“There is, no doubt, much in either order set down by the vulgar to foreign intervention, that is really explicable on natural principles. Good, pious people cry out ‘a miracle,’ not seldom where no miracle is; and I should be sorry to be obliged to make an act of faith in all the miracles recorded in the legends of the saints. I should be equally sorry to be obliged to believe every tale that is told of Satanic invasion. I have a deep and settled horror of scepticism, but also a horror no less of superstition. I would no more be credulous than incredulous. I do not like to undertake the refutation of those who explain the facts of the night-side of nature on natural principles, for it is hard to do it, without giving more or less occasion in many minds to superstition. It is only in cases, like the present, where the disease is an epidemic, more destructive than the cholera or the plague, that I am willing to do what I can to draw attention to their real character. “In regard to the dark prodigies, if I may so call them, I think not a few included by the vulgar under this head should be dismissed as mere jugglery; others may be explained by animal magnetism, and imply neither fraud nor dealing with devils, but are not innocent, because produced not by a justifiable motive, and are in all cases to be discountenanced because of dangerous tendency; others still may, perhaps, be explicable by natural causes, which science has not yet investigated, and of which we are ignorant.