additionally to revolt from the very idea of necromancy, strictly so
called. Man is a mortal, or an immortal being. His frame either wholly
"returns to the earth as it was, or his spirit," the thinking
principle within him, "to God who gave it." The latter is the
prevailing sentiment of mankind in modern times. Man is placed upon
earth in a state of probation, to be dealt with hereafter according to
the deeds done in the flesh. "Some shall go away into everlasting
punishment; and others into life eternal." In this case there is
something blasphemous in the idea of intermedding with the state of
the dead. We must leave them in the hands of God. Even on the idea of
an interval, the "sleep of the soul" from death to the general
resurrection, which is the creed of no contemptible sect of
Christians, it is surely a terrific notion that we should disturb the
pause, which upon that hypothesis, the laws of nature have assigned to
the departed soul, and come to awake, or to "torment him before the
time."


ALCHEMY.

To make our catalogue of supernatural doings, and the lawless
imaginations of man, the more complete, it may be further necessary to
refer to the craft, so eagerly cultivated in successive ages of the
world of converting the inferior metals into gold, to which was
usually joined the _elixir vitae_, or universal medicine, having
the quality of renewing the youth of man, and causing him to live for
ever. The first authentic record on this subject is an edict of
Dioclesian about three hundred years after Christ, ordering a diligent
search to be made in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of
the art of making gold and silver, that they might without distinction