In numerous towns within more than half of the states,--I state from personal inquiry,--there are at this day old women, who children, at least, are taught to believe have the power of bewitching! My first fright, when a little boy on my way to school, was from being told that an old woman, whose house we were passing, was a witch. These modern witches may not have arrived at the dignity of floating through the air on a broomstick, or crossing the water in a cockle-shell, as they were said to in ancient times; but the belief in their existence at this enlightened period of the world is more disgraceful than in the darker ages, and the frightening of children and the naturally superstitious is far more reprehensible. There is no such thing as a ghost. There are no witches. "The Bible teaches that there were witches," has often been wrongly asserted. That "choice young man and goodly," whose abilities his doting parent over-estimated when he sent him out _in search of the three stray asses_, and whose idleness prompted him to consult the seer Samuel, and by whose indolence and procrastination the asses got home first, was a very suitable personage to consult a "_woman of a familiar spirit_" (or any other woman, save his own wife), from which arose the great modern misnomer of the "_Witch of Endor_." "To the Jewish writers, trained to seek counsel only of Jehovah (not even from Christ), the 'Woman of Endor' was a dealer with spirits of evil. With us, who have imbibed truth through a thousand channels made turbid by prejudice and error, she is become a distorted being, allied to the hags of a wild and fatal delusion. We confound her with the (fabled) witches of Macbeth, the victims of Salem, and the modern Moll Pitchers. "The Woman of Endor! That is a strange perversion of taste that would represent her in hideous aspect. To me she seemeth all that is genial and lovely in womanhood." "Hearken thou unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength when thou goest on thy way." Then she made and baked the bread, killed and cooked the meat,--all she had in the house,--and Saul did eat, and his servants. I see nought in this but an exhibition of rare domestic ability and commendable hospitality; in the previous act (revelation), nothing more than a manifestation of the power of mind over mind (possibly the power of God, manifested through her mind?), wherein she divined the object of Saul's visit, and, through the same channel, surmised who he was that consulted her. [Illustration: WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD.]