Superficially the theory seems plausible enough, and yet it will not stand a moment before the judgement of history. The cultus of the Saints and their Relics is not an outcome of ancient hero-worship, but of reverence for the Martyrs, and this can be demonstrated without any possibility of question. So here we have two very striking parallels, each of which has an analogous starting-point, two cults which naturally develop upon logical and similar lines, but without any interdependence whatsoever. Needless to say, the unbalanced folklorist, who is in general far too insufficiently equipped for any such inquiry, has rushed in with his theories—to his own utter undoing. And so, with regard to Witchcraft, there appear in the rites of the Sabbat and other hellish superstitions to be ceremonies which are directly derived from heathendom, but this, as a matter of fact, is far from the case. Accordingly we recognize that the thesis of Miss M. A. Murray in her anthropological study _The Witch-Cult n Western Europe_,[65] although worked out with nice ingenuity and no little documentation, is radically and wholly erroneous. Miss Murray actually postulates that “underlying the Christian religion was a cult practised by many classes of the community” which “can be traced back to pre-Christian times, and appears to be the ancient religion of Western Europe.” We are given a full account of the chief festivals of this imaginary cult, of its hierarchy, its organization, and many other details. The feasts and dances—the obscene horrors of the Sabbat—“show that it was a joyous religion”! It is impossible to conceive a more amazing assertion. Miss Murray continues to say that “as such it must have been quite incomprehensible to the gloomy Inquisitors and Reformers who suppressed it.” The Reformers, for all their dour severity, perfectly well appreciated with what they were dealing, and the Inquisitors, the sons of S. Dominic who was boundless in his charity and of S. Francis, whose very name breathes Christ-like love to all creation, were men of the profoundest knowledge and deepest sympathies, whose first duty it was to stamp out the infection lest the whole of Society be corrupted and damned. Miss Murray does not seem to suspect that Witchcraft was in truth a foul and noisome heresy, the poison of the Manichees. Her “Dianic cult,” which name she gives to this “ancient religion” supposed to have survived until the Middle Ages and even later and to have been a formidable rival to Christianity, is none other than black heresy and the worship of Satan, no primitive belief with pre-agricultural rites, in latter days persecuted, misinterpreted, and misunderstood. It is true that in the Middle Ages Christianity had—not a rival but a foe, the eternal enemy of the Church Militant against whom she yet contends to-day, the dark Lord of that city which is set contrariwise to the City of God, the Terrible Shadow of destruction and despair.