Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 by Various
page 60 of 313 (19%)
page 60 of 313 (19%)
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whose familiar haunted the house and made it ring at times like a
bedlam? It was a peculiar characteristic in this chapter of _diablerie_, that when the Scriptures were being read, or prayers attended, the spasms became terrific; but when any ungodly book was substituted in place of the Bible, there was an immediate relief. The age was one of wonders, and Mather devotes an entire book to what he calls Thaumaturgia. Many of its statements are bold impositions on the reader's credulity; but there was much which, in those days of ignorance, must have seemed to Mather to be undeniable phenomena of a mysterious nature. After the colony had escaped many minor dangers, a new ordeal of suffering awaited it in a faith in sorcery, resulting in the horrible episode of Salem witchcraft, which may be considered the darkest stain upon the age. The death-beds and parting scenes in such a community were cherished features in domestic history, and almost every cottage could boast its Euthanasy. Ministering angels not only hovered over the couch, but touched their harps in melodies, whose music sometimes reached the human ear. Youth tender and inexperienced claimed a share in these triumphs, and Nathanael Mather, though but seventeen, expires in all the maturity of a saintly old age. Coming down to the survivors of the first emigration, we find them lingering amid the respect and veneration of the community, and their graves were deemed worthy of patriarchal honor. After their departure the ministry seems to have lost tone and fervor. The union of church and state swept them into secularities, and thus impaired their strength. So great was the decline, that by the close of the first century, formality chilled the churches, and the people bewailed their coldness, while the aged wept at the remembrance of by-gone days. Cotton Mather had prophesied of a coming time when churches would have to be gathered _out |
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