because of their subtlety. That there are such I am as little able
to doubt as I am to affirm anything concerning them; but if there
are such, why not evil spirits, as well as wicked men? Many
travellers who have been conversant with savages have been fully
persuaded that their jugglers actually possessed some means of
communication with the invisible world, and exercised a supernatural
power which they derived from it. And not missionaries only have
believed this, and old travellers who lived in ages of credulity,
but more recent observers, such as Carver and Bruce, whose testimony
is of great weight, and who were neither ignorant, nor weak, nor
credulous men. What I have read concerning ordeals also staggers
me; and I am sometimes inclined to think it more possible that when
there has been full faith on all sides these appeals to divine
justice may have been answered by Him who sees the secrets of all
hearts than that modes of trial should have prevailed so long and so
generally, from some of which no person could ever have escaped
without an interposition of Providence. Thus it has appeared to me
in my calm and unbiassed judgment. Yet I confess I should want
faith to make the trial. May it not be, that by such means in dark
ages, and among blind nations, the purpose is effected of preserving
conscience and the belief of our immortality, without which the life
of our life would be extinct? And with regard to the conjurers of
the African and American savages, would it be unreasonable to
suppose that, as the most elevated devotion brings us into
fellowship with the Holy Spirit, a correspondent degree of
wickedness may effect a communion with evil intelligences? These
are mere speculations which I advance for as little as they are
worth. My serious belief amounts to this, that preternatural
impressions are sometimes communicated to us for wise purposes: and
that departed spirits are sometimes permitted to manifest