Nevertheless, it would be wrong to infer, from the fact that the proper mesmeric phenomena are explicable on natural principles, that the practice of mesmerism is lawful or not dangerous. It is an artificial disease, and injurious to the physical constitution. It moreover facilitates the Satanic invasion. Satan has no creative power, and can operate only on a nature created to his hands, and in accordance with conditions of which he has not the sovereign control. Ordinarily, he can invade our bodies only as they are in an abnormal state, and by availing himself of some natural force, it may be some fluid, or some invisible and imponderable agent like electricity, or what Baron Reichenbach calls od, and Mesmer animal magnetism, and the older magnetists called spirit of the world. The practice of mesmerism brings into play this force, and thus gives occasion to the devil, or exposes us to his malice and invasions. But, though it is unwise, as well as unscientific, to ascribe to Satan what is explicable on natural principles, the contrary error is the one which in our times is the most necessary to be guarded against. Nothing is more unphilosophical than to treat the dark facts of human history as unreal, or to attempt to explain them all without resort to demonic influence. Many of the facts recorded, no doubt, never took place. Many were the result of fraud, imposture, jugglery, and many are explicable by reference to the abnormal development of human nature; but after making all reasonable deductions for these, there remains a residuum, as Mr. Merton has said, which it is as absurd to attempt to explain without the action of evil spirits, as to explain the light of day without the sun, or the existence and preservation of the universe without God. Not otherwise can you ever succeed in explaining the introduction, establishment, persistence, and power of the various cruel, filthy, and revolting superstitions of the ancient heathen world, or of pagan nations in modern times. No genuine philosopher will attempt to explain them on natural principles alone. They reveal a more than human power, and we have no alternative but to ascribe them either to God or to the devil. We cannot ascribe them to God, for they were too foul and filthy, too deleterious in their effects, too debasing and enslaving in their influence, to be ascribed to a good source. They were, then, from Satan, operating upon man’s morbid nature, and permitted by Infinite Justice as a deserved punishment upon the Gentiles for their hatred of truth, and their apostasy from the primitive religion. Men left to themselves, to human nature alone, however low they might be prone to descend, never could descend so low as to worship wood and stone, four-footed beasts, and creeping things. To do this needs Satanic delusion.