The story of the witchcraft delusion in New England is a sequel and companion-piece to the history of the conflict with the Quakers. Both exhibit the least attractive side of our forefathers, and both point the moral that the intermeddling by ecclesiastics in matters of public policy is dangerous to the state. It is a strange tale of superstition and of panic, painful to dwell upon, but necessary to a proper comprehension of the characters of the leaders of New England, and of the conditions under which the struggling colonies developed their strong and distinct individuality. It should always be remembered that belief in witchcraft was not a peculiarity of New England, and that the reason the colonists there have been judged so hardly for their panic is that men have felt that they had claimed to be superior to the men of their generation, and thus should be measured by a higher standard. Their claim had some justification. The leaders of thought in New England had advanced in some directions far beyond their contemporaries; in political insight and political adroitness they have had few equals in any period; but they were hampered and burdened by the very religion which to their fathers had been a gospel of liberty and a source of inspiration. This had become a theology with its dogmas and its rules; the devout and earnest ministers who had contended for their faith in England, or had braved the perils of the seas and the loneliness of the wilderness to be free to worship God as they chose, had given place to the second generation, who had never known suffering, and were therefore ignorant of mercy; men who were enthusiastic indeed, but not so much enthusiastic for religion as for their creed; not so zealous for Christ as for their own peculiar way of worshipping him. The result had been a general lowering of spiritual tone, which was recognized and freely acknowledged and deplored by the best men of the period. It seems inevitable that this hardening and narrowing should follow ages of contest and struggle. When the faith becomes a war-cry, it necessarily loses much of its spirituality. Beliefs for which one age has suffered become crystallized into formulas for the next, and divines wonder at the hardness of men’s hearts in refusing obedience to what once indeed had been a law of life, but by being made a commandment has become a law unto death.