A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale, one of the greatest judges and lawyers of England, for having caused children to vomit crooked pins. Think of that! The learned judge charged the intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to the existence of witches, that it was established by all history and expressly taught by the Bible. The woman was hung and her body was burned. Sir Thomas Moore declared that to give up witchcraft was to throw away the sacred scriptures. John Wesley, too, was a firm believer in ghosts, and insisted upon their existence after all laws upon the subject had been repealed in England, and I beg of you to remember that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church. In New England a woman was charged with being a witch and with having changed herself into a fox; while in that condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs, and a committee of three men was ordered by the Court to examine this woman. They removed her clothing, and searched for what they were pleased to call witch-spots--that is to say, spots into which a needle could be thrust without giving pain; they reported to the Court that such spots were found. She denied that she had ever changed herself into a fox. On the report of the committee she was found guilty, and she was actually executed by our Puritan fathers, the gentlemen who braved the danger of the deep for the sake of worshiping God and persecuting their fellow men. I belong to their blood, and the best thing I can say about them, and that which rises like a white shaft to their eternal honor, is that they were in favor of education. A man was attacked by a wolf; he defended himself and succeeded in cutting off one of the animal's paws, and the wolf ran away; he put it in his pocket and carried it home; there he found his wife with one of her hands gone, and he took that paw from his pocket and put it upon her arm, and it assumed the appearance of a human hand, and he charged his wife with being a witch. She was tried, she confessed her guilt, and she was hung and her body was burned! My! is it possible? Did not somebody say something against such an infamous proceeding? Yes, they did! There was a Young Men's Association who invited a man to come and give his ideas upon the subject. He denounced it. He said it was outrageous, that it was nonsensical, that it was infamous and the moment he went away the young men met and passed a resolution that he had deceived them; and the clergy at that time protested and said, of course, let the man think, if you call that kind of stuff thinking. But there was one man belonging to this Association who had the courage to stand by the truth. Whether he believed in what the speaker said or not, he had that manliness; and I take this opportunity to thank from the bottom of my heart a man. I have no idea he agrees with me except in this: Whatever you do, do it like a man and be honest about it.