they were especially exposed to the malice and spite of the devil, who desired to thwart their purpose. They saw special providences in every common occurrence that made for their welfare or that seemed to vindicate their theological prejudices, the envy and spite of the devil in every misadventure or threatening circumstance. Cotton Mather may be taken as a characteristic specimen of the more intelligent and devout thinkers among the men of the second generation, and for him the whole daily life of the colony was a spiritual warfare. The very object of his greatest work, the “Magnalia Christi,” is to show the special workings of Divine Providence in favor of the people of Massachusetts, and to exhibit how they had battled against “principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The savage Indians were supposed to be devil-worshippers, and to serve him at their “pow-wows” in the dark recesses of the unbroken forest. Every storm, every meteor, every unnatural birth, was a portent.[51] It is not strange that under such conditions a strong belief in the reality of witchcraft should have existed, especially when the delusion was general in Europe as well as in America. The belief in the power of evil spirits to interfere with man has been held in every age and in all parts of the world. It is a survival of that fear of the unseen, which filled the souls of men in those early ages when, ignorant of the forces of nature, they felt the universe about them to be hostile and ascribed all unfamiliar sensations to the agency of some invisible enemy. It is not strange that such a belief should have arisen. Man’s commonest experiences were those of hostility and pain; wild animals were hostile, his wilder fellow-men were still more hostile; from both he suffered injuries that were inflicted consciously and with evil intent; by analogy--the earliest, as it is the latest, form of reasoning--the other evils he suffered must be also the acts of conscious beings. The twinges of rheumatism were no less real than the pain from the blow of a foeman’s club; it was only natural to reason that they had been inflicted by an unseen enemy. The fear of the unseen, so characteristic of primeval man, has left many traces in language, religion, and custom. Like many another instinct inherited from savage life, it remains lurking in the human mind, and at certain times comes to the surface. It has developed itself in two directions. On the one hand it has led to religion, to a faith in a supernal Protector with whom the darkness and the light are both alike; on the other, to a grovelling fear of evil spirits, which has been the cause of the belief in magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. The fear of Jehovah was, for Israel and for the world, the beginning of wisdom. The “seeking unto wizards that peep and mutter” is the parody of religion, which seems always to exist by its side.