about men-wolves, struck its 
 roots most firmly. Thus, the old Northern writer, Olaus 
 Magnus, informs us that in Prussia and Livonia these mon- 
 sters, many of whom were of noble rank, held an annual 
 meeting at Christmas, and arranged among themselves the 
 places they should visit. He states also that their cruelty in 
 destroying individuals and whole families was fully equal to 
 that of real wolves ; and that the only test which the natives 
 of the afilicted districts had to distinguish the depredators 
 was, that the genuine wolves were satisfied with the fiesh of 
 their victims ; whilst the men-wolves sought farther for 
 whatever mead or other strong drink might be obtainable, as 
 a relish to their horrid feast. 
 
 Even in England, where wolves had been early extermi- 
 nated, rumours coming from abroad seem to have excited a 
 modified form of this mania ; for there was a general belief — 
 not yet quite extinct — that those in league with the powers 
 of darkness could take the form of dogs or cats, and work 
 thus injury on those they disliked. And that this supersti- 
 tion sometimes took an epidemic form, the following quotation 
 from Camden's " Britannia" seems to indicate, though here, 
 as we often find in such cases, the cause assigned is highly 
 absurd. The date is 1341, and the translation is not mine, 
 but the nervous old English of Dr. Holland. " This won- 
 drous prodigy following happened in the county of Leicester, 
 where a certain wayfaring man found on the king's highway 
 a pair of gloves, fit (as he thought) for his turn ; which, as 
 he drew upon his hands forthwith, instead of man's voice and 
 speech, he kept a strange and marvellous barking like unto 
 
( 15 ) 
 
 a dog. And from that present the elder folks and full 
 grown, yea, and women, too, throughout the same country 
 barked like big dogs, but the children and little ones waughed 
 as small whelps. The plague continued, with some, eighteen 
 days ; with others, a whole month ; and with some, for two 
 years. Yea, this foresaid contagious malady entered also 
 into the neighbouring shires, and forced the people in like 
 manner to bark." 
 
 The next instance of this infectious " delight to bark and 
 bite" I shall lay before you is what was called the " Convent 
 Mania ;" and it comes attested by contemporary documents. 
 The following is the general description given of it by Dr. 
 Zimmerman : — " Of all the epidemics which I myself have 
 seen, or of which the history is known to me, the most 
 strange is the celebrated Convent Epidemic of the fifteenth 
 century, which Cardan describes. A nun in a German con- 
 vent fell to biting all her companions. In a short time the 
 nuns of this convent took to biting one another. The news 
 of this infatuation among the nuns soon spread from convent 
 to convent throughout a great part of Germany. It after- 
 wards visited the nunneries of Holland ; and at last the nuns 
 had the biting mania even as far as Eome." A particular 
 case of this epidemic, which will be enough by way of illus- 
 tration, or perhaps more than enough, I abridge from an 
 older authority. A nun in a very large convent in Paris 
 began to mew like a cat ; shortly after, other nuns began to 
 imitate her ; at last, an irresistible desire seized the whole 
 community to emit like sounds for several hours, at a stated 
 time each day. Such a concert being most oJBfensive in the 
 neighbourhood, a guard of soldiers was placed before the 
 convent, provided with strong rods, and ordered to enter in 
 and flog soundly every nun that would dare to indulge in 
 such noises. This intimidation produced such an effect on 
 the nervous system of the community that the mania ceased 
 at once. Nor was it only in these instances that " the cat 
 
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 has mewed, the dog has had his day ;" for a disease, with 
 similar symptoms, appeared in the Orphan House of Amster- 
 dam in 1566, the inmates of which, both boys and girls, 
 " climbed (we are told) like cats over the roofs ; and made 
 such horrible grimaces, that the most resolute men were 
 afraid to approach them." Indeed, if John Wesley, the 
 founder of Methodism, may be believed, children have played 
 as straijLge pranks nearer home ; for he relates, in his Journal 
 of June 1st, 1764, that a disease among young people came 
 under his notice at Brechin, in Scotland, in which " frequently 
 [I use his own words] they run up like a cat to the top of 
 a house, and jump on the ridge as on the ground, but never 
 miss their footing at all. One of them was four and a half 
 years old. This child, we found, had three or four fits that 
 day, running and jumping like the rest, and in particular 
 leaping many times from a high table, without the least hurt.'' 
 I should perhaps add, that some " light, or rather darkness 
 visible," is thrown on this statement of Wesley by Sir John 
 Sinclair, in his great work on Scottish Statistics. He men- 
 tions, that about this time there occurred several outbreaks 
 in this part of Scotland of the epidemic known as Tarantism, 
 or the dancing madness — a malady which had infected thou- 
 sands in Italy and Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries. In it the violent spasmodic convulsions of the body 
 could only be relieved by some most severe muscular exer.- 
 tions — running, leaping, dancing — in the way of counter-irri- 
 tation. This remedy was so well known, that every facility 
 was given for such exercises; and Sir J. Sinclair mentions 
 the* case of a gentleman in Forfarshire, whose daughters 
 were liable to these attacks, and who kept a horse constantly 
 saddled, and ready to follow the young ladies when seized 
 with a fit of running ! I will say a few words regarding this 
 dancing mania, after noticing another strange hallucination, 
 in which also children were the actors, or rather sufferers. 
 " We all know something of the history of the Crusades. 
 
( 17 ) 
 
 We remember the singular excitement produced by the 
 preaching of Pope Urban II. at the Council of Clermont in 
 1095 ; where, by the way, his Latin sermon must have been 
 unintelligible to three-fourths of his vast audience. Its first 
 consequence, however, was that a rabble of 60,000 men and 
 women, whose infatuation was even surpassed by their pro- 
 fligacy, hurried away under Peter the Hermit and Walter the 
 Penniless, to leave their bones bleaching on the route to 
 Constantinople, where barely 2000 of them arrived. All this 
 may seem strange enough, but there is another event con- 
 nected with this period which, if it were not attested by valid 
 historical evidenccj would quite transcend our power of be- 
 lief ; I refer to what is called the Boy-Crusades. We will 
 find little information about this mania in the common histories 
 of the Crusades, but in Hecker's learned work there is a 
 collection of the documents regarding it, and from these the 
 following account is condensed. When the excitement about 
 the Crusades was at its height in Europe, a shepherd's boy 
 named Stephen, of Yendome in France, gave out in the year 
 1212 that he was an ambassador from the Lord, who had ap- 
 peared to him and given him a letter for the King of France. 
 The first to recognize his credentials were said by his par- 
 tizans to have been his own sheep, which all knelt and did 
 homage before him. The adjoining shepherd boys formed 
 the nucleus of his host, which at last swelled (if we may be- 
 lieve the Chroniclers) to the surprising number of 30,000, 
 who flocked to him to be thrown into ecstacies by his dis- 
 courses, and to partake his revelations. He is said to have 
 worked miracles at St. Denys, and the people hailed him as 
 the great saint of the day. The sons of nobles who, no less 
 than peasants' children, crowded to him, formed a body-guard 
 around the chariot in which he was borne ; and much were 
 they needed, for often on some exhibition of enthusiasm 
 among the children, they would so press to touch his gar- 
 ments that many were hurt, or even squeezed to death. The 
 
 B 
 
( 18 ) 
 
 contagion now spread far and wide, and prophets of eight or 
 ten years old arose on every side, who preached, worked 
 wonders, and led to Stephen bands of children, among whom 
 were many girls disguised as boys. Dire was the consterna- 
 tion among parents, and vain were tears and entreaties. 
 Bolts and bars and keepers generally availed not ; or if the 
 children were confined, they wept incessantly, got convulsive 
 fits and pined away, till liberated by the perplexed parents, 
 when they hurried oflfto join the Boy-Crusaders. The Pope 
 was delighted when he learned their proceedings, and ex- 
 claimed : " These children have laid it upon us that while we 
 sleep they run to recover the Holy Land." The King of 
 France, however, viewed this infatuation in a different light, 
 and with the sanction of the University of Paris, forbade these 
 assemblies. But this edict was unheeded — nay, to quote the 
 words of the chronicle, " when the clergy and some of sound 
 mind spoke against the expedition, the laics cavilled vehe- 
 mently, saying that the clerks were unbelievers, and opposed 
 this thing from envy and covetousness." And now, in the 
 July of an intensely hot summer, began their straggling 
 march from Vend6me to Marseilles, through the dusty plains 
 of Provence. When asked whither they were going, the 
 answer was, " to Jerusalem," w^hich they believed they Avould 
 reach dry-shod, Stephen having promised that the sea would 
 retire before them, and that the Saracens should be crushed 
 beneath their arms. When they reached Marseilles, two 
 merchants, pretending a great zeal for their cause, furnished 
 seven large vessels to transport part of them gratis. Imme- 
 diately after their setting sail, two of these were wrecked, 
 and all on board perished. The remaining five were 
 steered by the directions of the treacherous merchants to 
 Bougia and Alexandria ; and all the children contained in 
 them were sold as slaves to the Saracens. It is some comfort 
 to know that these two miscreants were subsequently caught, 
 and carefully hanged in Sicily. This morbid excitability of 
 
( 19 ) 
 
 the child- world was not confined to France ; for, simul- 
 taneously -with the French crusade, and, as it is asserted, 
 without any connexion with it, a movement on even a 
 larger scale took place among the children of Germany. 
 The phenomena were nearly the same : Boy-prophets every- 
 where urging on their playmates the recovery of the Holy 
 Sepulchre. These Boy-Crusaders in Germany divided into two 
 armies ; one, under the command of a lad named Nicholas, 
 marched up the Khine, crossed Mount Cenis, cumbering the 
 passes with the bodies of those who sank from privation and 
 exhaustion. Seven thousand of them are said to have reached 
 Genoa; but here, through dread of a famine, and jealousy of 
 the Emperor of Germany, the gates were closed against them. 
 They then disbanded, the greater number of them remaining 
 as servants in North Italy, and the few of them who strag- 
 gled back again to fatherland being loaded with revilings for 
 allowing themselves to be misled by Satan. Some few of this 
 expedition, however, succeeded in reaching Rome, where the 
 Pope received them most kindly, exacting from them an oath 
 to assist in recovering Jerusalem when they should arrive at 
 man's estate. The second army of these Boy-Crusaders from 
 Germany took its way through the wild gorges of Uri, and over 
 the Spliigen, numbers perishing through hardship and want. 
 In the hope of reaching Jerusalem, they directed their way to 
 the seaports of Italy, where many of them were entrapped by 
 slave-dealers, and sold to the Saracens. The chronicles tell 
 us that these German Boy-Crusaders contained more sons of 
 nobles than the French, and also more of the female sex ; 
 and the fate of these latter is represented to have been sad 
 indeed. 
 
 The limits of this paper forbid my attempting to give an 
 account of all the hallucinations of this kind that aifected 
 masses of people at once, during the Middle Ages. I will, 
 therefore, only notice briefly two other epidemics of this 
 nature, in which the mind and body reciprocally affected 
 
 B 2 
 
( 20 ) 
 
 each other, and both of which raged in the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries. The first of these was a convulsive disor- 
 der, known as the Dancing Mania, to which allusion has been 
 made before. Hundreds were seized with it simultaneously, 
 in Germany and Italy ; and the patients would leap about, and 
 dance spasmodically to music, till they sank swooning on the 
 ground. In Germany, numbers of the sufferers repaired to 
 the shrine of St. Vitus in Ulm, and sought the aid and inter- 
 cession of this legendary saint and boy-martyr ; and the feeble 
 vestige of this disease which still appears among us derives its 
 name — St. Vitus's Dance — from this fact. From a strange 
 notion which spread in Italy that this disorder had been 
 caused by the bite of a kind of spider called Tarantula, the 
 Dancing Epidemic was there known under the name of 
 Tarantism. It may, perhaps, be interesting to some of you 
 to know that the tunes most in favour with the Tarantists are 
 still preserved ; but, from my small acquaintance with music, 
 I will not presume to pronounce on their merits. Happily 
 this mania, which seized even distinguished Prelates, did 
 not transgress the limits of orthodoxy, and it was, there- 
 fore, allowed to dance itself out in peace. But it was 
 otherwise with a kindred malady that prevailed in the 
 same countries, and about the same period — the Scourg- 
 ing Epidemic. In it congregated hundreds of both sexes 
 roamed about, singing psalms when they entered a town, 
 and lacerating their naked shoulders with scourges, in which 
 sharp pieces of iron were knotted. This they called the 
 " Baptism of Blood." Unfortunately for themselves, they en- 
 tertained notions on Church government, and some other sub- 
 jects, which differed from those of the parties who claimed the 
 sole right of pronouncing on such questions ; and these latter 
 soon set their customary machinery of stake and gibbet in 
 active motion for the suppression of these deluded Flagellants. 
 We now pass from the more obscure period of the Middle 
 Ages to the full light of the eighteenth century, and to the 
 
( 21 ) 
 
 most polished city of Europe, as the scene of the last of these 
 convulsive Epidemics we shall at present notice. It has been 
 already remarked that it requires a strong array of testimony 
 to induce us to attach any credit to such events as the Boy- 
 Crusades ; but in the matters now to come before us, our 
 chief perplexity will arise. I think, from the strength of the 
 evidence adduced in support of occurrences seemingly as ex- 
 travagant as the shifting scenes of a troubled dream. This 
 difficulty has been felt equally by those who have regarded 
 these events from the most different points of view. I shall 
 first read to you the words of the sceptic Hume on the 
 subject : — "Many of these miracles were immediately proved 
 on the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested 
 by witnesses of credit and distinction in a learned age, and on 
 the most eminent theatre that is now in the world. Nor 
 is this all. A relation of them was published, and dispersed 
 everywhere ; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body 
 supported by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies of 
 those opinions in whose favour the miracles were said to 
 have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect 
 them." Let us now hear the words of Bishop Douglas, 
 Hume's able opponent : — " Whoever (he writes) attentively 
 weighs the evidence urged in support of some of these [events] 
 must own that few matters of fact ever were confirmed by more 
 unexceptionable testimony." I need hardly inform most of 
 you that these remarks refer to the so-called miracles that 
 took place among the partisans of the Jansenist Deacon 
 Francois De Paris. To those who are not acquainted with 
 the state of the Romish Church in France about this time, 
 a few preliminary observations may be acceptable. In the 
 early part of the eighteenth century some earnest French 
 ecclesiastics, called Jansenists, from Jansenius, Bishop of 
 Ypres, attempted to effect a reformation in the Gallican 
 Church. Their efforts were strenuously resisted by the 
 Jesuits, who were supported by the Pope, and the French 
 
( 22 ) 
 
 Court. The t¥/o parties first came to open rupture on doc- 
 trinal points regarding Divine Grace, which we may safely 
 omit. The Jesuits, who were manifestly worsted in argu- 
 ment, prevailed on the Pope to declare heretical five proposi- 
 tions, which his Holiness professed that he had discovered in 
 the writings of Jansenius. The controversy now turned on a 
 point which may seem curious to us, but which has more than 
 once proved a difficulty to the assertors of human Infalli- 
 bility ; and some who hear me may remember that a pre- 
 cisely similar dispute arose regarding the works of Professor 
 Hermes, of Bonn, who died in 1831. In the case before us, 
 the Jansenists maintained that no such propositions as the 
 five condemned by the Pope were to be found in the writings 
 of Jansenius, or anywhere, except in the imagination of the 
 Jesuits ; and the great Pascal (one of their party) sarcasti- 
 cally denied even to Infallibility the power of discovering in 
 a book doctrines which it does not contain. In vain, how- 
 ever, were their protests and appeals to a General Council, 
 and to the universe at large. They were crushed by a merciless 
 persecution, instigated by the Jesuits ; and their cause seemed 
 hopeless, when succour unexpectedly arose. 
 
 In the year 1727, a clergyman of their party, named 
 Francois De Paris, after living a life of austerity, almost rival- 
 ling that of an Eastern Fakeer, died at the age of thirty- 
 seven, in the odour of sanctity, Pope, Jesuits, and King, not- 
 withstanding. His tomb in the cemetery of St. Medard, at 
 Paris, was frequented by crowds of devotees, who sought his 
 intercession, and soon wonderful cures by his aid were re- 
 ported ; and thereupon broke out a convulsive epidemic, 
 which for violence and duration is without a parallel in mo- 
 dern times. Numbers, seized with the most violent spasms, 
 would fall on the ground : some would lie for hours in a 
 cataleptic state ; the body rigid, and forming a circle ; the 
 eyes fixed, and staring. Others would bound from the earth 
 like fish taken out of water. Many of both sexes barked 
 
( 23 ) 
 
 like a dog. Young children preached; women, sometimes 
 not of the most exemplary lives, assumed the functions of 
 priests ; clairvoyance, the faculty of discerning spirits, and 
 of reading letters with the eyes bandaged ; the power of 
 speaking in strange tongues, and the gift of prophecy be- 
 came (we are told) quite common ; and the predictions were 
 unanimous in announcing the speedy coming of the Prophet 
 Elias, the triumph of Jansenism, and the impending over- 
 throw of the French monarchy.* Unfortunately, the Ultra- 
 montane advisers of the Court regarded the outbreak, not 
 as a disease, but as a hostile religious movement ; and by 
 urging the King to order the cemetery of St. Medard to 
 be shut up, they merely compelled the Jansenists to meet in 
 clandestine conventicles, and they thus increased the violence 
 of this convulsive malady tenfold. For years it continued 
 its ravages in secret, nor could all the efforts of King and 
 priests succeed in stamping out Jansenism. It disappeared, 
 indeed, amid the hurricane of the great French Eevolution, if 
 we except Catherine Theot, Dom Gerle, and the band of 
 mystics who had discovered in the Apocalypse that Robes- 
 pierre was to regenerate mankind, and who were sent to the 
 guillotine overwhelmed with ridicule by the dictator's ene- 
 mies in the Convention. But with more settled times, Jan- 
 senism again raised its head ; and though now it cannot reckon 
 its adherents by thousands in France, it still has a follow- 
 ing, and a respectable Parisian newspaper to expound its 
 opinions. 
 
 After this prefatory glance at the history of Jansenism, 
 we now turn to say a few words on the source from which 
 we chiefly derive our information about occurrences so 
 strange, and yet (as we have seen) so well attested. Be- 
 fore the closing of the cemetery, a man of high position, 
 named Carre de Montgeron, who filled the important office 
 of " Counsellor of the Parliament of Paris," was attracted by 
 
 * See Note C at end. 
 
( 24 ) 
 
 fame to the tomb of the Deacon Paris. He had been here- 
 tofore (he tells us) a Sadducee in creed, and a libertine in 
 conduct. But being suddenly converted, he became thence- 
 forward one of the most devoted Jansenists, and even a 
 confessor for this cause ; having first suffered imprisonment 
 in the Bastile, and being afterwards exiled from Paris for the 
 remainder of his life. The cause of his tribulations was this : 
 After his conversion to Jansenism, he compiled a history of the 
 wonders going on around him, and presented the first volume 
 to the King, though warned (he informs us) prophetically, of 
 the. result. To this work of an apologist, in three large vols., 
 drawn up with all the ingenuity that his legal practice sug- 
 gested, he devoted his whole after-life and his ample fortune. 
 I must say, too, that the literary ability displayed in this 
 work is of no mean order, and the purity of style in it tempts 
 us to read many a page which otherwise we might close in 
 disgust. But what constitutes the peculiarity ofDeMont- 
 geron's work is, that he does not report many of the marvel- 
 lous occurrences as an eye-witness merely, or from hearsay, 
 but presents certificates of them, in legal form, attested by 
 the signatures of respectable witnesses ; many of them phy- 
 sicians, and officers of the Crown, who were adverse to Jan- 
 senism. You have already heard the remarks of Bishop 
 Douglas and Hume on this " Cloud of Witnesses ;" and I 
 may be permitted to add, that it is the most puzzling compi- 
 lation I have ever met with ; for, whilst De Montgeron's in- 
 ferences from the evidence are usually most absurd, as he 
 professes to discover in every extravagant act a sign from 
 heaven to confirm the faith of his own party, or to convince . 
 gainsayers, yet, of the actual occurrence of many of the 
 events attested, I see not how we can reasonably entertain a 
 doubt. 
 
 In noticing briefly the phenomena connected with this 
 movement, we must carefully distinguish two different series 
 of facts which are almost always confounded in popular ac- 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 counts of Jansenism. There was, 1st, a number of marvel- 
 lous cures, which took place before the cemetery was closed. 
 All the Jansenists believe in these, and regard them as 
 " miracles" worked by the intercession of their departed 
 saint. De Montgeron brings forward eight of these so-called 
 "miracles," the reality of which he professes "to demon- 
 strate ;" and he certainly produces an amount of evidence 
 which renders scepticism with regard to their actual occur- 
 rence very difficult. I purpose saying a few words, before 
 concluding, on the propriety of calling these and other such 
 like cures miraculous ; and I now proceed to the second 
 phase of this movement, which seems to me far more ex- 
 traordinary and astonishing than these sudden cures of bodily 
 infirmities. And this is the celebrated convulsional epidemic, 
 which raged most violently after the closing of the grave- 
 yard of St. Medard, and lasted for nearly half a century. It 
 is only right to state that the more sober-minded Jansenists 
 were shocked by the grotesque proceedings of these convul- 
 sionists, and were disposed rather to attribute them, with the 
 Jesuits, to the work of evil spirits, than to regard them as a 
 continuation of the Divine power supposed to have been 
 exerted by their saint in effecting the cures of bodily diseases ; 
 but neither they nor their Ultramontane opponents ; nor 
 again, the most determined French sceptics, including Vol- 
 taire, and the Atheist, Diderot, ever questioned the truth of 
 many of the facts recorded. In this epidemic the sufferers, 
 who were for the most part females, were seized with violent 
 convulsional pains and spasms, from which they sought relief, 
 by way of counter-irritation, in bodily tortures so excruciating 
 and frightful, that it is a complete mystery how the human 
 frame could sustain them ; nay, if the account of them was 
 not well authenticated, they would seem as little worthy of 
 credit as the Tales of the Genii. In some instances "the 
 patient could minister to himself," as well as edify the minds 
 of the spectators, or even (as we read) heal their bodily 
 
( 26 ) 
 
 ailments. Thus a gentleman of high rank, M. Fontaine, 
 Secretary of State to the King, in order to counteract a 
 numbness he felt in his legs one day at a fashionable dinner- 
 party, suddenly started iij), and commenced whirling round 
 on one foot, at the rate of sixty turns in the minute. Next 
 he called for a popular Jansenist volume, and continued 
 reading with unction, and spinning round for more than an 
 hour ! During upwards of six months he went through the 
 same performance each day, both morning and evening. 
 Next he took to fasting ; and if we believe our authorities, 
 he abstained on one occasion from everything but water for 
 eighteen days, and on another for forty. One statement 
 about him we can readily believe, and that is that, at the 
 end of this second fast, his body resembled nothing but an 
 Egyptian mummy. 
 
 I will not shock your ears by mentioning the sufferings 
 inflicted by these ecstatics on themselves in representation of 
 the Passion of our Blessed Lord ; nor will I bring before you 
 some of the grotesque and unseemly methods by which the 
 female patients sought relief from their convulsive affection ; 
 but I will now proceed to notice briefly the means most in 
 fashion for obtaining alleviation, or as they themselves called 
 it, ^'succour.'' Some of them were seized with an excruciat- 
 mgs ense of burning, which they declared could only be as- 
 suaged by holding their bodies over a fire. But lest you 
 should suspect me of attempting to impose on your credulity, 
 I will translate a contemporary document, drawn up on the 
 scene of the occurrence reported, and allow it to speak for itself 
 " We, whose names are hereto attached, certify that we have 
 seen to-day, between the hours of 8 and 10 o'clock in the even- 
 ing, Marie Sonet in a state of convulsion. Her head was 
 supported on one stool, and her feet on another ; the said 
 stools being set in a large fire-place, one on each side of the 
 fire, in such wise that her body was directly over the blaze, 
 which was very strong. In this position she remained for the 
 
( 27 ) 
 
 space of thirty-six minutes, at four different times ; nor was 
 the cloth in which she was wrapped consumed, though the 
 flame rose sometimes over it — a fact which has appeared to 
 us quite supernatural. We certify, moreover, that whilst we 
 were signing the present certificate, the said Marie Sonet 
 placed herself again over the fire in the manner before men- 
 tioned, and continued in this posture, apparently asleep, dur- 
 ing nine minutes, notwithstanding the violence of the blaze." 
 I will now read to you the names of the parties signing, as 
 these form not the least curious part of the document. 
 Fran9oisDesvernays, Priest and Dr. of Theology; Pierre Jour- 
 dan, Canon of Bayeux ; Edward, Lord Perth (a Scotch Jaco- 
 bite who held a high command in the French army) ; Carre 
 De Montgeron, Counsellor of the Parliament ; Armand Arouet, 
 Treasurer of the Chamber of Accounts (brother of Voltaire) ; 
 Alex. K. Boindin, Louis and Francois Archambault, Esqrs. 
 To these are added the names of three substantial citizens, 
 which want of space forbids me to transcribe. 
 
 Now, whatever we may think of the credibility of this ac- 
 count in whole or in part, the document itself furnishes strong- 
 proof of the " madness that ruled the hour," when we learn 
 from it, that men of such rank and respectability took part in 
 an exhibition of this kind, and witnessed the truth of it with 
 their signatures. 
 
 But this convulsional malady more usually took the form 
 of spasms resembling those that occur in hydrophobia, or in 
 lock-jaw. In these cases the Jansenist patients sought relief 
 by undergoing bodily tortures which tax our power of belief 
 to the utmost. These inflictions were called among the initi- 
 ated " The Grand Succours," and a number of men, called 
 '' the Brethren," were always ready to apply them. The 
 "Succours" usually consisted in stamping on the pit of the 
 stomach, and other most sensitive parts of the body, with the 
 feet ; in squeezing the patients with cords passed around them, 
 and then pulled by strong men in opposite directions ; or 
 
( 28 ) 
 
 more frequently still, in striking the parts indicated by the 
 convulsionists with heavy wooden mallets, or bars of iron. 
 Not only are the accounts left us of these " Succours" a hard 
 trial to our belief, but they are generally so shocking as to be 
 unfit for recital. " To give some idea of them, however, I 
 select one of the least revolting, in which De Montgeron was 
 himself a performer, and I give it in his own words literally 
 translated :- — " I commenced (he writes) by giving the con- 
 vulsionist light blows" [the instrument used, he tells us, was 
 an iron bar 301bs. in weight] ; " then excited by her complaint 
 that she did not feel her stomach relieved by my blows, I re- 
 doubled their force. But vainly did I exert all my strength, 
 for she complained that my blows were so feeble that they did 
 not give her any relief, and she ordered me to give the bar to 
 a strong man present. He spared nothing, but delivered 
 always on the same spot, strokes so terrible that they shook 
 the wall against which she was supported. In this way she 
 received 100 blows, besides the sixty I had given her ; and 
 she thanked him who rendered the " succour," whilst she up- 
 braided me with my feebleness, my want of faith, and timidity. 
 The " Succour" ended, I took again the bar, and tried the 
 effect of my blows against the wall. After the twenty -fifth 
 stroke the stone against which I directed my blows was 
 broken, and fell out on the other side, leaving an aperture of 
 nearly a foot in width." 
 
 Such were the tortures inflicted by these ecstatics on one 
 another for more than thirty years ; nor are we to suppose that 
 a single "Succour" like that just mentioned sufficed in the case 
 of these convulsionists. On the contrary, the same process 
 was undergone by them again and again. Indeed, it is well 
 known to medical men that, after a severe hysterical attack, 
 the patient is much more liable than other persons to a similar 
 affection; whilst repeated attacks of this kind will, if un- 
 checked, gradually sap the vital powers. When, then, we 
 read of a woman, who was a convulsionist for twenty-seven 
 
( 29 ) 
 
 years, our wonder must be great that she escaped so long 
 from " shuffling off this mortal coil," or, at least, from being 
 consigned to a lunatic asylum. 
 
 With such narratives as the above, or with others wilder 
 and more extravagant still — such as " The Succour of the 
 Sword" — a great part of the work of De Montgeron is taken 
 up. And the attestations he produces, as well as the admis- 
 sions made in the contemporary writings of opponents, have 
 prevented (as was before remarked) the most sceptical in- 
 quirers from denying the reality of many of these strange 
 occurrences. Indeed, as the learned Calmeil remarks, there 
 is evidence that many persons sustained permanent bodily 
 harm from the application of the "Succours." We read, for 
 instance, of a Dominican Friar who was killed outright ; and 
 the Jansenists themselves admitted that some of the Con- 
 vulsionists received serious injuries in this way, *' because (as 
 it was asserted) their faith was not strong enough ; but from 
 the secrecy necessarily observed to escape the government 
 spies, no doubt much of the mischief done was never known 
 outside the circle of the initiated. However, after making all 
 allowance for the bodily injury that may thus have occurred, 
 and after admitting what is well known to those conversant 
 in such matters — namely, that the human muscles, when in 
 spasmodic action, can exert a force of resistance perfectly 
 astounding ; still these, and all such facts as we are ac- 
 quainted with, seem inadequate to explain how the bodies 
 of these ecstatics escaped destruction. And the tortures thus 
 undergone with impunity appear to me (as I have said) far 
 more extraordinary than the sudden cures which took place 
 in the earlier part of the movement, and which were looked 
 upon by all the Jansenists as " miracles.'^ 
 
 Now, if we use the word "miracle" in the sense that 
 De Montgeron and Hume alike attach to it — namely, " a 
 violation of the laws of nature, to confirm some doctrine, or 
 assertion put forth by a person professing to be commis- 
 
( 30 ) 
 
 sioned by Grod ; or, again, if we understand (with a Noble 
 Author of our day) a " miracle" to be the effect of such a 
 combination of natural laws as it is beyond the power of 
 mere man to bring about without Divine aid; or, thirdly, 
 if we regard a "miracle" as an anticipation of natural pro- 
 cesses of healing, &c., revealed specially by Grod to His 
 inspired messengers, — under none of these suppositions does 
 it seem allowable to apply the term " miracle" to the sudden 
 cures of paralysis, dropsy, partial blindness, &c., reported as 
 having occurred among the Jansenists. Strange, extraordi- 
 nary, perplexing, in our present state of knowledge, we may 
 admit them to have been ; and we may farther grant that the 
 attempts of Bishop Douglas, and a far abler man, Dr. Calmiel, 
 to refer them to known causes, are not quite satisfactory. But 
 surely it would be presumptuous in us, without the guarantee 
 of an inspired messenger, or without some previous assertion, 
 to pronounce such events out of the " constitution and course 
 of Nature," about the limits of which we really know so 
 little.* 
 
 For if, on the one hand, we refuse to believe, on ANY evi- 
 dence, an account of some occurrence that transcends our expe- 
 rience ; or, again, if we cry " miracle" at each event we can- 
 not explain, what is this but to adopt the dictum of the old 
 sophists, that "man is the measure of the universe;" and 
 rashly to assume that we (even individually) know all the 
 mysteries of creation ? This is not the place, nor does time 
 permit, to enter farther into the question of "miracles;" 
 but I cannot forbear remarking, that when Hume declares 
 these extraordinary cures among the Jansenists well-authen- 
 ticated; then proceeds to call them "miracles;" and finishes 
 by pronouncing "miracles" incredible, because, contrary to 
 experience, he is merely juggling with words, or, as Garlyle 
 calls it, " blowing philosophic soap bubbles." 
 
 * See Note D at end. 
 
( 31 ) 
 
 Had Hume, who died in 1776, lived sixty years later, he 
 would have heard reports of sudden cures just as extraordi- 
 nary, or even more so, and equally well-authenticated, which 
 occurred in his own ** canny" country during that period of 
 excitement which witnessed the travail-throes that ended in 
 the birth of '*the Catholic and Apostolic Church" of the 
 Irvingites ; whilst at the same time multitudes of devout 
 Roman Catholics were experiencing comfort and edification 
 from the wonderful gifts of healing believed by them to 
 reside in Prince Hohenloe, of Bamberg, in Germany — gifts 
 of which the benefits were not confined to his own country, 
 but were — if we believe his co-religionists — projected from his 
 person as far as Dublin and the Queen's County. 
 
 In this Jansenist movement, however, of which we have 
 been speaking, and in some similar hallucinations, the prodi- 
 gies and marvellous events often assumed such grotesque — 
 nay, mischievous — forms and Protean changes, that even a 
 symbolical interpretation — the last refuge of many vagaries — 
 was tried in vain by devoted partisans ; and credulity itself 
 shrank from attributing such fantastic procedures to Divine 
 influence. In these cases the powers of evil were generally 
 called in to bear the responsibility. Too often under such 
 circumstances the wretched creatures who were supposed to 
 be the subjects of such diabolical influence were exposed to 
 pains and penalties which fill some of the darkest pages in the 
 annals of our race. We have already noticed something of 
 this when our attention was directed to Lycanthropy ; but it 
 is only in reading the atrocities connected with the Witch 
 Mania — a mania which seems to have been chronic for whole 
 centuries in the fairest portions of Europe, and of which a 
 serious outbreak has occurred in France within the memory 
 of the youngest here — it is only when we read the chroni- 
 cles of these epochs of frenzy, in which the Witch- Sabbath, 
 the rack, and the stake stand out in fearful distinctness — 
 epochs in which the worship of the Father of Mercy, pro- 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 claimed on earth by the Prince of Peace, appeared to be ex- 
 changed for that of Moloch or Kali — it is only then that we 
 begin to comprehend, with saddened and humiliated heart, 
 the depths to which man's infatuation and man's cruelty have 
 at times sunk him. 1 shall not, however, try your patience 
 farther by entering on this subject. I will only remark, in 
 conclusion, that as these Mental Epidemics touch (as we have 
 seen) the confines alike of Light and Darkness, we may justly 
 apply to them the words with which Virgil describes the oak, — 
 
 " High as its topmost boughs to heaven tend, 
 So deep its roots towards Tartarus descend." 
 
( 33 ) 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 We observed that in some of the mental epidemics already- 
 mentioned, the derangements were connected more or less 
 with notions current at the time concerning the invisible 
 world. And this will be the distinctive character of the oc- 
 currences that will come under our notice this evening ; for 
 our attention will be directed, first, to the belief in Witchcraft 
 which existed in Europe from the early centuries of our era ; 
 prompting occasionally to acts of local cruelty ; and, again, 
 from the fourteenth century till quite recently, breaking out 
 into wide-spread frenzies that ran like wild-fire through the 
 nations. We will next consider some of those religious ex- 
 citements, in which the barriers between the visible and invisi- 
 ble worlds were believed to be broken down, and men were 
 supposed to be endowed with a vision, a power, an utterance 
 beyond the ordinary laws of humanity. 
 
 I confess that I approach this latter subject with hesita- 
 tion, because some at least of the occurrences to be detailed 
 took place under conditions such as must be in some degree 
 connected with existing sympathies ; and because, farther, 
 however gently these events may be handled, the very selec- 
 tion of them for detail may seem to imply a morbid desire to 
 dwell on the weaknesses of our common nature. I can only 
 say that such is far from being my object, believing, as I do, 
 that man's nature, fallen and tarnished as it may be, still 
 possesses fragments of the image of Him who created it. 
 While bringing these subjects under your notice, I shall 
 strictly avoid pronouncing an opinion on the peculiar dog- 
 matic views of the parties afi'ected, confining my remarks to 
 
 c 
 
( 34 ) 
 
 the physical manifestations that were on each occasion pre- 
 sented ; I shall also, when speaking of these, refrain from any 
 reference to passages taken from Holy Scripture. When such 
 religious movements take place, accompanied with strange 
 bodily affections, it is often most painful to witness the rash- 
 ness with which texts taken from God's Word are quoted, 
 whether to prove that these manifestations proceed from God, 
 or are the work of i:he Adversary of souls. For, when men 
 have first made up their minds on any subject, and then turn 
 to the Bible to seek for confirmation of their views, they sel- 
 dom fail in the search : — 
 
 " The fly-blown text conceives an alien brood, 
 And turns to maggots what was meant for food." 
 
 Indeed, as we have already seen, these epidemic outbreaks 
 are peculiar to no one religion, but seem to spring from de- 
 rangement in the very depths of our being, and to be propa- 
 gated by imitation or sympathy — that mysterious bond which 
 connects the individual with the general body of mankind. 
 And the record of such maladies, however painful it may be, 
 may at least prove useful by teaching us — should the like oc- 
 cur within our own experience — not to regard them as some- 
 thing supernatural, but as amongst the worst " ills to which 
 the flesh is heir." 
 
 But there is another reason which should cause us to ap- 
 proach with reluctance the first subject which shall claim our 
 attention — Witchcraft. For the cruelties and butcheries per- 
 petrated through a belief in it constitute one of the foulest 
 blots on humanity. When, too, we reflect that these atrocities 
 were committed by men calling themselves followers of Him 
 who '' was sent, not to condemn the world, but that through 
 Him the world might be saved ;" atrocities instigated by Pope 
 Innocent VHl. in 1488, approved by our own Bishop Jewel, 
 and sanctioned by law officers in Great Britain so late as the 
 Eighteenth^century, our feeling must be one of horror and 
 shame. 
 
( 35 ) 
 
 We read, indeed, of sorcerers condemned to death in 
 Pagan Kome, by the laws of the Twelve Tables ; and Demos- 
 thenes tells us of a woman executed on this charge in his 
 days. In these cases, however, the penalty fell on persons 
 either really guilty, or supposed to be so, of some actual crime, 
 and not on those merely suspected of an unholy league with 
 the powers, of darkness. Such punishments, too, in Antient 
 Greece and Rome, were of rare occurrence ; but if we may 
 credit the numbers given in a work published by Chambers, 
 as put to death for witchcraft during our era, 100,000 in Grer- 
 many, 30,000 in England, 4000 in Scotland, not to mention 
 France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, we must actually stand 
 appalled. Nor can we regard these figures as exaggerated, for 
 a very high authority. Dr. Sprenger, in his recent " Life of 
 Mahomet," raises the number of those put to death as witches 
 during the Christian epoch to the incredible amount of nine 
 millions. 
 
 And who were the victims, and what the crime which 
 called forth such inhumanity from men not naturally cruel ? 
 No doubt many poisoners, malefactors, and impostors of the 
 worst kind met, under this imaginary imputation, the doom 
 which their acts deserved. The opinion, too, of the learned 
 Maury seems plausible, which supposes that, on the first 
 establishment of Christianity, sorcerers and witches were 
 looked upon as obstinate pagans, or else as relapsed Chris- 
 tians, who worshipped idols, and practised forbidden rites ; be- 
 cause the demons or false gods formerly adored were identi- 
 fied by the early Christians with the rebel angels " which kept 
 not their first estate ;" and whose chief occupation was believed 
 to be enticing men into disobedience to God, and so involving 
 their souls in perdition. The persecutions, then, to which this 
 class of persons were subjected would naturally be more violent 
 even than those which arise from that mistaken principle which 
 prompts men to suppress forcibly an erroneous worship, or, in 
 other words, every creed but that of the party in power; for 
 
 c2 
 
( 36 ) 
 
 sorcerers were supposed not merely to venerate false objects 
 of worship, but to pay their adoration to the very enemies of 
 the true God ; that is, to those angels whose rebellion had 
 forfeited heaven, and whose service must consequently consist 
 in rites subversive not merely of the true religion, but even 
 of common morality. This opinion of Maury commends itself 
 to our approval, because it seems to explain cases to which 
 its learned propounder never thought of applying it. For 
 instance, it will help to account for the absence of witch- 
 persecutions in Ireland, because the fairies and other relics of 
 the Keltic pantheon were never regarded as identical with the 
 rebel host of Satan ; and so those who, till quite recently, be- 
 lieved in, nay practically worshipped, these imaginary beings, 
 were never regarded with abhorrence, nor exposed to outrage. 
 
 But though this supposition may help to explain the 
 cruelty exercised towards witches, it does not palliate it ; for 
 the victims have been — more especially as we approach our 
 own times — for the most part, helpless creatures, many of 
 them old doting women, who should have been objects of 
 commiseration and Christian charity. And these were tor- 
 tured and burned without one ray of that hope which teaches 
 the martyr to look beyond this earth, and sustains him in his 
 fiery trial — without one gleam of human sympathy being re- 
 flected upon them. Can we, for instance, read without a 
 shudder, the account of an insane old woman condemned to 
 the stake by a Scotch Judge so late as 1722, when the victim, 
 so far from being able to realise her horrible situation, rubbed 
 her hands in idiot glee at the sight of the fire that was kindled 
 to consume her ? From these isolated horrors in the history 
 of witchcraft we gladly turn to consider it iu another aspect, 
 which it repeatedly assumed during these centuries, namely, 
 that of outbreaks of epidemic mania. 
 
 When advancing enlightenment was gradually shaking 
 the belief that witchcraft was the work of demons, the scep- 
 tics could find no better way of accounting for it than by 
 
( 37 ) 
 
 alleging imposture and credulity. One of the latest, and cer- 
 tainly one of the ablest defenders of its supernatural character, 
 was an English clergyman named Joseph Glanvil, who pub- 
 lished in the latter part of the seventeenth century a work 
 which he called the "Defeat of the Sadducee." Glanvil was 
 one of the most acute reasoners of his age, and, strange to say, 
 one of the most sceptical. Indeed he seems to me to resemble 
 in many respects a far greater man, whose loss we have re- 
 cently deplored — Archbishop Whately. He had already writ- 
 ten a most able work, in which he maintains that we should 
 admit nothing on mere authority^ but should require the 
 clearest proofs for everything we believe. But seeing the 
 facts of witchcraft so strongly attested, he rejected the notion 
 of their being the result of superstition and imposture, and 
 argued that it is more probable that the evidence for them 
 should be true, than that the occurrences attested should be 
 false ; and by way of evidence he produces a number of well 
 authenticated cases to establish his proposition against the 
 impugners of witchcraft in his day. But he takes for granted 
 in all this, that, supposing the facts to be real, they must be 
 the work of evil spirits ; whereas we find in the phenomena 
 he records occurrences analogous to those of the other mental 
 epidemics we are considering ; and he fails to answer the ar- 
 gument drawn by Wier (an eminent physician, and one of the 
 first to profess a disbelief in witchcraft), from a number of 
 cases in which drastic medicines had proved effectual when 
 exorcism and the other expedients of superstition had 
 failed. 
 
 Indeed, the fact on which Glanvil lays great stress, namely, 
 the identical confessions made by many individuals, with full 
 consciousness of their danger, merely proves that they were 
 simultaneously labouring under a hysterical delusion resting 
 on current notions, and propagated by sympathetic contagion. 
 This at least seems to be the most rational interpretation of 
 
( 38 ) 
 
 the case of the Warbois and Somersetshire witches ; and such, 
 too, appears to be the explanation of the confession wrung 
 from Dr. Fin, Agnes Sampson, and the twenty-eight butchered 
 along with them by that despicable poltroon, James I., for 
 these are reported to have given separately an almost iden- 
 tical account of the Witch- Sabbath they described themselves 
 as having attended at the kirk of North Berwick. 
 
 And the same remarks will apply to a fearful occurrence 
 so late as the year 1669, which I now proceed to lay before 
 you in an abridged form. On a complaint being made by the 
 inhabitants of the town of Mohra, in Sweden, that great num- 
 bers of children were under the influence of witchcraft, the 
 king appointed a Commission to investigate the case. The 
 proceedings were opened in the town by a sermon, in which 
 the dreadful condition of those who had delivered themselves 
 over to Satan was forcibly set forth ; then followed a fervent 
 prayer that the scourge would soon be removed from them. 
 Men, women, and children now began to sob and weep, and 
 declared themselves ready to divulge all they knew. When 
 they were in this frame of mind, seventy arrests were made, 
 including fifteen children. The witnesses against the accused 
 were, for the most part, children to the number of 300, who 
 generally agreed in a statement to this effect: — " They were 
 taught by the witches to go to a certain gravel-pit, and there 
 to dance ; they next invoked three times the demon, in these 
 words : " Antecessor come and carry us to Blocula.*' There- 
 upon the fiend made his appearance, usually in the form of a 
 merry-andrew, with a grey coat, blue stockings, and a red 
 beard reaching to his waist, a high-crowned hat with motley 
 rags tied around it, and long garters. They now bound 
 themselves to his service, and he furnished them with a salve 
 to anoint themselves. Then being provided with goats to 
 ride on, they took to flight through the air, and arrived at 
 Blocula ; where sometimes a white angel attempted their 
 
( 39 ) 
 
 rescue. Blocula itself was minutely described, as was the 
 banquet which there regaled them. Then followed the ob- 
 scenities of a Witch- Sabbath, which we cannot transcribe. 
 The majority of the children considered the journey a real 
 one, but some of them thought it was only their soul that ac- 
 companied Antecessor. The accused generally confessed their 
 guilt, twenty-three it is stated, voluntarily, and the rest under 
 torture ; and this frenzied delusion was quenched by the blood 
 of seventy human beings : of these, twenty- three were first 
 burned together in one fire at Mohra, and on the next day 
 fifteen children, and the rest were executed in a neighbouring 
 town. Besides these, fifty-six children were condemned to 
 imprisonment, and public whipping once a week for twelve 
 months . And thereupon the Commissioners returned to Court, 
 having gained high approbation for their conduct in this abo- 
 minable proceeding. 
 
 The last case of witch-mania that either space or inclination 
 will allow me to mention must make us thankful that our lot 
 has fallen in times of more enlightenment and humanity. 
 Two sickly young girls belonging to the village of Morzines, 
 in French Savoy, were seized with convulsive fits in the year 
 1857. As they exhibited the symptoms which fanatical cre- 
 dulity has beheved to be the work of evil spirits — among the 
 rest, that of speaking in a strange language, the Latin — the 
 alarm soon spread among the ignorant inhabitants of the 
 , country, and the contagion along with it. Spiritual efibrts 
 were diligently put forth in the way of exorcising both man 
 and beast ; and every remedy which superstition has pre- 
 scribed — short of the stimulants of rack and faggot — was ap- 
 plied according to art ; but all was in vain, for in the year 
 1860, the patients amounted to 110 persons. The Minister 
 of the Interior now interfered, and sent the able Inspector- 
 General of Lunatic Asylums, Dr. Constans, into the district. 
 The practised eye of the latter at once detected the hysterical 
 
( iO ) 
 
 nature of the disorder, but the sufferers, one and all, obsti- 
 nately refused to submit to medical treatment ; however, by 
 calling in the assistance of the police, and by insisting on the 
 removal of the parish priest, the doctor soon overcame the 
 demon, and succeeded in stamping out the malady. 
 
 You will no doubt feel surprised at the mention of the 
 patients speaking a language, the meaning of which was un- 
 known to them ; and yet this is a usual accompaniment of 
 these strange affections — so much so, that one of the marks 
 given in the Eomish Ritual of Exorcism for detecting those 
 bewitched, or possessed by demons, is their " speaking in an 
 unknown tongue." It is, however, one of the few symptoms 
 connected with this mysterious class of disorders of which a ra- 
 tional explanation may be given. It is well known that, when 
 the nervous sensibility is unnaturally excited, as in ecstacy, 
 whether spontaneous, or artificially produced, the memory is 
 often stimulated in a marvellous way ; and scraps of Latin 
 heard in public worship, and of other languages similarly 
 caught up, are repeated by the most illiterate. But, farther, in 
 hysterical affections, the organs of speech are often engaged ; 
 and involuntary sounds are produced resembling the cries of 
 animals, as was mentioned when we were considering Lycan- 
 thropy and the Convent Epidemic; or, again, the utterance is 
 a kind of harmonious recitative, such as Mrs. Oliphant de- 
 scribes when narrating "the gift of tongues" among the folloAvers 
 of Edward Irving, and of which we shall meet other examples 
 in the sequel. This shall be devoted to a few cases in which 
 the ecstatics, while deriving their hallucinations from the un- 
 seen world, no longer fancied themselves in league with the 
 powers of darkness, but as sharing in the glories of the king- 
 dom of light. I must ask your indulgence, if the detail of the 
 first of these we notice is somewhat prolix. 
 
 On the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, all the 
 Protestant pastors were ordered to quit France withinfifte en 
 
( 41 ) 
 
 days ; and two millions of their hearers were put outside the 
 pale of the law, being denied liberty of conscience at home, 
 and prohibited from leaving France under pain of death. 
 Their conversion to the new faith of Madame de Maintenon, 
 the king's favourite, herself originally a Protestant, was chiefly 
 intrusted to dragoons, whose diabolical ingenuity in torturing 
 their victims surpasses imagination. Their efforts seemed for 
 a time to have crushed all opposition, though numbers, when 
 first attempting to swallow the consecrated wafer, were seized 
 with convulsions of the throat, and ejected it from their mouth. 
 Meanwhile the places of the pastors had, in many districts, 
 been supplied by ignorant and enthusiastic peasants, who 
 were named the " Pastors of the Desert," from the secret 
 places where they ministered. One of these, named Du Serre, 
 in Languedoc, was seized with convulsive fits, in which he 
 uttered unintelligible words, such as " Tartara ; " to these 
 succeeded states of trance, wherein he saw visions and pro- 
 phesied. Many others soon caught the contagion, but the 
 chief of these ecstatics was a beautiful peasant girl named 
 Isabella Vincent. A Huguenot eye-witness has left us a sur- 
 prising account of her powers of preaching and exposition, 
 though she could neither read nor write ; but hostile writers 
 assert that when she was captured and confined in a convent 
 she confessed that she had been labouring under a strong de- 
 lusion. The stake and the gibbet soon did their work among 
 this school of prophets ; but the spirit of ecstacy was not 
 quenched among the Huguenots, for it broke out far more 
 violently in the mountain district ofCevennes in 1701, and 
 continued there till 1713. The ecstatic state was divided 
 into four degrees: " The Warning," "The Breath," "Pro- 
 phecy," and finally " The Gift," the possessor of which last 
 was supposed to be endowed with the power of healing dis- 
 eases and working other miracles. "The spirit (says Peyrat, 
 whose narrative I abridge) rarely descended on old persons, 
 and never on the rich or educated. It visited youth and in- 
 
( 42 ) 
 
 digence, shepherds, labourers, girls, and even young children. 
 ' The youngest child I ever saw speak in a state of ecstacy 
 (says an eye-witness) was a little girl of five years of age;' 
 but another of the party informs us, ' I have seen, among 
 others, a child of five months old in its mother's arms that 
 spake with a loud voice, but yet with sobbings and interrup- 
 tions which made it necessary to listen attentively so as to 
 hear certain words.' '* 
 
 I would gladly enter into some details of the heroic strug- 
 gle of these Cevenols — Camisards they were called — against 
 their oppressors, but time would not allow me ; a very few 
 words, however, will describe the position of their affairs in 
 1703, from which we can imagine the horrors that ensued. 
 In that year the Pope, Clement XI., issued a bull for " the 
 extirpation of the heretics of the Cevennes ; " and "in order 
 to engage the faithful in the work of exterminating the ac- 
 cursed race, did award the absolute and general remission of 
 their sins to all those who should engage in this holy crusade." 
 The commissioner also of the French king recommended the 
 following plan to be adopted in the campaign : " It is not 
 sufficient to kill those only who bear arms, it is necessary to 
 put to the sword all the Protestants." Permanent gibbets, 
 too, were erected in all the towns, and the executioners or- 
 dered to be in constant attendance. I cannot forbear remark- 
 ing that the gallant resistance of the Protestants marred these 
 arrangements ; but the ideas thus suggested were fully car- 
 ried out in a way the proposers little dreamed of before ninety 
 years elapsed, for the infidel Convention sent its "infernal 
 columns," with accompanying guillotines, to traverse Catholic 
 La Vendee in 1793 ; "and the land was as the garden of 
 Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness." 
 On the present occasion 60,000 veteran troops, under one of 
 the ablest French marshals, advanced against the heretical 
 district, which must have presented a singular aspect, for it is 
 said to have contained 8,000 ecstatics. In every village and 
 
( 43 ) 
 
 hamlet men believed to be inspired called the people together 
 each day for exhortation. The means of effective resistance 
 were limited to undisciplined peasants, calling themselves 
 *' The Camp of the Eternal," and officered in the strangest 
 manner force ever was ; for each canton chose as its chiefs 
 those who were considered to be most largely gifted with the 
 Spirit. Their supreme leader was a prophet-king named Ro- 
 land, and under him were other captains ranking according 
 to their supposed degrees of inspiration. These possessed at 
 once religious functions and civil and military powers — the 
 rights of celebrating the Lord's Supper, of baptizing, and 
 marrying, with absolute power over the lives and properties 
 of their followers. And yet before these bands of enthusiasts 
 the French army recoiled again and again, succeeding in no- 
 thing but the work of devastation ; and though their most 
 skilful leader, Cavalier, sustained some severe defeats, he was 
 able to conclude a most advantageous peace with Villars, the 
 greatest general in France. Of this treaty, which granted 
 liberty of worship long unknown, some of the Camisards 
 availed themselves, though many of their prophets continued 
 their resistance until they were gradually cut off ; one of the 
 last survivors, named Ravanel, being seized when declaring, 
 in an ecstacy, that the king could never capture him, and 
 then tortured, and, with another prophet named Catinat, burned 
 alive. 
 
 Contemporary writers have left us strange details of the 
 occurrences among the Camisards. Time will only allow me 
 to lay before you one of these, which is abridged from the 
 words of an eye-witness : — " At a Sunday assembly, brother 
 Claris, a man of excellent gifts, and whose revelations were 
 frequent, was seized with the Spirit. His agitation was so 
 great, that all present were moved in an extraordinary man- 
 ner. ' I assure you, my child (the Spirit made him say), 
 that there are two traitors in this assembly.' In his ecstacy 
 he now rose, and walked, sobbing ; his eyes closed, his head 
 
( 44 ) 
 
 shaking violently, and his hands clasped and elevated. He 
 went thus straight to one traitor, and laid his hands upon him ; 
 when the other, who was at some distance, fell down and 
 confessed. Murmurs, however, arose, as if from a suspicion 
 of collusion ; whereupon the Spirit again spoke through Claris, 
 ordering a fire to be kindled, that the truth might be esta- 
 blished by his servant passing through a fiery ordeal. The 
 doubters now expressed conviction, and with tears entreated 
 Claris to proceed no farther : but he was inflexible ; and 
 when a large pile of pine boughs and dry brushwood had 
 been heaped up in a hollow spot, he, with his own hand, 
 applied the fire. Then (continues the narrator) as the 
 flames arose, Claris, who wore a white waistcoat, brought 
 him that morning by his wife, placed himself in the centre of 
 the pile, still in ecstacy, with his clasped hands raised above 
 his head. He stood there till the wood was so far consumed 
 as no longer to emit a flame. Thus, the Spirit supported him 
 about the space of a quarter of an hour ; and when he came 
 out he was still speaking, with heavings of the chest and sobs. 
 Our wonder may be judged of. I was one of the first to 
 embrace him, and I found no trace of fire on his hair, or on 
 his white waistcoat."* 
 
 This extract will enable us to form some idea of the 
 frenzy that prevailed among the Camisards ; and it must 
 suffice, as we proceed, to cast a hurried glance at the closing 
 scene of " the French prophets' " career. In the year 1706, 
 three of them took refuge in London, where they soon pro- 
 duced great excitement by falling down in convulsions, 
 foaming at the mouth, shrieking out exhortations and pre- 
 dictions ; and, above all, by uttering sounds believed to be 
 speaking in an unknown tongue. The specimens left of this 
 latter gift seem ridiculous enough. " My child (said the 
 Spirit by Fage, one of these three prophets), I am going to 
 
 * See Note E at end. 
 
( 45 ) 
 
 pour out terrible judgments on my enemies, and my last 
 sentence shall be, ' Tring trang, swing swang, hing hang.' " 
 These last words were explained by one of the party who 
 interpreted, as a direction " not to reject the prophet ;" be- 
 side which they probably alluded (he said) to the Jewish 
 Law not to exceed forty stripes. By a kind of deduction 
 equally rational, Sir Eichard Bulkeley, one of their many 
 converts, maintained that the fluent utterance of a youno- 
 attorney in one of their meetings must be a Hebrew hymn ; 
 because Sir Richard was familiar with Grreek and Latin, but 
 " could not talk Hebrew." But nowhere was the amazement 
 caused by the prophets so great as among the French Pro- 
 testant exiles settled in London. These deputed a body of 
 their ministers and elders to examine into the pretensions of 
 their recently-arrived countrymen. The commission pro- 
 nounced, them impostors, and called on the Government to 
 suppress them. The prophets immediately replied by de- 
 nouncing j udgments ; one of which was the speedy destruc- 
 tion of London by fire, a prediction which, strange to say, 
 was not assisted in the fulfilment. Some of their number 
 were exposed in the pillory, as public nuisances, but this 
 merely served to swell the crowd of their disciples. Of these 
 one of the most conspicuous was Henry Nicholson, of Trinity 
 College, Dublin, who had gone in a scoffing mood to one of 
 their meetings, but was there thrown into frightful convul- 
 sions, which speedily produced a change in his sentiments. 
 He now became a devoted adherent — a fact which he sig- 
 nalized by writing a tirade against universities, and against 
 all human learning. 
 
 When the excitement was at its height, it was announced 
 by seventeen predictions — " two of them (we are told) uttered 
 by inspiration, in public, by a child twelve years old" — that 
 Dr. Emes, one of the party just deceased, would rise openly 
 from^ the dead five months from the day of his death. On 
 the specified day the cemetery where the doctor's remains 
 
( 46 ) 
 
 lay was crowded, but notliing miraculous occurred. This 
 result produced general distrust ; and though Sir R. Bulke- 
 ley attempted a symbolical interpretation (as was after- 
 wards done in the case of Joanna Southcott), the party sank 
 rapidly to decay. Its end, indeed, seems to have been acce- 
 lerated by a suspicion that got abroad among the London 
 mob, then highly theological, that the movement was at 
 bottom Socinian, and designed to put " the Church in 
 danger." 
 
 The readers of Southey's Life of Wesley will recollect 
 that the latter, early in his career, addressed himself to these 
 French prophets, but was little satisfied with their "spiri- 
 tuality." It would have been well for him if he had in- 
 quired carefully into the physical manifestations that had 
 marked their history, for he might thus have paused before 
 he attributed the screechings and bodily convulsions of his 
 hearers to a miraculous display of divine power ; or boasted 
 that he " had [I quote his own words] laid numbers flat on 
 the ground by dint of a few words ; by the breath of his 
 mouth rendering them speechless, senseless, or tortured with 
 inexpressible agony ;" or, finally, from his dealings with hys- 
 terical devotees, chiefly women, have fancied that he was 
 able to work miracles in healing diseases, and casting out 
 demons. It is but right to add that Charles Wesley, his 
 brother, discouraged these displays of frantic excitement ; 
 as did some, at least, of the first Methodist preachers ; for we 
 have read of one of these in the North of Ireland, who, when 
 his congregation began to gesticulate and shriek hysterically, 
 told them that " he came there to instruct them, and not be 
 out-lunged by them, and, therefore, he would stop till they 
 ceased their ejaculations and became quiet." 
 
 A still more decisive and prompt method was adopted by 
 the Presbyterians in Scotland, when similar symptoms broke 
 out at this time in their places of worship, about which ample 
 details will be found in Sir John Sinclair's great work already 
 
( 47 ) 
 
 referred to. As our limited space will not allow us to say 
 much on this subject, I shall merely abridge the account of 
 this hysterical outbreak in the Shetland Isles, given by Eev. 
 William Archibald, who was a minister there in 1774. 
 "There is [he writes] a most shocking distemper, which has 
 prevailed in the last years very much among us. Those at- 
 tacked will suddenly fall down, toss their arms about, writhe 
 their bodies into various shapes, move their heads suddenly 
 from side to side, and, with their eyes fixed and staring, utter 
 the most dismal cries. The distemper is said to have origi- 
 nated with an epileptic female, who was seized in a church ; 
 from her the disease was communicated, but whether by 
 fear or sympathy is not easy to determine. Our churches, 
 especially in the warm weather, have been greatly disturbed 
 by their outcries on nearly every Sabbath. Few men are 
 attacked by it, as it seems more confined to the female sex : 
 girls of six years being attacked with it. In Northmaven, 
 and many other parishes, the disease seems now nearly ex- 
 tinct. In Northmaven the cure is said to have been afiected 
 by a very strange remedy, which shows the influence of 
 moral causes in removing, as well as in inducing, convulsive 
 disorders. The cure is attributed to a rough kirk officer who 
 tossed a woman in that state, with whom the congregation 
 had been often disturbed, into a ditch of water. She was 
 never known to have the same disease afterwards ; and all 
 others dreaded the same treatment." Before leaving Scot- 
 land I would gladly, if time permitted, enter into some de- 
 tails regarding that strange religious excitement, which com- 
 menced in the parish of Kosneath with cures of disease, re- 
 puted miraculous, by the brothers Mac Donald ; and with the 
 " Gift of Tongues" conferred on Mary Campbell; and which 
 ended in origing-ting •' The Catholic and Apostolic Church" 
 of the Irvingites. Meantime, however, the movement had 
 brought to an untimely grave, with a broken heart, him 
 whom Carlyle declares to have been a man of the noblest 
 
( 48 ) 
 
 nature lie ever knew — Edward Irving. The interesting Life 
 of Irving, by Mrs. Oliphant, is, I am sure, known to many 
 of you ; and I shall not allude to it farther than to mention 
 one fact which, I think, ought not to have been omitted in it. 
 Mrs. Oliphant dwells pathetically on the shock Irving re- 
 ceived on the morning of his trial and condemnation by the 
 Presbytery of London. The most gifted "prophet" in Ir- 
 ving's congregation, Mr. Baxter, had withdrawn from the 
 " bedlara-let-loose" amid which they were all living, into the 
 quiet and pure air of the country ; and when his nervous 
 system had regained a more healthy state, he returned to 
 Irving on that eventful morning, declaring that he now be- 
 lieved himself to have been instigated by a lying spirit. But 
 Mrs. Oliphant has neglected to mention another fact of the 
 same kind ; that death spared Irving from a still more crush- 
 ing blow ; for Mary Campbell, whom to the last he regarded 
 as " a saint," and to whom (as already noticed), " the gift of 
 tongues" was at first vouchsafed, made a confession similar 
 to Baxter's to her parish minister. Rev. Robert Story of 
 Rosneath. The life of the latter, by his son, I would ear- 
 nestly recommend to your perusal ; as besides being a cor- 
 rective to many statements in Mrs. Oliphant' s volume, it 
 records the life of one of the most sincere Christians and 
 exemplary parish ministers I have ever read. 
 
 The next of these epidemics which claims our notice need 
 not detain us long ; for, though strange enough in its mani- 
 festations, and affecting large numbers — 3000 at one time — 
 it does not present any features different from those we have 
 already mentioned. I refer to what is called the preaching 
 mania, which prevailed during 1842-3 in the poorest and 
 most ignorant parts of Sweden. In it women and children 
 bore the most prominent part, three of the most gifted 
 " preachers" being girls of ages varying from eight to twelve. 
 A most interesting account of this distemper is given in a 
 letter from the Lutheran bishop of Skara to his archbishop. 
 
( 49 ) 
 
 in which he describes the symptoms minutely. These con- 
 sisted of three stages — the " Convulsions," the " Inward 
 Light," and the "Utterance," or " Preaching," closely resem- 
 bling the degrees of ecstacy among the Camisards, which 
 have been already described. The good bishop was much 
 engaged in treating the disease medically, in which, he as- 
 sures us, he was uniformly successful. The Swedish Govern- 
 ment, too, on this occasion adopted a course widely different 
 from that pursued in the case of the witches of Mohra. In- 
 deed, their interference with these hysterical propagandists 
 would seem to have been of a like kind with that recom- 
 mended by Cromwell to his Committee of Godly Ministers, 
 in reference to Biddle, the first English Socinian, and a 
 crazed fanatic, who called himself, " by revelation," Thearo 
 John. " Do not burn or mutilate — lock them up, that they 
 may not mislead others. On frugal, wholesome diet, they 
 will not cost much, and may arrive at some composure." 
 
 We now proceed to consider what is called American 
 Kevivalism ; and in so doing our attention will be directed, 
 not to the doctrinal views or forms of worship of its pro- 
 moters, but to the strange physical manifestations which, as 
 the extracts I shall lay before you will show, are usually ex- 
 hibited in it. And I would request of you to bear in mind, 
 that the following extracts are taken from an advocate of 
 Revivalism, and from an impartial writer of the very highest 
 authority — Mr. Hepworth Dixon. Indeed, in dealing with 
 this subject there is a risk of incurring the charge of exag- 
 geration or caricature — an imputation brought against Mrs. 
 Trollope for the description she has left us of the wild scene 
 she witnessed at a Camp Meeting. The account, however, 
 which Mr. Dixon (our latest and best authority on American 
 affairs) has given of Camp Meetings at which he was present, 
 fully confirms previous statements. He compares the general 
 aspect of the assembly to the Epsom races on the Derby Day. 
 "In the tents" — I use his own words — "men are eating, 
 
 D 
 
( 50 ) 
 
 drinking, smoking, praying, gambling. In the midst of the 
 camp a pale Revivalist preacher (usually a Methodist) stand- 
 ing on the stump of a tree, is screeching and roaring to a 
 • wild throng of listeners equally ablaze with himself, and 
 feeders of his fire. His periods are broken by shouts and 
 sobs ; his gestures are answered by yells and groans. With- 
 out let or pause in his discourse, he goes tearing on, belching 
 forth a hurricane of words. While the men sit around him 
 white and still, and the women rush wildly about, tossing up 
 their arms, groaning out their confessions, casting themselves 
 on the earth, swooning into sudden hysterics, straining at the 
 eyes, and foaming at the mouth ; the staid red Indian looking 
 with contempt on these miseries of the white man's squaw; 
 and the negroes breaking forth into convulsive sobs, and 
 rapturous cries of ' glory, glory, alleluia.' Many die in the 
 camp." In a week or so the fire of religious zeal begins 
 to flicker, and die down. Quarrels break out, and bowie 
 knives are freely used ; " till the preacher, disgusted with 
 his hearers, ceases to give tongue, and betakes himself else- 
 where." 
 
 Thisipicture is sombre enough, but the consequences that 
 follow such proceedings — the suicides caused by despair of 
 salvation — the shaking of all religious convictions — the per- 
 manent unsettling of the reason which fills the Lunatic Asy- 
 lums — are absolutely frightful. And yet there are men 
 calling themselves followers of Him of whom it was predicted: 
 " He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear 
 his voice in the streets : a bruised reed shall he not break ; 
 and smoking flax shall he not quench till he send forth 
 judgment into victory" — there are men who think they do 
 Him service by propagating such delirious confusion ! This 
 fact will receive painful confirmation from the following ex- 
 tracts, taken from a work which has appeared within the last 
 few years, and has been received with such favour, that it 
 has gone through many editions, both in England and 
 
( 51 ) 
 
 America : I refer to the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, 
 a Wesleyan minister. This author glories in the leading part 
 he took among the American Revivalists, and boasts repeat- 
 edly that he was the instrument in turning multitudes from 
 the evil of their ways, and making them — in his own words — 
 "humble, shouting, happy Christians." I shall now lay be- 
 fore you Cartwright's own description of a convulsive disease 
 he assisted in disseminating, called the " Jerks," though I 
 feel most reluctant to offend your ears with the flippant and 
 burlesque style in which the narrative is given ; for the ludi- 
 crous treatment of political and domestic affairs with which 
 our old transatlantic friend, Sam Slick, and our more recent 
 acquaintance, poor Artemus Ward, have so' often amused 
 us, assumes a very different character when transferred by 
 Cartwright to the solemn subjects he is handling. He pre- 
 faces his account of this Revival, in which the "Jerks" broke 
 out, by claiming the entire glory of it for the Methodists ; 
 " for" — I use his own words — " Predestinarians of almost all 
 sorts put forth a mighty effort to stop this work of God ; 
 and some of the old starched Presbyterian preachers preached 
 against these shouting exercises, but the work went on until 
 our country all seemed coming home to God. And though 
 the Westminster Confession of Faith required them to believe 
 in Election and Reprobation, yet in this Revival they almost 
 to a man gave up these points of high Calvinism. The same 
 Confession also required every man, before he was licensed 
 to preach, to have a liberal education ; but this qualification 
 was dispensed with, and a great many fine men were licensed 
 to preach without this literary qualification." He adds, how- 
 ever, that " these Presbyterian preachers and members, not 
 being accustomed to shouting, when they yielded to it, went 
 into great extremes, and downright madness, to the great 
 injury of the cause of God." He now goes on to describe 
 this Revival in these words : " Just in the midst of our con- 
 troversies a new exercise broke out among us called the 
 
 d2 
 
( 52 ) 
 
 ^' Jerks," which was overwhelming in its effects on the 
 bodies and minds of the people. No matter whether saints 
 or sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or ser- 
 mon, and seized with a convulsive jerking all over ; and the 
 more they resisted it, the more they jerked. I have seen 
 more than 500 persons jerking at one time in my large con- 
 gregations. Most usually, to obtain relief, as they said, they 
 Would rise up and dance. Some would run, but could not 
 get away. To see these proud young gentlemen and ladies, 
 dressed in their silks, jewellery, and prunella, take the jerks, 
 would often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so, you 
 would see their fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly ; and so 
 sudden would be the jerking of the head, that their long, 
 loose hair would crack almost as loud as a waggoner's whip." 
 Now follows an episode highly jocular, narrating the way 
 in which Cartwright triumphed, by a trick, over two young 
 gentlemen who came to cow-hide him for giving tbeir sister 
 the jerks. And he next details another incident more tragi- 
 cal in its issue, as follows : " The rowdies were headed by a 
 very large drinking man, who cursed the Jerks and all re- 
 ligion. Suddenly he took the jerks, and started to run, but 
 jerked so powerfully, he could not get away. And though 
 he was violently agitated, he took out a bottle of whiskey, 
 
 and swore he would drink the Jerks to death ; but the 
 
 bottle was broken, and the whiskey spilled. Thereupon he 
 became very much enraged, and swore very profanely, his 
 jerks still increasing. At length he fetched a very violent 
 jerk, snapped his neck, and soon expired, his mouth full of 
 cursing and bitterness." 
 
 For so far, then, this Revival, w^hich spread like wildfire 
 through the Western States, was a complete success for Cart- 
 w^right and his coadjutors, as against Predestinarians and 
 rowdies. But as magicians are said at times to evoke spirits 
 that prove uncontrollable, so, as you may no doubt antici- 
 pate, this torrent of delirium soon burst through the limits of 
 
( 53 ) 
 
 that dogmatic system within which these preachers wished 
 to confine it ; and the narrative of Cartwright now proceeds 
 in a less exultant tone. " There were many other strange and 
 wild exercises into which the subjects of this Kevival fell : 
 such, for instance, as what was called the running, jumping, 
 barking exercise. The Methodist preachers generally preached 
 against this wildness. I did it uniformly in my little minis- 
 trations, and sometimes gave great offence. From these wild 
 exercises another great evil arose. They professed to fall 
 into trances and see visions ; they would fall at meetings, 
 and sometimes at home ; they would lie apparently power- 
 less and motionless, sometimes for a week at a time, without 
 food or drink ; and when they came to, they professed to 
 have seen heaven and hell [with the inhabitants of both 
 regions] ; they would prophesy, and, under the pretext of 
 divine inspiration, would predict the time of the end of the 
 world and of the millennium. This was the most troublesome 
 delusion of all, it made such an appeal to the ignorance, 
 superstition, and credulity of the people, even saint as well 
 as sirmer. If I or any one opposed it, these visionists would 
 single him out, and denounce the dreadful judgments of God 
 against him ; they would prophesy that fire would come down 
 from heaven and consume him, like the blasphemous Shakers. 
 They would proclaim that they could heal all manner of 
 diseases, and raise the dead, just like the diabolical Mormons, 
 They professed to have converse with the spirits of the dead 
 {in happiness or woe], like the modern Spirit-rappers. Such 
 a state of things, I hope in God, I shall never see again." 
 
 We cannot wonder much, after this description, at a case 
 that follows it, and which I shall give, abridging Cartwright's 
 narrative. It is that of *' a very wicked, noted gambler, who 
 was an esquire," and who, under the teaching enforced by 
 Cartwright, "burned his cards, found peace, and w^as soundly 
 converted to God." Unfortunately, " through family influence, 
 he became acquainted with the Mormons, who told him he 
 
( 54 ) 
 
 Avas just .right as far as he had gone ; as were the Methodists, ' 
 who, after the Mormons themselves, were the best people in 
 all the land, but they had stopped short of their glorious mis- 
 sion, and through fear of persecution had shrunk from their 
 duty ; that the best and holiest men and women amongst the 
 Mormons had been members of the Methodist church." As 
 the position occupied both by Cartwright himself and by 
 " this shining, shouting squire" seems rather untenable, we 
 are not surprised to learn that the latter joined the Mormons, 
 nor to find that when Cartwright " last met him he was in 
 daily expectation of the gift of tongues, and power to raise 
 the dead, and may probably now have fifteen or twenty 
 wives." 
 
 It is but justice to Cartwright himself to state that Joe 
 Smith, the founder of the Mormons, had tried his powers of 
 persuasion on him without shaking his faith in Methodism, 
 or indeed producing any other effect on him than eliciting 
 from him some conversational amenities that are too forcible 
 to be transcribed. The gist, however, of his discourse was 
 of this nature : " Uncle Joe, I expect that he whom you 
 serve will come some of these days, and take you to himself. 
 And (he continues) shortly after this an outraged and deeply- 
 injured people took the law into their own hands, and killed 
 him." And, we may add, they thus invested a notorious 
 swindler and impostor with the halo of martyrdom, and so 
 gave to his system — which would otherwise, in all proba- 
 bility, have ended with its author — a vitality and perma- 
 nence which renders it one of the chief wonders of the 
 nineteenth century, and one of the darkest stains on modern 
 civilization. 
 
 We thus find, from the admission of this partisan of 
 American Revivalism, that its result is to unsettle the religious 
 convictions of those who c.ome within its influence. And such 
 has always been the case in that country ; for we learn from 
 the testimony of an eye-witness (quoted in Bishop Wilber- 
 
( 55 ) 
 
 force's "History of the Episcopal Church in America") that 
 consequences precisely similar followed the earliest Revival 
 there, namely, that produced by the preaching of Whitefield. 
 Indeed, so notorious is this fact, that the more sober-minded 
 members of the Methodist body in America have ceased to 
 give encouragement to such proceedings as marked the mi- 
 nistry of Cartwright. 
 
 Those of you vp-ho have read the two works of Mr. Dixon, 
 "New America" and "Spiritual Wives," will remember his 
 observations on the unfailing tendency of such scenes to drive 
 votaries into the ranks of the Mormons, the Bible Commu- 
 nionists, the Shakers of Lebanon, and other extravagant sects, 
 whose practices, almost inconceivable to us, tend to render 
 credible the accounts left by the earlier Christian writers of 
 the orgies and immorality that prevailed among some branches 
 of the old Gnostics; and you will have remarked in *'New 
 America" the colloquy in which Elder Frederick, the male 
 head of the Shakers of Lebanon, declared to Mr. Dixon that 
 he regarded Revivals as a species of spiritual cyclones, or- 
 dained to waft converts within the precincts of his own com- 
 munion — a communion which we are surely justified in 
 designating " a Paradise of Fools," since their main tenet is 
 that this earth is Heaven ; and, in consequence, they reject 
 alike the practice of medicine and matrimony. For, as Elder 
 Frederick candidly admitted, his sect, which can only be re- 
 cruited by full-grown converts, must soon die out, unless it 
 be fed by Revivals. 
 
 I shall only notice very briefly a Revival that took place, 
 not in the United States, but in Jamaica, in 1860, among the 
 Negro population. Some of you, no doubt, read at the time 
 the accounts given of it in the periodicals ; and must recollect 
 how the religious stimulants working, in this instance, on the 
 susceptible African temperament, produced a state of delirium 
 in which human beings seemed to be transformed into the 
 lower orders of the animal creation ; and men made in the 
 
( 56 ) 
 
 image of God to liave sunk down into the condition of beast- 
 hood. 
 
 Before quitting this subject, I would wish to guard against 
 being misunderstood as to the sense in which the term " Re- 
 vival" is here used, and to state that there is one kind of 
 Revivalism which must claim our hearty approval. If mem- 
 bers of any denomination, who profess and call themselves 
 Christians, have so far forgotten their duty to God as to be 
 living in contempt of His word and commandment, and with; 
 out attending public worship; or, again, if any persons are 
 so unfavourably circumstanced as to be without the ordinary 
 means of grace, it is both right and necessary that every 
 Christian exertion should be used to awaken the former class 
 to a sense of their danger, and to minister to the spiritual 
 wants of the latter. But the instances we have already con- 
 sidered will surely be sufficient to warn us against attributing 
 hysterical convulsions, in whatever way induced, to the action 
 of divine grace ; when we know that such physical manifes- 
 tations have been produced by the most opposite and, indeed, 
 trivial causes. In further illustration of this last statement, I 
 am tempted to lay before you an account of another curious 
 hysterical attack, presenting symptoms exactly like those 
 before mentioned ; though, by ending with it, I feel that I 
 am suggesting a comparison of my paper with the mountain 
 in labour. " In a Cotton Factory at Hodden Bridge, Lanca- 
 shire, on the 15th February, 1787, a girl put a mouse into 
 the breast of another girl who had a great dread of these 
 animals. The latter was immediately seized with violent 
 convulsions, which lasted for twenty-four hours. On the next 
 day, three more girls of the Factory were similarly affected. 
 By this time the alarm was so great, that the whole Factory 
 work, in which 300 were engaged, was stopped ; and an idea got 
 abroad that a plague had been introduced in a bag of cot- 
 ton. On the 19th, the number of patients was twenty-four ; 
 of these, five worked at another Factory, some miles distant, 
 
( 57 ) 
 
 and had been infected merely from report and dread of ttie 
 plague. The symptoms were at first a feeling of strangula- 
 tion ; then convulsions, in some cases lasting for twenty-four 
 hours, and requiring five persons to hold the patients. Dr. 
 St. Clare of Preston was sent for, and gave the sufferers re- 
 lief by means of an Electric machine. He then made them 
 spend a day or two in dancing and amusing themselves ; and 
 they were soon, all of them, able to resume their factory 
 work." 
 
 But I must fulfil my promise just made, and bring no more 
 Mental Epidemics under your notice ; though, if time per- 
 mitted, I would gladly lay before you some details regarding 
 that strange movement, which at this moment, under the name 
 of " Spiritism," " Spirit-rapping," or " Table-turning," counts 
 nearly three millions of adherents (belonging chiefly to the 
 upper classes) in America and Europe — a movement which 
 originated about twenty years ago with a cobbler (Davis, the 
 Poughkeepsie seer), and which can now point with triumph 
 to an American Judge, and a distinguished Professor of Ma- 
 thematics in London, as its leading advocates ; and to the 
 Emperor of the French, as its disciple. I must, however, 
 content myself with the barest allusion to it ; and merely say 
 that, whilst the charges of imposture, trickery, and credulity 
 so lavishly bestowed upon it seem insufficient to account 
 for facts connected with it, and to explain its wide and rapid 
 prevalence, it yet presents but few features that are novel to 
 any one who has devoted some attention to such subjects. 
 The reported movement of tables and chairs is, indeed, some- 
 thing peculiar to Spiritism ; and whether these gyrations can 
 be explained by "unconscious cerebration,'' "involuntary mus- 
 cular action," or the other causes assigned by opponents, I do 
 not presume to decide. The rapping, however, which is 
 attributed to disembodied Spirits, is as old as the date of 
 the first haunted house, and has always showed the same 
 tendency to desist in the presence of sceptics, or parties 
 
( 58 ) 
 
 whose sympathies did not flow in the same channel as that of 
 the believing circles present. And again, the suspension of 
 the law of gravitation to allow the Mediums to float through 
 the air, is an occurrence common enough, if we may believe 
 the accounts given of magicians, or the legendary lives of 
 Christian saints, or the more recent statements made re- 
 garding the performance of Hindoo Ascetics. Nay, the re- 
 jection by advanced Spiritists of all revelation, except such 
 as is communicated by their ministering spirits — this, and 
 their other coagulum of impiety, as recounted by Mr. Dixon 
 and others, have been closely foreshadowed in Jean Paul 
 Richter's fearful dream of the Atheist's universe — a universe 
 filled with ghosts who have no Almighty Ruler. 
 
 We have now finished our imperfect sketch of these 
 Mental Epidemics ; and I think there is one lesson which 
 must have been impressed on all whilst engaged in consi- 
 dering them, and that is, the danger incurred by persons, 
 especially by those of an excitable or nervous temperament, 
 who come into contact with these hysterical outbreaks ; for 
 such persons are nearly sure to suffer from sympathetic 
 contagion. This fact, though most important to be borne in 
 mind, has been but too little attended to ; and one or two 
 additional instances, by way of illustration and warning, 
 may not be superfluous. Lucian, a Pagan author of the 
 second century, thus describes the frantic rites with which 
 the worship of the Syrian gods was celebrated in his day. 
 ** In these mysteries attend a great number of men, and 
 furious fanatical women. The priests begin the rites ; and 
 while they are celebrating the orgies, making horrid noises, 
 and cutting themselves, the fury presently seizes the rest ; 
 and many who came only as spectators are affected in the 
 same manner," and they then proceed to mutilate themselves 
 in a way we cannot here describe. If we now pass to more 
 recent times, we find in John Wesley's Journal many simi- 
 lar cases recorded, in which — I use his own words — " the 
 
( 59 ) J 
 
 power of God was exerted to convince gainsayers." One of 
 these must suffice, which is thus described by Wesley : — "A 
 Quaker [at one of the meetings] was biting his lips and 
 knitting his brows at the dissimulation of these creatures 
 (that is, of those tossing in convulsions), but suddenly he 
 dropped down, as thunderstruck, in an agony terrible to be- 
 hold. We besought God not to lay folly to his charge ; and 
 he soon lifted up his head, and cried aloud, ' Now I know 
 that thou art a prophet of the Lord.'"* Wesley's modern 
 disciple, Cartwright, was no less successful in this way. I 
 give one instance from his Autobiography, though reluctant 
 to repeat his irreverent flippancy in your hearing. These 
 are his words, one or two phrases being softened or omitted 
 as rather forcible : — " Betsy, the daughter of a Baptist minis- 
 ter, would stand on our seats ; and, when any one would fall 
 under Divine power, she would say it was nothing but a 
 Methodist fit. But just as I was closing up my sermon, and 
 pressing it with all, the power I could command, sinners sud- 
 denly fell by scores through the assembly. It was supposed 
 500 thus fell in five minutes. One of these was Betsy. 
 When I came to her, she said, * Oh, do pray for me ; I am 
 afraid I am lost for. ever,' I said, * Betsy, get up, you have 
 only got the Methodist fit.' But she only roared the louder 
 two or three times. I bid her get up, saying, ' you are merely 
 playing the hypocrite ; get up, Betsy.' But I assure you she 
 was past getting up. Just hard by I saw her father, who 
 was crying, and shaking every joint in him." He, too, was 
 facetiously bantered in language we may safely omit. Cart- 
 wright next goes on to inform us, that immediately " Betsy 
 got religion ; and she then assured her father that he had no 
 religion at all, and begged him to repent, and get his soul 
 converted." 
 
 I will now tax your patience, and the kindness with which 
 
 * See Note F at end. 
 
( 60 ) 
 
 you have listened to me, no longer, but hasten to a conclu- 
 sion which, I feel, must be most unsatisfactory. It is usual 
 after citing, as has been done, a number of isolated occur- 
 rences apparently of a similar nature, to attempt some gene- 
 ralization — to refer them to some law — in a word, to give an 
 explanation of them. This, as already remarked, I cannot 
 pretend to do ; nor can I do more than express my own be- 
 lief — merely as an opinion to which I do not demand assent 
 — concerning them. These strange phenomena, of the real 
 occurrence of which we have no reason to doubt, seem to me 
 to be neither the tricks of imposture, nor the work of dis- 
 embodied Spirits, or of any supernatural power, but to lie 
 within the limits of that mysterious organism itself, in which 
 God has united man's bodily and spiritual nature. Ac- 
 cordingly, in every instance we have mentioned, from the 
 mania of the Milesian women to the disease caused by the 
 mouse at Hodden Bridge, the symptoms, at least in an early 
 stage, seem to be amenable, partly to the control of the patient's 
 own will, partly to judicious medical treatment. But here, 
 in our present state of knowledge, we must, I think, pause ; 
 for, of all subjects of rational investigation, that on which 
 human science has, perhaps, made the least advance is, in 
 tracing the connexion between soul and body, and their 
 action on each other ; nor do man's present mental powers 
 seem to be able fully to fathom the mystery. Advancing 
 knowledge may, no doubt, remove many errors, and intro- 
 duce sounder views than have prevailed concerning these 
 subjects. We know, for instance, that there are peoples at 
 this day who look on madmen as inspired characters, and 
 listen to their ravings as oracular utterances. We remem- 
 ber, too, that the ancient Greeks called epilepsy "The Sacred 
 Disease," supposing it to be the immediate work of a deity, 
 just as in the Witch-mania some peculiar bodily affections 
 were attributed to wicked Spirits. Medical science, however, 
 has pointed out TO US the far more merciful expedient of 
 
( 61 ; 
 
 sabjecting the lunatic to treatment likely to restore to him 
 the use of his reason. The same science has, since the days 
 of Hippocrates, divested epilepsy of its supernatural charac- 
 ter, and has taught us something concerning its prevention 
 and cure. In like manner future investigations, based on, 
 established facts, may extend the circle of light amid the 
 darkness that surrounds these Mental Epidemics. But at 
 present it seems the duty of the sober inquirer not to be 
 over-solicitous to refer such cases as we have been consider- 
 ing to causes already known, or to form precise theories 
 about them. 
 
 I have thought it right to state the conclusion at which I 
 have arrived regarding these occurrences ; but, as was already 
 remarked, I do not wish to press it on the acceptance of any 
 here. It may be allowable, with the same proviso, to men- 
 tion a conjecture which has been hazarded concerning these 
 mysterious and perplexing subjects. When " this mortal 
 shall have put on immortality," the reign of law will be re- 
 cognized throughout the entire Work of the Great Artificer ; 
 and what now may seem fortuitous irregularities, both in the 
 outer and inner framework of man's organism, will all be 
 found subordinated to some great principle of universal order; 
 and, consequently, the Epidemics which have swept over the 
 bodies and minds of our race may then appear to have been 
 as little outside the domain of law as are now the storms at 
 sea, which overwhelm the strongest vessels. 
 
 The time of this awful change is not very remote from 
 even the youngest amongst us. May we all be found ready, 
 when our final summons come"s, to pass into that state 
 " where we shall know, even as also we are known." 
 
NOTES. 
 
 !N'oTE A, Page 6. 
 
 The nature of the subject has obliged me to select as illustrations such 
 phenomena only as have been exhibited simultaneously by numbers of per- 
 sons. Those that are presented in isolated cases, whether occurring spon- 
 taneously, as in Trance, Catalepsy, &c., or produced by an artificial process, 
 as in the so-called Mesmerism, Hypnotism, &c., are omitted. Any one in- 
 terested in such matters will find abundant information regarding the 
 latter in the popular works of Colquhoun, Gregory, Braid, &c. 
 
 There is one mysterious kind of phenomena of this latter description 
 which does not seem to have met with the attention it deserves, viz., that 
 arising from the influence exerted by the volition of individuals not only 
 over some portions of the bodily organism, but also over the vital func- 
 tions. I will briefly refer to a few recorded cases of this class. 1st. Dr. 
 Livingstone (" Travels in South Africa," p. 126) states that among the 
 Bechuanas it is usual to find women who have long since — as long as fif- 
 teen years — ceased to bear children able at will to act as wet nurses. He 
 quotes from Baron Humboldt the case of a man who had discharged the 
 same office ; and after adducing some anatomical considerations, the Doctor 
 concludes that the account given in "The Cloud of Witnesses " of a man's 
 thus supporting an infant may be " literally true." He might also have 
 referred to Franklin's " Journey to the Polar Regions " (p. 157) for a 
 story of an Esquimaux who after the death of his wife was similarly ena- 
 bled to supply her place., 2nd, Pliny, Plutarch, and Lucian tel! us that 
 Hermotimus of Clazomene could throw himself into a trance in which his 
 body lay as dead while his soul visited distant places — a mode of travel- 
 ling which at last proved fatal to him, as, through the treachery of his 
 wife, his body was burned — in his absence ! This story is rather mythi- 
 
( 64 ) 
 
 cal, but the following accounts seem more trustworthy. St. Augustin (De 
 Civitate Dei, Lib. 14, cap. 24) gives as well authenticated the case of a 
 presbyter named Restitutus who could by an effort of his will bring on a 
 state of ecstacy in which his breathing was suspended, and his body was 
 insensible to pain. In more recent times, Jerome Cardan declared that 
 he possessed a similar power ; and Dr. Cheyne, an English physician of 
 celebrity in the last century, has left a detailed account of a Colonel Towns- 
 end who " could die or expire when he pleased, and yet by an effort come 
 to life again." Cheyne, with two other medical men, were, at the Colonel's 
 request, witnesses of this strange experiment ; and when, after the cessation 
 of the action of both heart and lungs for half an hour, they were satisfied 
 that life was extinct, the patient again revived. But a still more marvellous 
 instance of this power of suspending the vital functions is that said to have 
 been possessed by Runjeet Singh's Fakeer, and which was witnessed by 
 many British officers. According to their report, he could at will suspend 
 respiration and pulsation, and after being buried in this state for weeks, 
 he would again gradually revive. In the Appendix to Ennemoser's " Ma- 
 gic " will be found an account given by an eye-witness, Sir C. Wade, of 
 the disinterment and restoration to animation of this Fakeer in 1837, after 
 he had been buried for six weeks in a vault sealed with Runjeet Singh's 
 own signet. 
 
 The brief space allowed by a note will not suffice for details regarding 
 another class of phenomena which seems closely connected with those just 
 mentioned : I mean the strange marks that have appeared on the bodies 
 of those subject to trance. AVhether these arise spontaneously, or are 
 produced unconsciously by the ecstatics themselves, I leave to others to 
 decide ; but of their existence there seems to be no reason to doubt. St. 
 Francis of Assisi was the first to exhibit on his body the " Stigmata," 
 or five wounds of our Saviour. A short time previous to this saint's 
 death, after an serial tour, and a dialogue with unseen powers which leave 
 the performances of modern "mediums" far behind, he is reported 
 to have presented these marks for the first time ; and hence some of 
 his followers exalted him virtually to the same rank with our Lord — the 
 notion of a " Complement of the Trinity" not being restricted to a single 
 case, as the mere readers of Dr. Pusey's " Eirenicon " might suppose. 
 However, the rival order of the Dominicans discovered in one of their own 
 number — St. Catherine of Sienna — not only the traces of the five wounds, 
 but also of the crown of thorns ! Since then down to our own times per- 
 sons thus marked have abounded in the Church of Rome — to the confu- 
 sion of heretics. It might, however, have damped the ardour of some 
 
( 65 ) 
 
 living English devotees of high rank, when descanting on modern ecsta- 
 tics (such as Maria de Moerll of Kaltern), had they been aware that St. 
 Ignatius Loyola had attributed to the work of the devil these marks on 
 the body of a young woman who had them distinctly traced, but whose 
 conduct was not very exemplary. Vid. Maury, " La Magie," p. 398. In 
 fact these Stigmata seem to lose somewhat of their value as an " articu- 
 lum stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae," when we find them present in the Jan- 
 senist Convulsionists, and when we learn from Sprenger's "Life of Maho- 
 met " that advanced Moslem saints also bear the marks of the wounds 
 received by their founder in the battle of Ohod, 
 
 Note B, Page 7. 
 
 E^eaders of Calmeil's able work, " De laFolie," will, I think, be often 
 disposed to say " melius ne scire fateri^^^ rather than to adopt the explana- 
 tions there proposed. The same may be said of the attempts to reduce 
 the symptoms exhibited in Demoniacal Possession to known causes. For 
 instance, Farmer, who refers Possession to natural causes, identifying 
 it with madness and epilepsy, explains the whole matter quite satisfacto- 
 rily to himself, by attributing it to the "temperaments," "humours," and 
 " animal spirits," supposed, in his day, to reside in our body. " The tem- 
 peraments of the body (he tells us), the motion of the blood, the excess or 
 defect of the animal spirits, will destroy the regular exercise of the under- 
 standing. It is matter of common observation that what renders the 
 spirits too volatile causes the raving species of madness 5 and what de- 
 presses them, the melancholy. These remarks are equally true of epi- 
 leptical distempers." — Q. E. D. (On Demon., p. 160). I have avoided all 
 reference to Possession in modern times, though it appears occasionally to 
 assume an epidemic form in Abyssinia and Hindostan. Those who are in- 
 terested in such matters will find ample details regarding the mysterious 
 malady called by the natives "Bouda," in Parkyns' "Travels in Abyssinia." 
 In the " Dublin University Magazine" a series of most able papers ap- 
 peared during the years 184:8-50 on " The Waren" of the Hindoos. The 
 number far January, 1850, contains an account of a species of Posses- 
 sion presenting phenomena of " double-consciousness" that are extremely 
 curious. It will also be* noticed that no mention is here made of the 
 "Revival" that took place some years ago in the North of Ireland, 
 I have intentionally abstained from alluding to this movement for fear 
 of wounding the sensibiUty of Presbyterian friends, which I must have 
 
 E 
 
( 66 ) 
 
 done, if their views on this subject are fairly represented in a sermon 
 preached before their General Assembly in 1860. From it the following 
 extract is taken : — " If they wanted a proof of the truth of the doctrines 
 and polity of the Presbyterian Church, they had it in this Revival. Upon 
 whom had God showered down His blessings ? Upon the Presbyterian 
 Church. It did not substitute for the Supremacy of Christ Succes- 
 sion, Confirmation, and other forms and rituals of man's invention ; but took 
 His Holy Word as its standard. And God had given them and the 
 world, in this Revival, a proof of the truth of Presbyterianism." It may 
 be, however, remarked, without an intention to give offence, that Mr. 
 Dixon, in his valuable work '' Xew America," states that he travelled, 
 during this Revival, through the chief scenes of it, and regarded its phe- 
 nomena as identical with the " exercises" that take place in American 
 Revivals, the glory of which the Methodists claim as their own. I can 
 only add, ''-non nostrum tantas componere lites. Et vitula tu dignus et 
 hie.'" It is more to the purpose of this note to say, that the ablest pamph- 
 let by far — "The Work . and the Counter- Work" — called forth by 
 this Revival, seems also liable to the charge of attempting to explain 
 occurrences, to do which our present state of science is not adequate. 
 For instance, the direction given by the Abbot Simon to the Hesychasts 
 of Mount Athos affords to the accomplished Author data for explaining 
 physiologically the case of these ecstatics. " Anticipating (he writes) the 
 researches of modern physiology, they had discovered, if not the theory, yet 
 the effect of innervating the great centre of the ganglionic system. They 
 did thus produce in their own minds visions of light ; these visions were hys- 
 terical ; the fruits of the supremacy of the nervous system of the belly over 
 the mind." (p. 58). Now, the importance, nay, dignity, of this part of our 
 frame was reluctantly admitted even by those old sages who professed a 
 contempt for " matter" in general ; so much so, that some of the Gnostics 
 asserted that man was formed by two different artificers; the divinely- 
 executed portion of the work extending a little way below the waist ; and 
 the evil craftman's composition reaching from thence downwards. Emi- 
 nent philosophers, too, both ancient and modern, have dwelt on the high 
 office the epigastric region holds in man's intellectual and moral economy. 
 Thus Seneca declares : ^'^ Magna pars lihertatis est bene moratus venter.'''' 
 And Cabanis, the Father of French Ideology, has fixed the seat of " poetry 
 and religion" thereabout. A lecturer on morals with ourselves also — 
 Sydney Smith — has assured us that a " misguided morsel of food vexing 
 the duodenum is an overmatch for ethical teaching." Still, another part 
 of the body to which so grave a significance is not usually attached, has 
 
( 67 ) 
 
 been just as successfully employed to produce the Quietest effect above- 
 mentioned. This will appear from the following description given of the 
 Hindoo Yogis by Dr. Zimmerman. " These have overcome the world, 
 and live like hermits, so deeply sunk in contemplation, that they look for 
 hours at one spot, insensible to all other objects ; but then (as they state) 
 they see God. For some days before they live on nothing but bread and 
 water, sink into deep silence, and then turn their eyes, in deep concentra- 
 tion of soul, to the point of the nose; and now the white light appears." 
 It is a comfort to know that, having no more useful occupation, they 
 can at least enjoy their " white light" in peace ; and have never been sum- 
 moned before Councils to declare whether the object of vision is the sub- 
 stance of their deity, or only his environment. It is hardly necessary 
 to state that mystics have sometimes been favoured with a sight of this light 
 without any preliminary process. Thus John "Woolman, the Quaker, 
 assures us that it was presented to him by direct revelation, with the words 
 " certain evidence of divine truth," twice repeated. He describes it 
 as " about nine inches in diameter, of a clear easy brightness, and near its 
 centre most radiant." Sic itur adastra. 
 
 Note C, Page 23. 
 Surely the accurate Hecker is mistaken when he states (p. 136), that 
 " Clairvoyance was a phenomenon till then unknown." On the contrary, 
 it was said to be of frequent occurrence among those Possessed, and with 
 sorcerers. Thus Olans Magnus describing the magic rites of the Finns 
 and Laps, states " that by means of these they could throw themselves 
 into a deep sleep, or trance, in which they saw the most remote things as 
 if they were present ; discerning what either their friends or enemies were 
 doing hundreds of miles away." Cotton Mather, too, in his " Hist, of New 
 England," Book vi., chap. 7, gives many cases "attested by persons of the 
 utmost veracity, and unquestionably well supported, of people thus prae- 
 ternaturally indisposed, who knew things done at a distance, and what 
 persons were bewitched at distant places." Instances also are given by 
 Glanvil, " Sadd. Trium." 2nd Relat. The Komish Ritual, too, makes it 
 one mark of a Demoniac that " he is able to discover distant and occult 
 things." This proves that pretensions to Clairvoyance are of old date ; 
 but they are older still; for Eusebius,- "Eccl. Hist.," Book v., ch. 16, quotes 
 from an unnamed author the following account ofMontanus: "He was 
 carried away in spirit, and wrought up into a certain kind of frenzy, and 
 irregular ecstacy, uttering strange things, and proclaiming what was con- 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 trary to the institutions of the Church." Farther, the evil spirit which 
 led Montanus astray "excited two others, females, and filled them with a 
 spirit of delusion, so that they also spake like Montanus in a kind of 
 ecstatic frenzy, and in a manner strange and novel. The same inflated 
 spirit taught them to revile the whole Church, because it did not honour 
 this false spirit of prophecy." Some of these Montanists would seem to 
 have anticipated the feats of modern Spiritists, for one of their number, 
 named Theodotua, " falling into trances, gave himself up to the evil spirit, 
 was by him tossed like a quoit in the air ; and thus, as some say, perished." 
 Such is the account given by adversaries. Let us now hear Tertullian, 
 who regarded Montanus as the promised Paraclete, The following pas- 
 sage, which I translate literally, occurs in his " Treatise De Anima," cap. 
 ix. : " There is at this day among us a sister who has obtained the gifts 
 of revelation, which, by means of ecstacy, she experiences in spirit, during 
 the solemnities of the Lord's Day, in church. She converses with angels, 
 sometimes also with the Lord, and sees and hears mysteries. Of some 
 persons she discerns the thoughts of the heart, and prescribes medicines for 
 those that require them. As the Scriptures are read, or psalms sung, 
 materials are supplied for her visions." These she was able to report for 
 edification, when the service was ended, and the congregation dismissed. 
 This feeling of veneration for Montanus was not limited to early times, for 
 John Wesley " doubted whether that arch-heretic Montanus was not one 
 of the holiest men of the second century :" Stevens' " History of Me- 
 thodism," ii. 390. And powers of Clairvoyance precisely similar to those 
 of the Montanists were claimed by the first Quakers. Thus George Fox 
 informs us that " Quakers can discern who are saints, who devils, and who 
 apostates, without speaking even a word. They have the Word of God, 
 Christ, which is infallible, in their hearts, to judge persons and things." 
 Great Mystery, p. 89. Of this supernatural gift of introspection many 
 instances are recorded in Fox's "Journal;" thus he says (p. 18): "I 
 cast my eyes upon a woman, and discerned an unclean spirit within her." 
 An insight concerning medicine was also imparted to him, for he assures 
 us that he * ' knew not only a renewing of the heart, and a restoration of 
 the mind, but the virtues of the creatures were also opened unto him ; so 
 that he began to deliberate whether he should practise medicine for the 
 good of mankind." Indeed there are many things connected with Mes- 
 merism, Spiritism, &c., which prove the truth of the old proverb, "there 
 is nothing new but what has been forgotten." 
 
( 69 ) 
 
 Note D, Page 30. 
 
 Compare St. Augustin, De Civ. Dei, Lib. 21, cap. 8: "We say, in- 
 deed, that marvellous occurrences (portenta) are contrary to Nature ; but 
 they are not really so. For how is that contrary to Nature which takes 
 place by the will of God, since the will of the Almighty Creator is the na- 
 ture of each thing He has created ? A marvellous event, therefore, is not 
 contrary to Nature, but only contrary to Nature as known to us." The two 
 following extracts will, I think, suffice to show whether this Father or 
 Hume had, in reality, a more philosophic conception of Nature and its 
 laws : — " A miracle is a violation of the laws of Nature ; and as a firm and 
 inalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a mi- 
 racle is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be ima- 
 gined :" Essay 10, On Miracles. " God, the Creator of all Nature, does 
 nothing contrary to Nature ; for that must be conformable to the nature 
 of each thing which He does from whom all Nature proceeds. But we 
 say, without impropriety, that God does something contrary to Nature, 
 when it is contrary to the course of Nature as known to us. This ordi- 
 nary course of Nature thus known to us is what we are wont to call Nature ; 
 and when God does anything contrary to this, such events are termed 
 miracles (mirabilia). But against that highest law of Nature which is far 
 exalted above the knowledge alike of the ungodly, and of men still clothed 
 with infirmity, God no more acts, than He acts against Himself." Con- 
 tra Faustum, Lib. 26, cap. 3. 
 
 Note E, Page 44. 
 
 The asbestic waistcoat of Claris, and the fire -proof covering of Marie 
 Sonet, already mentioned, may safely be regarded as mythical parodies 
 of Daniel, iii. 27 ; yet these reported fiery trials, and, again, the accounts 
 given of the Jansenist Convulsionaires taking live coals into their mouths 
 with impunity, may rest on a substratum of fact. For one of the strange 
 things connected with Ecstatics is their reputed freedom, not merely from 
 a sensation of pain, but from bodily injury, when exposed to the action of 
 fire. Some of the Ordeals by Fire in the Middle Ages read very strangely 
 in contemporary Chronicles, but they would occupy more space than 
 could be allowed in a note. The following instances, however, which 
 seem well attested, will suffice as illustrations ; — Pliny (Lib. vii. 2) tells 
 us that " the Hirpi of Mount Soracte were exempted from military scr- 
 
( 70 ) 
 
 vice by a perpetual decree of the Roman Senate; because, in an annual 
 sacrifice -which was there oflfered to Apollo, they walked over a burning 
 heap of wood without sustaining bodily injury." Virgil alludes to this 
 custom in these words : " Medium freti pietate per ignem, Cultores 
 multa premimus vestigia pruna." In Mr. Davenport's " Sketches of 
 Imposture and Credulity," p. 80, a similar feat is described by Mr. 
 Swan, a missionary, as performed by the Shamans of Siberia. After a 
 Corybantic dance, one of them "appeared wrought up into a higher 
 ecstacy. He staggered round the fire, now and then jumping violently, 
 and unconscious of the presence of any one. He then threw off his boots, 
 and began to rake out the burning cinders from the fire with his hands, 
 and spread them by the side of the fire-place. He took up a piece of 
 live charcoal, and held it for some time in his hands. Next he began to 
 dance upon the glowing embers with his naked feet." Mr. Swan calls 
 all this " a farce." Another msisionary, M. Hue, pronounces a still more 
 severe sentence on proceedings of a similar kind ; for, after informing us 
 that " pieces of iron are made red hot, and then licked by the Lamas 
 with impunity," he attributes it to the direct agency of Satan. — Travels, 
 c. 9. The last instance I shall cite is taken from Colonel Walmsley's 
 " Sketches of Algeria during the Kabyle War." London, 1858. The 
 scene was a religious house, and the actors Arabs of a fanatical sect, 
 called Aissoua. ' ' A young Arab gave me (says the Colonel) two or three 
 sharp pokes with his elbow. Turning to him, I noticed that his features 
 were deadly pale, and convulsed, and his limbs were working as if drawn 
 by wires. Uttering two or three sharp yells, he bounded into the centre, 
 and began gesticulating and dancing like a madman, until foam and 
 saliva poured from his mouth. The old priest now approached the 
 dancer, holding by a long handle a large piece of red hot iron, which he 
 offered to him ; but he refused it with horror. The hot iron was re- 
 turned to the fire, and the tambourines were beat more furiously. The 
 perspiration stood thick on the devotee's forehead, and the foam flowed 
 down as the priest again approached him with the iron glowing red. 
 This time the man took it in his left hand, several times passing his right 
 hand over the red hot metal. He looked a shocking sight, as he stood 
 there bmi-ning himself, his eyes starting from their sockets, the foam trick- 
 ling from his mouth, and the most horrible guttural sounds preceeding 
 from his heaving chest. With a wild yell, he then took the burning iron 
 between his teeth, and holding it firmly, agitated his lips against the 
 scorching metal. He now sustained the whole simply by the grip of his 
 teeth ; and thus holding the red hot mass, he walked across the floor to 
 
(71) 
 
 the priest, who took the handle, and relieved him of his burthen. The 
 sickly odour of burning flesh overpowered even that of the subtle in- 
 cense, and yet no trace of fire could be noticed on his hands or hps. All 
 at once he threw himself on all fours ; and furiously gr owling and howl- 
 ing, made insane dashes and snaps at the spectators. I could see, as he 
 snapped at me, that his eyes were open, but looked dead and inanimate." 
 After tearing with his teeth, and devouring a leaf of the prickly Cactus, 
 a sting of which made the Colonel suffer for his experiment in touching 
 it, "the devotee next proceeded to singe his hands and arms with the 
 candle ; and taking some pieces of live charcoal from the brazier, he 
 placed them in his mouth, and walked round the room, blowing sparks 
 all about him. All this he did with the most perfect impunity, as far as 
 I could see, and I was close to him all the time. But nature at last be- 
 came exhausted, and he suddenly fell back on the ground, as if he had 
 been shot. Turning him on his face, the priest kneaded the patient's 
 back with his feet, which process seemed at once to revive him ; for a few 
 seconds later he stepped passed me, a little out of breath, but otherwise 
 none the worse for his late exertions. How all this was effected, I know 
 not." 
 
 A similar orgie was witnessed among these Arabs by Mr. Pope, and is 
 described by him in "The Corsair and his Conqueror," pp. 191,204. 
 In the latter case there were four devotees engaged at the same time in 
 these disgusting rites. 
 
 I^OTE r, Page 59. 
 
 This Quaker, who looked with wonder on the scene of frenzied ex- 
 citement before him, must have been ignorant that his own communion 
 had exhibited similar hysterical outbursts little more than half a century 
 before this period. These seizures are thus described in Barclay's Apo- 
 logy, p. 359. " Sometimes the power of God will break forth into a 
 whole meeting ; and there will be such an inward travail while each is 
 seeking to overcome the evil in themselves, that by the strong contrary 
 .workings of these opposite powers (like the going of two contrary tides), 
 every individual will be strongly exercised, as in a day of battle ; and 
 thereby trembling and motion of body will be upon most, if not upon 
 all ; which, as the power of truth prevails, will, from pangs and groans, 
 end with a sweet sound of thankfulness and praise." These " exercises" 
 are described in less measured language by Francis Higgins, in his 
 
( 72 ) 
 
 "Brief Narrative of the Irreligion of the Northern Quakers," quoted by 
 Dr. Sheppard in his excellent Essay, " A Fallen Faith," p. 34. " Those 
 in their assemblies that are taken with these quaking fits fall suddenly 
 down, as though they were in epilepsy, and lie grovelling on the ground, 
 struggling as it were for life. While the agony of their fits is on them, 
 their lips quiver, their flesh and joints tremble, their bellies swell as 
 though blown with wind [the globus, hystericus] ; they foam at the 
 mouth. When the fit leaves them, they roar out horribly, with a voice 
 greater than the voice of a man; the noise is a" fearful noise, and greater 
 sometimes than any bull can make." Indeed, there seem to have been 
 maiiy points both of resemblance and of contrast between Fox and John 
 Wesley ; both believed themselves endowed with power to cast out 
 demons, and to work other miracles, though Wesley never laid claim, 
 like Fox, to the gift of " discerning Spirits," of " seeing visions," or of 
 prophecy. Nor again, did Wesley attach the same importance to the 
 *< Spirit," " Inner Light," or " Verifying Faculty," as Fox, who regarded 
 its authority as greater than that of the Written Word of God: an 
 opinion held at the present day not only by the schismatical Hicksites, 
 but by other parties, who seem to be indebted to Fox for no Article of 
 their Creed except this one. As revolutionists in religion, Wesley and 
 Fox appear to me to have occupied, respectively, positions somewhat 
 analogous to those ofMirabeau and of Danton in political affairs during 
 the great French Revolution. Dr. Sheppard, in the essay above referred 
 to (p. 53), has called attention to a curious fact concerning their follow- 
 ers at the present day : viz., that " the Quakers as a class are much better 
 educated than the Methodists." This certainly at first sight may seem 
 strange, since Fox denounced University education as tending to pro- 
 mote that " diversity of languages which had been sent as a judgment on 
 the builders of Babel;" whilst Wesley, though he told his preachers that 
 " they should no more affect the character of a gentleman than that of a 
 dancing-master," yet never forgot that he was such himself; nor in any 
 way discouraged " letter -learning." In fact, he more than once ex- 
 presses his disgust at the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of '* Dissen- 
 ters ;" and he tells us that he '' a thousand times found his father's words 
 true, viz. : ' you may have some peace with the Dissenters if you do not 
 so far humour them as to argue with them ; but if you do, they will out- 
 face you and out-lung, you^ and at the end you will be where you were at 
 the beginning.' " I think the explanation lies in this, that Wesley did not 
 attempt any change in the social condition of his followers, who belonged 
 chiefly to the poorer classes ; whilst Fox required all his adherents to 
 
• ( 73 ) 
 
 adopt a system of social asceticism; wliicli, though it excluded them 
 from every other source of excitement, yet left open to them what is per- 
 haps the most exciting passion of all — the pursuit of wealth. When, 
 therefore, they became rich as a body, no -artificial regulations or sump- 
 tuary enactments could prevent them from sharing in the enlightenment of 
 the social class to which they belong. In the Parsees of Bombay we find 
 a close parallel to the Quakers in this respect. 
 
 Concluding Note. 
 
 A friend to whose judgment I attach great importance has objected, 
 that in the preceding remarks there is not sufficient allowance made, nor 
 in fact, any place left, for the action of Spirits, whether of an angelic or 
 of a maleficent nature. Now I would earnestly protest against any such 
 inference being drawn from what I have here stated, believing, as I do, 
 the clear declarations of Holy Scripture concerning the existence of both 
 classes of Spirits, and the separate functions assigned to them. But I 
 cannot think it allowable to attribute epidemic affections, where the par- 
 ties subject to them hold some particular dogmatic opinions, to the agency 
 of Spirits, when precisely similar symptoms exhibited by patients in the 
 hospitals are regarded by all — not excepting, I believe, the followers of 
 Mr. Home — as the results of natural disease. The limited space at my 
 disposal will only allow me to cite one case in illustration of my mean- 
 ing. It is described by Mr. Holden in the St. Bartholomew's Hospital 
 Reports, 1867, vol. 3, p. 299. It will be observed, that in this instance 
 some of the most curious phenomena that occurred among the Jansenists, 
 &c., are presented. The patient is a bright -looking boy of 12|, who 
 presents every appearance of perfect health. All that he complains of is 
 Tvhat he calls his "bump," which is about the size of a hen's egg, and 
 lies on the right side of his neck. If the " bump" is touched, even most 
 gently, the boy loses all consciousness, and becomes deaf, dumb, and 
 blind ; while his body becomes arched like a bow, and is supported only 
 by the back of his head and his heels ; and his arms are rigidly extended. 
 He may now be pinched, pricked, &c., but shows no signs of sensation. 
 After remaining in this state about a minute, he draws a long breath, 
 which is followed by a deep sigh. Instantly the spasm ceases, and the 
 body falls, seemingly lifeless, on the bed. After two other sighs the boy 
 in a few seconds awakes as from a profound sleep, and is none the worse 
 
 F 
 
( 74 )• ^ 
 
 for, what he has.. goiie through. By continuous gentle manipi^latlon of 
 the bump, the boy has .been kept unconscious for twenty minutes. 
 Whenever the hump is touched, even when the boy is fast asleep, the 
 same phenomena occur ; and it has been found that similar results follow 
 when the backbone in the dorsal region is touched. Another remarkable 
 phase of the boy's affection is .Ms-barking fit, which takes place every 
 day at the same time, almost to a minute (vid. Chambers' Encyclop. 
 Art. "Nervous Diseases"). When, therefore, we know so little of such 
 disorders— nay, when the whole subject of our spiritual and bodily na- 
 tures and their interaction are so mysterious, is it anything but a " mul- 
 tiplication of causes" — an explanation of " obscurum per obscurius," to 
 refer such perturbations of our ordinary condition to the capricious 
 doings of disembodied Spirits ? - Some persons, indeed — the learned 
 Grotius among the number — are said to hav6 felt their adherence to the 
 Christijau- religion strengthened by a belief in the constant presence, and 
 occasional appearance of such Beings; but most of those who read the 
 account of "The General Council" of the Spiritists, held at Chicago in 
 1865, wiU, I think, come to tlie conclusion that the tendency of this 
 movement is to reject Christianity, in, tUe common" acceptation of the 
 term, and to substitute for it a system of Theurgy, based vja-tually on * 
 Polytheism; sintie the different classes of Spirits; whose doings are re- 
 ported would seem to possess spontaneity; and to be little, if at all, 
 conditioned by the ordinance of a Supreme Ruler. - 
 
 4 
 
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