“But a residuum remains which it is impossible to explain without the assumption of Satanic intervention. Such are some of the cases which you have heard me relate. Such are many of the phenomena which you yourself must have witnessed, and perhaps been instrumental in producing. Such, too, is the inspiration of Mahomet, if we may rely on the account given us by his friends, as well as the demon of Socrates, and such are evidently the well known cases of the Camisards or Tremblers of the Cevennes in 1688, George Fox and the early Quakers, Swedenborg, and the trance or ectasy of the Methodists, and finally Joe Smith and the Mormon prophets. In all these cases there are evident marks of superhuman intervention, and which no man in his sober senses, and instructed in the Christian religion, can pretend is the intervention of the Holy Ghost, or of good angels. The perturbation, the disorder, the trembling, the falling backwards, the foaming at the mouth, the violence which always in these cases accompany the presence of the spirit, are so many sure indications that it is an evil, not a good spirit. The Lord was not in the strong wind that rent the mountain; he was not in the fire that wrapt it in flames; but in the still small voice that made the prophet step forth from his cave to listen. When the Lord comes in his gracious visitations all is sweetness and peace. No disturbance of the physical system, no whirling and howling, no storm or tempest, no wringing and twisting of the arms and legs, no violent or indecent postures, no abnormal development or exercise of the faculties, mark the incoming of the Holy Ghost. All is calm and serene; the understanding is illuminated, the heart is warmed, the will is strengthened, and the whole soul is elevated by the infusion of a supernatural grace. There is no crisis, no forgetfulness on awaking from a trance. But whenever it is the reverse, wherever there is violence, distortion, quaking, trembling, and disturbance, we know that if any spirit is present it is an evil spirit, which delights in violence and disorder, and displays power without love, force without goodness, knowledge without gentleness.