“So,” said Dr. Corning, “here we are in the middle of the nineteenth century, in this age of science, after so much has been said and written against the folly, ignorance, barbarism, and superstition of past ages, back in the old superstitious belief in demons, good and bad angels, ghosts and hobgoblins, fairies and ghouls, witches and witchcraft, sorcery and magic. Well, gentlemen, I have done. I am inclined to believe there must be a devil, for if there were no devil we could hardly have such poor success in bringing the world to reason, and curing it of superstition.” “There may be more truth in what you say than you suspect,” said Mr. Merton. “The devil is the father of ignorance, credulity, and superstition, no less than of false science, infidelity, and irreligion.” CHAPTER XX. SHEER DEVILTRY. A few days after this last conversation, I was visited by Judge Preston, whom I had slightly known in former years,—a man of very respectable gifts and attainments, and of high standing in the community. He had been a politician, lawyer, legislator, and was now a Justice of the Supreme Court of his native State. He was moral, upright, candid, and sincere, but like too many of his class, as well as of mine, had grown up and lived without any fixed or determinate views of religion. To say he had rejected Christianity, would be hardly just; but he had only vague notions of what is Christianity, and if he did not absolutely disbelieve a future state, he had no firm belief in the immortality of the soul. He rather wished than hoped to live again. He had not long before lost his wife, whom he tenderly loved, and her death had plunged him into an inconsolable grief. He wept, and refused to be comforted. A friend drew him one evening into a circle of Spiritualists or Spiritists, and after much persuasion, induced him to seek through a medium an interview with his deceased wife. What he saw and heard convinced him, and he soon found that he was himself a medium—a writing medium, I believe. Judge Preston, in connection with a physician of some eminence, and his friend Van Schaick, formerly a member of the United States Senate, a prominent politician a few years since, and in religion a Swedenborgian, had just published a work, of large dimensions as well as pretensions, on Spiritualism and Spirit-manifestations, very well written, and not without interest to those who would investigate the subject of demonic invasion. He said that he had called to see me in obedience to an order given him by Benjamin Franklin, who assured him that I could, if I chose, give him some information on the subject of the spirit-manifestations, for I had had more to do with them than any man living.