Their faculties for receiving, containing, holding on to, and obeying an inherited FAITH were the _deluded_ ones. In common with all Christendom the convictors of witches had been deluded into adoption, or at least retention, of a woful creed concerning the devil. At that time public sentiment in most countries on the continent of Europe, and also in both Old and New England, demanded rigid enforcement of all laws which that false, mischief-working creed had engendered and recorded in statute-books. Such laws were plain and imperative; both jurors and judges, suppressing sentiment, must yield to logic--must convict and sentence. By no other course could they be true to their convictions of duty toward society around them, or toward God on high. Yes; an imported monastic-born FAITH, unnatural, erroneous, and more than barbarous, deluded kind and good men to feel that they must suppress sympathy, ignore their tender impulses, benumb their hearts, and, whither God's voice was believed to call, go forward in stern, agonizing resolve to thrust a devil-helped worker, however good and estimable in outward seeming, to where the wicked one could do them and theirs no mischief through that mortal ally. Such was the logical and stern demand of the old deluding and heart-curbing creed. Do we wonder in our day how such monstrous faith could ever have obtained and kept both an abiding hold and controlling authority in any clear head that was joined to a kindly heart? Seeds of faith get lodgment in the human brain while it is yet too young to understand or even try to test the nature and quality of what falls upon it. Whatever the church and public believe, and have believed through a long past, is ever dropping its own seed into opening minds, which forthwith germinates therein. This sends its roots deep into virgin soil, grows with vigor there, and becomes fruitful of the same old faith during that very early portion of life in which the infantile questioning, analyzing, and reasoning faculties are scarce able to doubt the soundness or excellence of what thence has grown and matured in close alliance with themselves. Faith's right and fitness to define duty, and the child's obligation to execute its requirements, are usually conceded by all the other faculties. The truer and better the man, the more surely will he carry out his faith to its logical demands, even though, Abraham like, he have to lay his dearest on the altar of sacrifice, to lift the knife, and nerve himself to plunge it into his own child's heart, unless some voice from on high, more potent than previous faith, shall bid him hold. Few other than strong men and true, conscious of being soldiers in heaven's army, would march resolutely to the Devil's living and shotted guns, purposing to destroy them; for their destruction was instinct with, and inseparable from, anguish to Christian neighbors and friends. Extremists alone would do that. None midway between vile