“Superstition, my friend, is a word oftener used,” replied Mr. Merton, “than understood. The heathen religions were all superstitions, I grant, because they all ascribed effects to unreal or inadequate causes. To believe in the existence of good and bad angels is not superstition, if good and bad angels really exist, any more than it is to believe in the existence of men and women, horses or oxen. Where there is no error, there is no superstition. Suppose a fairy really to exist, there is no superstition in believing the fact. Suppose the ministry of angels to be a fact, there is nothing superstitious, unreasonable, or unscientific in believing it, or in ascribing to that ministry real effects. Suppose fallen angels or wicked spirits do really exist, do really tempt us, and by Divine permission, do really besiege or possess us, there is no superstition in believing it, in taking the proper precautions against them, or the proper measures to disperse or expel them. If the real origin of the phenomena we have been considering is diabolical, nothing is more reasonable than to believe it; and to ascribe them to natural causes, would be unscientific, and itself a sort of superstition. Undoubtedly, the spirit-rappers, or spiritualists, as they call themselves, are superstitious. What they call spiritualism is rank superstition, because they believe the phenomena are produced by the _shades_ or spirits of the dead, and the word _superstition_ was originally used, I believe, to imply a belief in, and a dread of, the influence of the departed on the living; but to ascribe them to fallen angels, if such they are, is no superstition at all, for then they are ascribed to an adequate cause, and to their real cause. “There are two opposite errors,” concluded Mr. Merton, “both equally hostile to religion and to good sense,—superstition and irreligion. Each is an abuse, as the schoolmen say, an _excess_ in a contrary direction; and unhappily, the tendency of most men is to one or the other. Nothing is more certain than that in every age much superstition has been connected with the doctrine I have contended for.” “That,” said I, “is what makes me dread and hesitate to accept it.”