I.  GROWTH OF A THEOLOGICAL THEORY.



The popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms,

thunder, and lightning, took shape in myths representing Vulcan

as forging thunderbolts, Jupiter as flinging them at his enemies,

Aeolus intrusting the winds in a bag to Aeneas, and the like.  An

attempt at their further theological development is seen in the

Pythagorean statement that lightnings are intended to terrify the

damned in Tartarus.



But at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific

view.  In Greece, the Ionic philosophers held that such phenomena

are obedient to law.  Plato, Aristotle, and many lesser lights,

attempted to account for them on natural grounds; and their

explanations, though crude, were based upon observation and

thought.  In Rome, Lucretius, Seneca, Pliny, and others,

inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the germs

of a science.  But, as the Christian Church rose to power, this

evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in the

Scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a new

view, or rather for a modification of the old view.



This ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and

reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the

letter of Scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances

of various fathers in the early Church.  As to the general

features of this new development, Tertullian held that sundry

passages of Scripture prove lightning identical with hell-fire;

and this idea was transmitted from generation to generation of

later churchmen, who found an especial support of Tertullian's

view in the sulphurous smell experienced during thunderstorms.

St. Hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the

heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the

upper waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.[199]

St. Ambrose held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking

through the solid firmament, and cited from the prophet Amos the

sublime passage regarding "Him that establisheth the

thunders."[200]  He shows, indeed, some conception of the true

source of rain; but his whole reasoning is limited by various

scriptural texts.  He lays great stress upon the firmament as a

solid outer shell of the universe:  the heavens he holds to be

not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their

character from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians and from the

one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm.  As to "the waters which are

above the firmament," he takes up the objection of those who hold

that, this outside of the universe being spherical, the waters

must slide off it, especially if the firmament revolves; and he

points out that it is by no means certain that the OUTSIDE of the

firmament IS spherical, and insists that, if it does revolve, the

water is just what is needed to lubricate and cool its axis.



[199] For Tertullian, see the Apol. contra gentes, c. 47; also

Augustin de Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, p. 64.  For

Hilary, see In Psalm CXXXV. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. ix, p. 773).



[200] "Firmans tonitrua" (Amos iv, 13); the phrase does not

appear in our version.





St. Jerome held that God at the Creation, having spread out the

firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the

upper waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be frozen

into ice, in order to keep all in place.  A proof of this view

Jerome found in the words of Ezekiel regarding "the crystal

stretched above the cherubim."[201]



[201] For Ambrose, see the Hexaemeron, lib. ii, cap. 3,4; lib.

iii, cap. 5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xiv, pp. 148-150, 153, 165).

The passage as to lubrication of the heavenly axis is as follows:

"Deinde cum ispi dicant volvi orbem coeli stellis ardentibus

refulgentem, nonne divina providentia necessario prospexit, ut

intra orbem coeli, et supra orbem redundaret aqua, quae illa

ferventis axis incendia temperaret?"  For Jerome, see his

Epistola, lxix, cap. 6 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxii, p.659).





The germinal principle in accordance with which all these

theories were evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by

St. Augustine in his famous utterance:  "Nothing is to be

accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is

that authority than all the powers of the human mind."[202]  No

treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe the spirit and

conform to the letter of this maxim.  Unfortunately, what was

generally understood by the "authority of Scripture" was the

tyranny of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through

distorting superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party

spirit.



[202] "Major est quippe Scripturae hujas auctoritas, quam omnis

humani ingenii capacitas."--Augustine, De Genesi ad Lit., lib.

ii, cap. 5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxxiv, pp. 266, 267).  Or, as

he is cited by Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. Nat., lib. iv, 98):

"Non est aliquid temere diffiniendum, sed quantum Scriptura dicit

accipiendum, cujus major est auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii

capacitas."





Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in

every field, theological views of science which have never led to

a single truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind

away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for

centuries into abysses of error and sorrow.  In meteorology, as

in every other science with which he dealt, Augustine based

everything upon the letter of the sacred text; and it is

characteristic of the result that this man, so great when

untrammelled, thought it his duty to guard especially the whole

theory of the "waters above the heavens."



In the sixth century this theological reasoning was still further

developed, as we have seen, by Cosmas Indicopleustes.  Finding a

sanction for the old Egyptian theory of the universe in the ninth

chapter of Hebrews, he insisted that the earth is a flat

parallelogram, and that from its outer edges rise immense walls

supporting the firmament; then, throwing together the reference

to the firmament in Genesis and the outburst of poetry in the

Psalms regarding the "waters that be above the heavens," he

insisted that over the terrestrial universe are solid arches

bearing a vault supporting a vast cistern "containing the

waters"; finally, taking from Genesis the expression regarding

the "windows of heaven," he insisted that these windows are

opened and closed by the angels whenever the Almighty wishes to

send rain upon the earth or to withhold it.



This was accepted by the universal Church as a vast contribution

to thought; for several centuries it was the orthodox doctrine,

and various leaders in theology devoted themselves to developing

and supplementing it.



About the beginning of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of

Seville, was the ablest prelate in Christendom, and was showing

those great qualities which led to his enrolment among the saints

of the Church.  His theological view of science marks an epoch.

As to the "waters above the firmament," Isidore contends that

they must be lower than, the uppermost heaven, though higher than

the lower heaven, because in the one hundred and forty-eighth

Psalm they are mentioned AFTER the heavenly bodies and the

"heaven of heavens," but BEFORE the terrestrial elements.  As to

their purpose, he hesitates between those who held that they were

stored up there by the prescience of God for the destruction of

the world at the Flood, as the words of Scripture that "the

windows of heaven were opened" seemed to indicate, and those who

held that they were kept there to moderate the heat of the

heavenly bodies.  As to the firmament, he is in doubt whether it

envelops the earth "like an eggshell," or is merely spread over

it "like a curtain"; for he holds that the passage in the one

hundred and fourth Psalm may be used to support either view.



Having laid these scriptural foundations, Isidore shows

considerable power of thought; indeed, at times, when he

discusses the rainbow, rain, hail, snow, and frost, his theories

are rational, and give evidence that, if he could have broken

away from his adhesion to the letter of Scripture, he might have

given a strong impulse to the evolution of a true science.[203]



[203] For Cosmas, see his Topographia Christiana (in Montfaucon,

Collectio nova patrum, vol. ii), and the more complete account of

his theory given in the chapter on Geography in this work.  For

Isidore, see the Etymologiae, lib. xiii, cap. 7-9, De ordine

creaturarum, cap. 3, 4, and De natura rerum, cap. 29, 30.

(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. lxxxii, pp. 476, 477, vol. lxxxiii, pp.

920-922, 1001-1003).





About a century later appeared, at the other extremity of Europe,

the second in the trio of theological men of science in the early

Middle Ages--Bede the Venerable.  The nucleus of his theory also

is to be found in the accepted view of the "firmament" and of the

"waters above the heavens," derived from Genesis.  The firmament

he holds to be spherical, and of a nature subtile and fiery; the

upper heavens, he says, which contain the angels, God has

tempered with ice, lest they inflame the lower elements.  As to

the waters placed above the firmament, lower than the spiritual

heavens, but higher than all corporeal creatures, he says, "Some

declare that they were stored there for the Deluge, but others,

more correctly, that they are intended to temper the fire of the

stars."  He goes on with long discussions as to various elements

and forces in Nature, and dwells at length upon the air, of which

he says that the upper, serene air is over the heavens; while

the lower, which is coarse, with humid exhalations, is sent off

from the earth, and that in this are lightning, hail, snow, ice,

and tempests, finding proof of this in the one hundred and

forty-eighth Psalm, where these are commanded to "praise the Lord

from the earth."[204]



[204] See Bede, De natura rerum (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xc).





So great was Bede's authority, that nearly all the anonymous

speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects

were eventually ascribed to him.  In one of these spurious

treatises an attempt is made to get new light upon the sources of

the waters above the heavens, the main reliance being the sheet

containing the animals let down from heaven, in the vision of St.

Peter.  Another of these treatises is still more curious, for it

endeavours to account for earthquakes and tides by means of the

leviathan mentioned in Scripture.  This characteristic passage

runs as follows:  "Some say that the earth contains the animal

leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a fashion of his own,

so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun, whereupon he strives

to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken by the motion

of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such huge

masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all the seas

feel their effect."  And this theological theory of the tides, as

caused by the alternate suction and belching of leviathan, went

far and wide.[205]



[205] See the treatise De mundi constitutione, in Bede's Opera

(Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xc, p. 884).





In the writings thus covered with the name of Bede there is much

showing a scientific spirit, which might have come to something

of permanent value had it not been hampered by the supposed

necessity of conforming to the letter of Scripture.  It is as

startling as it is refreshing to hear one of these medieval

theorists burst out as follows against those who are content to

explain everything by the power of God:  "What is more pitiable

than to say that a thing IS, because God is able to do it, and

not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which it

is so; just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You

talk like one who says that God is able to make a calf out of a

log.  But DID he ever do it?   Either, then, show a reason why a

thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else cease to

declare it so."[206]



[206] For this remonstrance, see the Elementa philosophiae, in

Bede's Opera (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol.xc, p. 1139).  This

treatise, which has also been printed, under the title of De

philosophia mundi, among the works of Honorius of Autun, is

believed by modern scholars (Haureau, Werner, Poole) to be the

production of William of Conches.





The most permanent contribution of Bede to scientific thought in

this field was his revival of the view that the firmament is made

of ice; and he supported this from the words in the twenty-sixth

chapter of Job, "He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and

the cloud is not rent under them."



About the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in

that triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred

science throughout the early Middle Ages--Rabanus Maurus, Abbot

of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence.  Starting, like all his

predecessors, from the first chapter of Genesis, borrowing here

and there from the ancient philosophers, and excluding everything

that could conflict with the letter of Scripture, he follows, in

his work upon the universe, his two predecessors, Isidore and

Bede, developing especially St. Jerome's theory, drawn from

Ezekiel, that the firmament is strong enough to hold up the

"waters above the heavens," because it is made of ice.



For centuries the authority of these three great teachers was

unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their

doctrine was translated and diluted for the common mind.  But

about the second quarter of the twelfth century a priest,

Honorius of Autun, produced several treatises which show that

thought on this subject had made some little progress.  He

explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern manner;

with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the

thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert."  His thinking is

vigorous and independent.  Had theorists such as he been many, a

new science could have been rapidly evolved, but the theological

current was too strong. [207]



[207] For Rabanus Maurus, see the Comment. in Genesim and De

Universo (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. cvii, cxi).  For a charmingly

naive example of the primers referred to, see the little Anglo-

Saxon manual of astronomy, sometimes attributed to Aelfric; it is

in the vernacular, but is translated in Wright's Popular

Treatises on Science during the Middle Ages.  Bede is, of course,

its chief source.  For Honorius, see De imagine mundi and

Hexaemeron (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. clxxii).  The De philosophia

mundi, the most rational of all, is, however, believed by modern

scholars to be unjustly ascribed to him.  See note above.





The strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought of

Honorius is seen again in the work of the Dominican monk, John of

San Geminiano, who in the thirteenth century gave forth his Summa

de Exemplis for the use of preachers in his order.  Of its

thousand pages, over two hundred are devoted to illustrations

drawn from the heavens and the elements.  A characteristic

specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase, "The arrows

of the thunder."  These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry

vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper

air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning

into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being

too hot to be extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened

at the lower end, and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning

everything they touch.[208]



[208] See Joannes a S. Geminiano, Summa, c. 75.





But far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fact

that the most eminent scientific authority of that age, Albert

the Great, Bishop of Ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the

speculations of Aristotle with theological views derived from the

fathers.  In one very important respect he improved upon the

meteorological views of his great master.  The thunderbolt, he

says, is no mere fire, but the product of black clouds containing

much mud, which, when it is baked by the intense heat, forms a

fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky, tearing beams

and crushing walls in its course:  such he has seen with his own

eyes.[209]



[209] See Albertus Magnus, II Sent., Op., vol. xv, p. 137, a.

(cited by Heller, Gesch. d. Physik, vol. i, p. 184) and his Liber

Methaurorum, III, iv, 18 (of which I have used the edition of

Venice, 1488).





The monkish encyclopedists of the later Middle Ages added little

to these theories.  As we glance over the pages of Vincent of

Beauvais, the monk Bartholomew, and William of Conches, we note

only a growing deference to the authority of Aristotle as

supplementing that of Isidore and Bede and explaining sacred

Scripture.  Aristotle is treated like a Church father, but

extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great maxim of St.

Augustine; then, little by little, Bede and Isidore fall into the

background, Aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his utterances

are second in sacredness only to the text of Holy Writ.



A curious illustration of the difficulties these medieval

scholars had to meet in reconciling the scientific theories of

Aristotle with the letter of the Bible is seen in the case of the

rainbow.  It is to the honour of Aristotle that his conclusions

regarding the rainbow, though slightly erroneous, were based upon

careful observation and evolved by reasoning alone; but his

Christian commentators, while anxious to follow him, had to bear

in mind the scriptural statement that God had created the rainbow

as a sign to Noah that there should never again be a Flood on the

earth.  Even so bold a thinker as Cardinal d'Ailly, whose

speculations as to the geography of the earth did so much

afterward in stimulating Columbus, faltered before this

statement, acknowledging that God alone could explain it; but

suggested that possibly never before the Deluge had a cloud been

suffered to take such a position toward the sun as to cause a

rainbow.



The learned cardinal was also constrained to believe that certain

stars and constellations have something to do in causing the

rain, since these would best explain Noah's foreknowledge of the

Deluge.  In connection with this scriptural doctrine of winds

came a scriptural doctrine of earthquakes:  they were believed to

be caused by winds issuing from the earth, and this view was

based upon the passage in the one hundred and thirty-fifth Psalm,

"He bringeth the wind out of his treasuries."[210]



[210] For D'Ailly, see his Concordia astronomicae veritatis cum

theologia (Paris, 1483--in the Imago mundi--and Venice, 1490);

also Eck's commentary on Aristotle's Meteorologica (Ausburg,

1519), lib. ii, nota 2; also Reisch, Margarita philosophica, lib.

ix, c. 18.





Such were the main typical attempts during nearly fourteen

centuries to build up under theological guidance and within

scriptural limitations a sacred science of meteorology.  But

these theories were mainly evolved in the effort to establish a

basis and general theory of phenomena:  it still remained to

account for special manifestations, and here came a twofold

development of theological thought.



On one hand, these phenomena were attributed to the Almighty,

and, on the other, to Satan.  As to the first of these theories,

we constantly find the Divine wrath mentioned by the earlier

fathers as the cause of lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, and

the like.



In the early days of Christianity we see a curious struggle

between pagan and Christian belief upon this point.  Near the

close of the second century the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his

effort to save the empire, fought a hotly contested battle with

the Quadi, in what is now Hungary.  While the issue of this great

battle was yet doubtful there came suddenly a blinding storm

beating into the faces of the Quadi, and this gave the Roman

troops the advantage, enabling Marcus Aurelius to win a decisive

victory.  Votaries of each of the great religions claimed that

this storm was caused by the object of their own adoration.  The

pagans insisted that Jupiter had sent the storm in obedience to

their prayers, and on the Antonine Column at Rome we may still

see the figure of Olympian Jove casting his thunderbolts and

pouring a storm of rain from the open heavens against the Quadi.

On the other hand, the Christians insisted that the storm had

been sent by Jehovah in obedience to THEIR prayers; and

Tertullian, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Jerome were

among those who insisted upon this meteorological miracle; the

first two, indeed, in the fervour of their arguments for its

reality, allowing themselves to be carried considerably beyond

exact historical truth.[211]



[211] For the authorities, pagan and Christian, see the note of

Merivale, in his History of the Romans under the Empire, chap.

lxviii.  He refers for still fuller citations to Fynes Clinton's

Fasti Rom., p. 24.





As time went on, the fathers developed this view more and more

from various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books,

substituting for Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty

wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings.  Through the

Middle Ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a

mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still

further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sins

which were thus punished.  Thus even the rational Florentine

historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too great

pride of the city of Florence and the ingratitude of the citizens

toward God," which, "of course," says a recent historian, "meant

their insufficient attention to the ceremonies of

religion."[212]



[212] See Trollope, History of Florence, vol. i, p. 64.





In the thirteenth century the Cistercian monk, Caesarius of

Heisterbach, popularized the doctrine in central Europe.  His

rich collection of anecdotes for the illustration of religious

truths was the favourite recreative reading in the convents for

three centuries, and exercised great influence over the thought

of the later Middle Ages.  In this work he relates several

instances of the Divine use of lightning, both for rescue and for

punishment. Thus he tells us how the steward (cellerarius) of his

own monastery was saved from the clutch of a robber by a clap of

thunder which, in answer to his prayer, burst suddenly from the

sky and frightened the bandit from his purpose:  how, in a Saxon

theatre, twenty men were struck down, while a priest escaped, not

because he was not a greater sinner than the rest, but because

the thunderbolt had respect for his profession! It is Cesarius,

too, who tells us the story of the priest of Treves, struck by

lightning in his own church, whither he had gone to ring the bell

against the storm, and whose sins were revealed by the course of

the lightning, for it tore his clothes from him and consumed

certain parts of his body, showing that the sins for which he was

punished were vanity and unchastity.[213]



[213] See Caesarius Heisterbacensis, Dialogus miraculorum, lib.

x, c. 28-30.





This mode of explaining the Divine interference more minutely is

developed century after century, and we find both Catholics and

Protestants assigning as causes of unpleasant meteorological

phenomena whatever appears to them wicked or even unorthodox.

Among the English Reformers, Tyndale quotes in this kind of

argument the thirteenth chapter of I.  Samuel, showing that, when

God gave Israel a king, it thundered and rained.  Archbishop

Whitgift, Bishop Bale, and Bishop Pilkington insisted on the same

view.  In Protestant Germany, about the same period, Plieninger

took a dislike to the new Gregorian calendar and published a

volume of Brief Reflections, in which he insisted that the

elements had given utterance to God's anger against it, calling

attention to the fact that violent storms raged over almost all

Germany during the very ten days which the Pope had taken out for

the correction of the year, and that great floods began with the

first days of the corrected year.[214]



[214] For Tyndale, see his Doctrinal Treatises, p. 194, and for

Whitgift, see his Works, vol. ii, pp. 477-483; Bale, Works, pp.

244, 245; and Pilkington, Works, pp. 177, 536 (all in Parker

Society Publications).  Bishop Bale cites especially Job xxxviii,

Ecclesiasticus xiii, and Revelation viii, as supporting the

theory.  For Plieninger's words, see Janssen, Geschichte des

deutschen Volkes, vol. v, p. 350.





Early in the seventeenth century, Majoli, Bishop of Voltoraria,

in southern Italy, produced his huge work Dies Canicularii, or

Dog Days, which remained a favourite encyclopedia in Catholic

lands for over a hundred years.  Treating of thunder and

lightning, he compares them to bombs against the wicked, and says

that the thunderbolt is "an exhalation condensed and cooked into

stone," and that "it is not to be doubted that, of all

instruments of God's vengeance, the thunderbolt is the chief";

that by means of it Sennacherib and his army were consumed; that

Luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a caution against

departing from the Catholic faith; that blasphemy and

Sabbath-breaking are the sins to which this punishment is

especially assigned, and he cites the case of Dathan and Abiram.

Fifty years later the Jesuit Stengel developed this line of

thought still further in four thick quarto volumes on the

judgments of God, adding an elaborate schedule for the use of

preachers in the sermons of an entire year.  Three chapters were

devoted to thunder, lightning, and storms.  That the author

teaches the agency in these of diabolical powers goes without

saying; but this can only act, he declares, by Divine

permission, and the thunderbolt is always the finger of God,

which rarely strikes a man save for his sins, and the nature of

the special sin thus punished may be inferred from the bodily

organs smitten. A few years later, in Protestant Swabia, Pastor

Georg Nuber issued a volume of "weather-sermons," in which he

discusses nearly every sort of elemental disturbances--storms,

floods, droughts, lightning, and hail.  These, he says, come

direct from God for human sins, yet no doubt with discrimination,

for there are five sins which God especially punishes with

lightning and hail--namely, impenitence, incredulity, neglect of

the repair of churches, fraud in the payment of tithes to the

clergy, and oppression of subordinates, each of which points he

supports with a mass of scriptural texts.[215]



[215] For Majoli, see Dies Can., I, i; for Stengel, see the De

judiciis divinis, vol. ii, pp. 15-61, and especially the example

of the impurus et saltator sacerdos, fulmine castratus, pp. 26,

27.  For Nuber, see his Conciones meteoricae, Ulm, 1661.





This doctrine having become especially precious both to Catholics

and to Protestants, there were issued handbooks of prayers

against bad weather:  among these was the Spiritual Thunder and

Storm Booklet, produced in 1731 by a Protestant scholar,

Stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred pages of prayer and song,

"sighs for use when it lightens fearfully," and "cries of anguish

when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a wonderful adaptability

to all possible meteorological emergencies.  The preface of this

volume is contributed by Prof. Dilherr, pastor of the great

church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, who, in discussing the Divine

purposes of storms, adds to the three usually assigned--namely,

God's wish to manifest his power, to display his anger, and to

drive sinners to repentance--a fourth, which, he says, is that

God may show us "with what sort of a stormbell he will one day

ring in the last judgment."



About the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century we

find, in Switzerland, even the eminent and rational Professor of

Mathematics, Scheuchzer, publishing his Physica Sacra, with the

Bible as a basis, and forced to admit that the elements, in the

most literal sense, utter the voice of God.  The same pressure

was felt in New England.  Typical are the sermons of Increase

Mather on The Voice of God in Stormy Winds.  He especially lays

stress on the voice of God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind,

and upon the text, "Stormy wind fulfilling his word."  He

declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes

have a hand therein,...yea, and sometimes evil angels."  He gives

several cases of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says,

"Nothing can be more dangerous for mortals than to contemn

dreadful providences, and, in particular, dreadful tempests."



His distinguished son, Cotton Mather, disentangled himself

somewhat from the old view, as he had done in the interpretation

of comets.  In his Christian Philosopher, his Thoughts for the

Day of Rain, and his Sermon preached at the Time of the Late

Storm (in 1723), he is evidently tending toward the modern view.

Yet, from time to time, the older view has reasserted itself, and

in France, as recently as the year 1870, we find the Bishop of

Verdun ascribing the drought afflicting his diocese to the sin of

Sabbath-breaking.[216]



[216] For Stoltzlin, see his Geistliches Donner- und Wetter-

Buchlein (Zurich, 1731).  For Increase Mather, see his The Voice

of God, etc. (Boston, 1704).  This rare volume is in the rich

collection of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester.  For

Cotton Mather's view, see the chapter From Signs and Wonders to

Law, in this work.  For the Bishop of Verdun, see the Semaine

relig. de Lorraine, 1879, p. 445 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his

Dossier des Pelerinages, pp. 141-143).





This theory, which attributed injurious meteorological phenomena

mainly to the purposes of God, was a natural development, and

comparatively harmless; but at a very early period there was

evolved another theory, which, having been ripened into a

doctrine, cost the earth dear indeed.  Never, perhaps, in the

modern world has there been a dogma more prolific of physical,

mental, and moral agony throughout whole nations and during whole

centuries.  This theory, its development by theology, its fearful

results to mankind, and its destruction by scientific observation

and thought, will next be considered.







II.  DIABOLIC AGENCY IN STORMS.





While the fathers and schoolmen were labouring to deduce a

science of meteorology from our sacred books, there oozed up in

European society a mass of traditions and observances which had

been lurking since the days of paganism; and, although here and

there appeared a churchman to oppose them, the theologians and

ecclesiastics ere long began to adopt them and to clothe them

with the authority of religion.



Both among the pagans of the Roman Empire and among the

barbarians of the North the Christian missionaries had found it

easier to prove the new God supreme than to prove the old gods

powerless.  Faith in the miracles of the new religion seemed to

increase rather than to diminish faith in the miracles of the

old; and the Church at last began admitting the latter as facts,

but ascribing them to the devil.  Jupiter and Odin sank into the

category of ministers of Satan, and transferred to that master

all their former powers.  A renewed study of Scripture by

theologians elicited overwhelming proofs of the truth of this

doctrine.  Stress was especially laid on the declaration of

Scripture, "The gods of the heathen are devils."[217] Supported

by this and other texts, it soon became a dogma.  So strong was

the hold it took, under the influence of the Church, that not

until late in the seventeenth century did its substantial truth

begin to be questioned.



[217] For so the Vulgate and all the early versions rendered Ps.

xcvi, 5.





With no field of action had the sway of the ancient deities been

more identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena.  The

Roman heard Jupiter, and the Teuton heard Thor, in the thunder.

Could it be doubted that these powerful beings would now take

occasion, unless hindered by the command of the Almighty, to vent

their spite against those who had deserted their altars?   Might

not the Almighty himself be willing to employ the malice of these

powers of the air against those who had offended him?



It was, indeed, no great step, for those whose simple faith

accepted rain or sunshine as an answer to their prayers, to

suspect that the untimely storms or droughts, which baffled their

most earnest petitions, were the work of the archenemy, "the

prince of the power of the air."



The great fathers of the Church had easily found warrant for this

doctrine in Scripture.  St. Jerome declared the air to be full

of devils, basing this belief upon various statements in the

prophecies of Isaiah and in the Epistle to the Ephesians.  St.

Augustine held the same view as beyond controversy.[218]



[218] For St. Jerome, see his Com. in Ep. ad Ephesios (lib. iii,

cap.6): commenting on the text, "Our battle is not with flesh and

blood," he explains this as meaning the devils in the air, and

adds, "Nam et in alio loco de daemonibus quod in aere isto

vagentur, Apostolus ait: In quibus ambulastis aliquando juxta

Saeculum mundi istius, secundum principem potestatis aeris

spiritus, qui nunc operatur in filos diffidentiae (Eph, ii,2).

Haec autem omnium doctorum opinio est, quod aer iste qui coelum

et terram medius dividens, inane appellatur, plenus sit

contrariis fortitudinibus." See also his Com. in Isaiam, lib.

xiii, cap. 50 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxiv, p. 477).  For

Augustine, see the De Civitate Dei, passim.





During the Middle Ages this doctrine of the diabolical origin of

storms went on gathering strength.  Bede had full faith in it,

and narrates various anecdotes in support of it.  St. Thomas

Aquinas gave it his sanction, saying in his all authoritative

Summa, "Rains and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse

alone, can be caused by demons."  "It is," he says, "a dogma of

faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire

from heaven."



Albert the Great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a

certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds.  The

great Franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"--St. Bonaventura, whose

services to theology earned him one of the highest places in the

Church, and to whom Dante gave special honour in paradise, set

upon this belief his high authority.  The lives of the saints,

and the chronicles of the Middle Ages, were filled with it.

Poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it.  Dante

wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought may still be seen

embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone:  a shipload of

demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm, threatening

destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and St.

Nicholas attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.[219]



[219] For Bede, see the Hist. Eccles., vol. i, p. 17; Vita

Cuthberti, c. 17 (Migne, tome xliv).  For Thomas Aquinas, see the

Summa, pars I, qu. lxxx, art. 2.  The second citation I owe to

Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 73, where the whole

interesting passage is given at length.  For Albertus Magnus, see

the De Potentia Daemonum (cited by Maury, Legendes Pieuses). For

Bonaventura, see the Comp. Theol. Veritat., ii, 26.  For Dante,

see Purgatorio, c. 5.  On Bordone's picture, see Maury, Legendes

Pieuses, p. 18, note.





The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was

amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious imaginations,

and interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of the people at

large.  A strong argument in favour of a diabolical origin of the

thunderbolt was afforded by the eccentricities of its operation.

These attracted especial attention in the Middle Ages, and the

popular love of marvel generalized isolated phenomena into rules.

Thus it was said that the lightning strikes the sword in the

sheath, gold in the purse, the foot in the shoe, leaving sheath

and purse and shoe unharmed; that it consumes a human being

internally without injuring the skin; that it destroys nets in

the water, but not on the land; that it kills one man, and

leaves untouched another standing beside him; that it can tear

through a house and enter the earth without moving a stone from

its place; that it injures the heart of a tree, but not the bark;

that wine is poisoned by it, while poisons struck by it lose

their venom; that a man's hair may be consumed by it and the man

be unhurt.[220]



[220] See, for lists of such admiranda, any of the early

writers--e. g., Vincent of Beauvais, Reisch's Margarita, or Eck's

Aristotle.





These peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing

sermonizers of the day, were used in moral lessons from every

pulpit.  Thus the Carmelite, Matthias Farinator, of Vienna, who

at the Pope's own instance compiled early in the fifteenth

century that curious handbook of illustrative examples for

preachers, the Lumen Animae, finds a spiritual analogue for each

of these anomalies.[221]



[221] See the Lumen animae, Eichstadt, 1479.





This doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth,

sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a

multitude of treatises by the most learned of the Catholic and

Protestant divines, and its fruitage in the torture chambers and

on the scaffolds throughout Christendom.  At the Reformation

period, and for nearly two hundred years afterward, Catholics and

Protestants vied with each other in promoting this growth.  John

Eck, the great opponent of Luther, gave to the world an annotated

edition of Aristotle's Physics, which was long authoritative in

the German universities; and, though the text is free from this

doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth's atmosphere shows

most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, the devils who there

reign supreme.[222]



[222] See Eck, Aristotelis Meteorologica, Augsburg, 1519.





Luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition

even more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds

themselves are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a

stone thrown into a certain pond in his native region would cause

a dreadful storm because of the devils, kept prisoners

there.[223]



[223] For Luther, see the Table Talk; also Michelet, Life of

Luther (translated by Hazlitt, p. 321).





Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants

welcomed alike the great work of Delrio.  In this, the power of

devils over the elements is proved first from the Holy

Scriptures, since, he declares, "they show that Satan brought

fire down from heaven to consume the servants and flocks of Job,

and that he stirred up a violent wind, which overwhelmed in ruin

the sons and daughters of Job at their feasting."  Next, Delrio

insists on the agreement of all the orthodox fathers, that it was

the devil himself who did this, and attention is called to the

fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished is

expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the

evil angels.  Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four

angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back

the winds and preventing their doing great damage to mortals;

and he dwells especially upon the fact that the devil is called

by the apostle a "prince of the power of the air."  He then goes

on to cite the great fathers of the Church--Clement, Jerome,

Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.[224]



[224] For Delrio, see his Disquisitiones Magicae, first printed

at Liege in 1599-1600, but reprinted again and again throughout

the seventeenth century.  His interpretation of Psalm lxxviii,

47-49, was apparently shared by the translators of our own

authorized edition.  For citations by him, see Revelation vii,

1,; Ephesians ii, 2.  Even according to modern commentators

(e.g., Alford), the word here translated "power" denotes not

MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense it was

always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception is

best rendered by our plural--"powers."  See Delrio,

Disquisitiones Magicae, lib. ii, c. 11.





This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in

light literature and by popular illustrations.  In the Compendium

Maleficarum of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing

book in the whole literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch,

in propria persona, riding the diabolic goat through the clouds

while the storm rages around and beneath her; and we may read a

rich collection of anecdotes, largely contemporary, which

establish the required doctrine beyond question.



The first and most natural means taken against this work of Satan

in the air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found

scattered through the Christian liturgies--some very beautiful

and touching.  This means of escape has been relied upon, with

greater or less faith, from those days to these.  Various

medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in all centuries,

from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with results claimed

to be miraculous.  Whatever theory any thinking man may hold in

the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word:

such prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind

of man in trouble.[225]



[225] For Guacci, see his Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608).

For the cases of St. Giles, John Wesley, and others stilling the

tempests, see Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, s. v. Prayer.





But against the "power of the air" were used other means of a

very different character and tendency, and foremost among these

was exorcism.  In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope

Gregory XIII, the formula is given:  "I, a priest of Christ,...

do command ye, most foul spirits, who do stir up these clouds,...

that ye depart from them, and disperse yourselves into wild and

untilled places, that ye may be no longer able to harm men or

animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever is designed for human

use."  But this is mild, indeed, compared to some later

exorcisms, as when the ritual runs:  "All the people shall rise,

and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these

words: `I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use,

for the accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of Nature

by which God in divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up

winds, gather vapours, form clouds, and condense them into

hail....I exorcise ye,...that ye relinquish the work ye have

begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the clouds, disperse the

vapours, and restrain the winds.'" The rubric goes on to order

that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open place,

and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one

hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while malodorous

substances, among them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into

the flames.  The purpose seems to have been literally to "smoke

out" Satan.[226]



[226] See Polidorus Valerius, Practica exorcistarum; also the

Thesaurus exorcismorum (Cologne, 1626), pp. 158-162.





Manuals of exorcisms became important--some bulky quartos, others

handbooks.  Noteworthy among the latter is one by the Italian

priest Locatelli, entitled Exorcisms most Powerful and

Efficacious for the Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether raised

by Demons at their own Instance or at the Beck of some Servant of

the Devil.[227]



[227] That is, Exorcismi, etc.  A "corrected" second edition was

printed at Laybach, 1680, in 24mo, to which is appended another

manual of Preces et conjurationes contra aereas tempestates,

omnibus sacerdotibus utiles et necessaria, printed at the

monastery of Kempten (in Bavaria) in 1667.  The latter bears as

epigraph the passage from the gospels describing Christ's

stilling of the winds.





The Jesuit Gretser, in his famous book on Benedictions and

Maledictions, devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing

summarily the scepticism that questions the power of devils over

the elements, and adducing the story of Job as conclusive.[228]



[228] See Gretser, De benedictionibus et maledictionibus, lib.

ii, c. 48.





Nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the

elder Church.  Luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribed

especially the first chapter of St. John's gospel as of

unfailing efficacy against thunder and lightning, declaring that

he had often found the mere sign of the cross, with the text,

"The word was made flesh," sufficient to put storms to

flight.[229]



[229] So, at least, says Gretser (in his De ben. et aml., as

above).





From the beginning of the Middle Ages until long after the

Reformation the chronicles give ample illustration of the

successful use of such exorcisms.  So strong was the belief in

them that it forced itself into minds comparatively rational, and

found utterance in treatises of much importance.



But, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other means

were sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts.  One of

the earliest of these appeared when Pope Alexander I, according

to tradition, ordained that holy water should be kept in churches

and bedchambers to drive away devils.[230] Another safeguard was

found in relics, and of similar efficacy were the so-called

"conception billets" sold by the Carmelite monks.  They contained

a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the devil might well

turn pale.  Buried in the corner of a field, one of these was

thought to give protection against bad weather and destructive

insects.[231]



[230] "Instituit ut aqua quam sanctum appellamus sale admixta

interpositus sacris orationibus et in templis et in cubiculis ad

fugandos daemones retineretur."  Platina, Vitae Pontif.  But the

story is from the False Decretals.



[231] See Rydberg, The Magic of the Middle Ages, translated by

Edgren, pp. 63-66.





But highest in repute during centuries was the Agnus Dei--a

piece of wax blessed by the Pope's own hand, and stamped with the

well-known device representing the "Lamb of God."  Its powers

were so marvellous that Pope Urban V thought three of these cakes

a fitting gift from himself to the Greek Emperor.  In the Latin

doggerel recounting their virtues, their meteorological efficacy

stands first, for especial stress is laid on their power of

dispelling the thunder.  The stress thus laid by Pope Urban, as

the infallible guide of Christendom, on the efficacy of this

fetich, gave it great value throughout Europe, and the doggerel

verses reciting its virtues sank deep into the popular mind.  It

was considered a most potent means of dispelling hail,

pestilence, storms, conflagrations, and enchantments; and this

feeling was deepened by the rules and rites for its consecration.

So solemn was the matter, that the manufacture and sale of this

particular fetich was, by a papal bull of 1471, reserved for the

Pope himself, and he only performed the required ceremony in the

first and seventh years of his pontificate.  Standing unmitred,

he prayed:  "O God,...we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt bless

these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,...

that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break

forth into praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast

of hurricanes, the violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and

the malice of thunderbolts may be tempered, and evil spirits flee

and tremble before the standard of thy holy cross, which is

graven upon them."[232]



[232] These pious charms are still in use in the Church, and may

be found described in any ecclesiastical cyclopaedia. The

doggerel verses run as follows:



"Tonitrua magna terret,        Inimicos nostras domat

Et peccata nostra delet;       Praegnantem cum partu salvat,

Ab incendio praeservat,        Dona dignis multa confert,

A subersione servat,           Utque malis mala defert.

A morte cita liberat,          Portio, quamvis parva sit,

Et Cacodaemones fugat,         Ut magna tamen proficit."



See these verses cited in full faith, so late as 1743, in Father

Vincent of Berg's Enchiridium, pp. 23, 24, where is an ample

statement of the virtues of the Agnus Dei, and istructions for

its use. A full account of the rites used in consecrating this

fetich, with the prayers and benedictions which gave colour to

this theory of the powers of the Agnus Dei, may be found in the

ritual of the Church. I have used the edition entitled Sacrarum

ceremoniarum sive rituum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae libri tres,

Rome, 1560, in folio. The form of the papal prayer is as follows:

"Deus . . . te supplicater deprecamur, ut . . . has cereas

formas, innocentissimi agni imagine figuritas, benedicere . . .

digneris, ut per ejus tactum et visum fideles invitentur as

laudes, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum,

ventorum rabies, infesta tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque

tremiscant maligni spiritus ante Sanctae Crucis vexillum, quod in

illis exculptum est. . . ."(Sacr. Cer. Rom. Eccl., as above). If

any are curious as to the extent to which this consecrated wax

was a specific for all spiritual and most temporal ills during

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them consult the

Jesuit Litterae annuae, passim.





Another favourite means with the clergy of the older Church for

bringing to naught the "power of the air," was found in great

processions bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through the

streets.  Yet even these were not always immediately effective.

One at Liege, in the thirteenth century, thrice proved

unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last it was found that the

image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new procession was at

once formed, the Salve Regina sung, and the rain came down in

such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.[233]



[233] John of Winterthur describes many such processions in

Switzerland in the thirteenth century, and all the monkish

chronicles speak of them. See also Rydberg, Magic of the Middle

Ages, p. 74.





In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very

important features in these processions are the statues and the

reliquaries of patron saints.  Some of these excel in bringing

sunshine, others in bringing rain.  The Cathedral of Chartres is

so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of St. Taurin,

especially potent against dry weather, and some of St. Piat,

very nearly as infallible against wet weather.  In certain

regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet

and dry weather--as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon.

Against storms St. Barbara is very generally considered the most

powerful protectress; but, in the French diocese of Limoges,

Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a

few years since, all the neighbouring parishes were ravaged by

storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected.

In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially invoked

against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country

to his shrine.[234]



[234] As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide

du touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by "Paul

Parfait," in his Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of

the Dossier.





But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be

most widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.



This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is

extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells

and of hanging certain tags[235] on their tongues as a

protection against hailstorms; but even Charlemagne was

powerless against this current of medieval superstition.

Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the year 968

Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by

himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the

Lateran, and christening it with his own name.[236]



[235] Perticae. See Montanus, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken

(Chenmitz, 1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des

Mittelalters, p. 186.



[236] For statements regarding Pope John and bell superstitions,

see Higgins's Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70.  See also Platina,

Vitae Pontif., s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales

Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968.  The conjecture of Baronius that the

bell was named after St. John the Baptist, is even more startling

than the accepted tradition of the Pope's sponsorship.





This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in

ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in

multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves.  This

branch of theological literature may still be studied in

multitudes of church towers throughout Europe.  A bell at Basel

bears the inscription, "Ad fugandos demones."  Another, in

Lugano, declares "The sound of this bell vanquishes tempests,

repels demons, and summons men."  Another, at the Cathedral of

Erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning and malignant

demons."  A peal in the Jesuit church at the university town of

Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, "They praise God, put to flight

the clouds, affright the demons, and call the people."  This is

dated 1634.  Another bell in that part of France declares, "It is

I who dissipate the thunders"(Ego sum qui dissipo

tonitrua).[237]



[237] For these illustrations, with others equally striking, see

Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, pp. 185, 186.  For the

later examples, see Germain, Anciennes cloches lorraines (Nancy,

1885), pp. 23, 27.





Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a

doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated:



"On the devil my spite I'll vent,

And, God helping, bad weather prevent."[238]



[238] "An dem Tufel will cih mich rachen,

Mit der hilf gotz alle bosen wetter erbrechen."

(See Meyer, as above.)





Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous

Latin.



Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of

bells.  Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler

Sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle

of the sixteenth century:



"In lyke sorte [as churches] are the belles used.  And first,

forsouth, they must hange so, as the Byshop may goe round about

them.  Whiche after he hath sayde certen Psalmes, he consecrateth

water and salte, and mingleth them together, wherwith he washeth

the belle diligently both within and without, after wypeth it

drie, and with holy oyle draweth in it the signe of the crosse,

and prayeth God, that whan they shall rynge or sounde that bell,

all the disceiptes of the devyll may vanyshe away, hayle,

thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and tempestes, and all untemperate

weathers may be aswaged.  Whan he hath wipte out the crosse of

oyle wyth a linen cloth, he maketh seven other crosses in the

same, and within one only.  After saying certen Psalmes, he

taketh a payre of sensours and senseth the bel within, and

prayeth God to sende it good lucke.  In many places they make a

great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at a solemne

wedding."[239]



[239] Sleiden's Commentaries, English translation, as above, fol.

334 (lib. xxi, sub anno 1549).





These bell baptisms became matters of great importance.  Popes,

kings, and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors.  Four of the

bells at the Cathedral of Versailles having been destroyed during

the French Revolution, four new ones were baptized, on the 6th of

January, 1824, the Voltairean King, Louis XVIII, and the pious

Duchess d'Angouleme standing as sponsors.



In some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun

knowledge, and one of Luther's stories, at the expense of the

older Church, was that certain authorities thus christened a bell

"Hosanna," supposing that to be the name of a woman.



To add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes

brought from the river Jordan.[240]



[240] See Montanus, as above, who cites Beck, Lutherthum vor

Luthero, p. 294, for the statement that many bells were carried

to the Jordan by pilgrims for this purpose.





The prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine.

The ritual of Paris embraces the petition that, "whensoever this

bell shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences of

the assailing spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the rush

of whirlwinds, the stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the

disasters of storms, and all the spirits of the tempest."

Another prayer begs that "the sound of this bell may put to

flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men"; and others vary the

form but not the substance of this petition.  The great Jesuit

theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this

baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry

suited to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the

warfare against heretics.[241]



[241] For prayers at bell baptisms, see Arago, Oeuvres, Paris,

1854, vol. iv, p. 322.





Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned

directly by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was

everywhere taken for granted.[242] The development of this idea

in the older Church was too strong to be resisted;[243] but, as

a rule, the Protestant theologians of the Reformation, while

admitting that storms were caused by Satan and his legions,

opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of their

influence in dispersing storms.  Luther, while never doubting

that troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils,

regarded with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish

as to be scared by the clang of bells; his theory made them

altogether too powerful to be affected by means so trivial.  The

great English Reformers, while also accepting very generally the

theory of diabolic interference in storms, reproved strongly the

baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a sacrament and

involving blasphemy.  Bishop Hooper declared reliance upon bells

to drive away tempests, futile.  Bishop Pilkington, while arguing

that tempests are direct instruments of God's wrath, is very

severe against using "unlawful means," and among these he names

"the hallowed bell"; and these opinions were very generally

shared by the leading English clergy.[244]



[242] As has often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its

details--even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the

baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast--precisely the same as

when a child was baptised.  Magius, who is no sceptic, relates

from his own experience an instant of this sort, where a certain

bishop stood sponsor for two bells, giving them both his own

name--William. (See his De Tintinnabulis, vol. xiv.)



[243] And no wonder, when the oracle of the Church, Thomas

Aquinas, expressly pronounced church bells, "provided they have

been duly consecrated and baptised," the foremost means of

"frustrating the atmospheric mischiefs of the devil," and likened

steeples in which bells are ringing to a hen brooding her

chickens, "for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the

demons and avert storm and lightning"; when pre-Reformation

preachers of such universal currency as Johannes Herolt declared,

"Bells, as all agree, are baptised with the result that they are

secure from the power of Satan, terrify the demons, compel the

powers"; when Geiler of Kaiserberg especially commended bell-

ringing as a means of beating off the devil in storms; and when a

canonist like Durandus explained the purpose of the rite to be,

that "the demons hearing the trumpets of the Eternal King, to

wit, the bells, may flee in terror, and may cease from the

stirring up of tempests." See Herolt, Sermones Discipuli, vol.

xvii, and Durandus, De ritibus ecclesiae, vol. ii, p. 12.  I owe

the first of these citations to Rydberg, and the others to

Montanus. For Geiler, see Dacheux, Geiler de Kaiserberg, pp. 280,

281.



[244] The baptism of bells was indeed, one of the express

complaints of the German Protestant princes at the Reformation.

See their Gravam. Cent. German. Grav., p. 51.  For Hooper, see

his Early Writings, p. 197 (in Parker Society Publications).  For

Pilkington, see his Works, p. 177 (in same).  Among others

sharing these opinions were Tyndale, Bishop Ridley, Archbishop

Sandys, Becon, Calfhill, and Rogers.  It is to be noted that all

of these speak of the rite as "baptism."





Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony

strictly forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging

penance and prayer instead; but the custom was not so easily

driven out of the Protestant Church, and in some quarters was

developed a Protestant theory of a rationalistic sort, ascribing

the good effects of bell-ringing in storms to the calling

together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion of prayers

during storms at night.  As late as the end of the seventeenth

century we find the bells of Protestant churches in northern

Germany rung for the dispelling of tempests.  In Catholic Austria

this bell-ringing seems to have become a nuisance in the last

century, for the Emperor Joseph II found it necessary to issue an

edict against it; but this doctrine had gained too large headway

to be arrested by argument or edict, and the bells may be heard

ringing during storms to this day in various remote districts in

Europe.[245]  For this was no mere superficial view.  It was

really part of a deep theological current steadily developed

through the Middle Ages, the fundamental idea of the whole being

the direct influence of the bells upon the "Power of the Air";

and it is perhaps worth our while to go back a little and glance

over the coming of this current into the modern world.  Having

grown steadily through the Middle Ages, it appeared in full

strength at the Reformation period; and in the sixteenth century

Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala and Primate of Sweden, in his

great work on the northern nations, declares it a

well-established fact that cities and harvests may be saved from

lightning by the ringing of bells and the burning of consecrated

incense, accompanied by prayers; and he cautions his readers

that the workings of the thunderbolt are rather to be marvelled

at than inquired into.  Even as late as 1673 the Franciscan

professor Lealus, in Italy, in a schoolbook which was received

with great applause in his region, taught unhesitatingly the

agency of demons in storms, and the power of bells over them, as

well as the portentousness of comets and the movement of the

heavens by angels.  He dwells especially, too, upon the perfect

protection afforded by the waxen Agnus Dei.  How strong this

current was, and how difficult even for philosophical minds to

oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes and Francis

Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and

suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose

by the concussion of the air.[246]



[245] For Elector of Saxony, see Peuchen, Disp. circa

tempestates, Jena, 1697.  For the Protestant theory of bells,

see, e. g., the Ciciones Selectae of Superintendent Conrad

Dieterich (cited by Peuchen, Disp. circa tempestates).  For

Protestant ringing of bells to dispel tempests, see Schwimmer,

Physicalische Luftfragen, 1692 (cited by Peuchen, as above).  He

pictures the whole population of a Thuringinian district flocking

to the churches on the approach of a storm.



[246] For Olaus Magnus, see the De gentibus septentrionalibus

(Rome, 1555), lib. i, c. 12, 13.  For Descartes, see his De

meteor., cent. 2, 127.  In his Historia Ventorum he again alludes

to the belief, and without comment.





But no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned Bishop

Binsfeld, of Treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of

the confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effect

of bells in calming atmospheric disturbances.  Basing his general

doctrine upon the first chapter of Job and the second chapter of

Ephesians, he insisted on the reality of diabolic agency in

storms; and then, by theological reasoning, corroborated by the

statements extorted in the torture chamber, he showed the

efficacy of bells in putting the hellish legions to flight.[247]

This continued, therefore, an accepted tenet, developed in every

nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the seventeenth

century.  At that period--the period of Isaac Newton--Father

Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome,

published under the highest Church authority his lectures upon

meteorology.  Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at

so late a period, they are very important as indicating what had

been developed under the influence of theology during nearly

seventeen hundred years.  This learned head of a great college at

the heart of Christendom taught that "the surest remedy against

thunder is that which our Holy Mother the Church practises,

namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt impends:  thence

follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a physical, because

the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and by

agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the thunder;

but the moral effect is the more certain, because by the sound

the faithful are stirred to pour forth their prayers, by which

they win from God the turning away of the thunderbolt."  Here we

see in this branch of thought, as in so many others, at the close

of the seventeenth century, the dawn of rationalism.  Father De

Angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in the background.

Little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bells in putting to

flight the legions of Satan:  the wise professor is evidently

preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see in the

history of every science when it is clear that it can no longer

be suppressed by ecclesiastical fulminations.[248]



[247] See Binsfeld, De Confessionbus Malef., pp. 308-314, edition

of 1623.



[248] For De Angelis, see his Lectiones Meteorol., p. 75.







III.  THE AGENCY OF WITCHES.





But, while this comparatively harmless doctrine of thwarting the

powers of the air by fetiches and bell-ringing was developed,

there were evolved another theory, and a series of practices

sanctioned by the Church, which must forever be considered as

among the most fearful calamities in human history.  Indeed, few

errors have ever cost so much shedding of innocent blood over

such wide territory and during so many generations.  Out of the

old doctrine--pagan and Christian--of evil agency in atmospheric

phenomena was evolved the belief that certain men, women, and

children may secure infernal aid to produce whirlwinds, hail,

frosts, floods, and the like.



As early as the ninth century one great churchman, Agobard,

Archbishop of Lyons, struck a heavy blow at this superstition.

His work, Against the Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar touching Hail

and Thunder, shows him to have been one of the most devoted

apostles of right reason whom human history has known.  By

argument and ridicule, and at times by a lofty eloquence, he

attempted to breast this tide.  One passage is of historical

significance.  He declares:  "The wretched world lies now under

the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of

such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen

to believe."[249]



[249] For a very interesting statement of Agobard's position and

work, with citations from his Liber contra insulsam vulgi

opinionem de grandine et tonitruis, see Poole, Illustrations of

the History of Mediaeval Thought, pp. 40 et seq.  The works of

Agobard are in vol. civ of Migne's Patrol. Lat.





All in vain; the tide of superstition continued to roll on;

great theologians developed it and ecclesiastics favoured it;

until as we near the end of the medieval period the infallible

voice of Rome is heard accepting it, and clinching this belief

into the mind of Christianity.  For, in 1437, Pope Eugene IV, by

virtue of the teaching power conferred on him by the Almighty,

and under the divine guarantee against any possible error in the

exercise of it, issued a bull exhorting the inquisitors of heresy

and witchcraft to use greater diligence against the human agents

of the Prince of Darkness, and especially against those who have

the power to produce bad weather.  In 1445 Pope Eugene returned

again to the charge, and again issued instructions and commands

infallibly committing the Church to the doctrine.  But a greater

than Eugene followed, and stamped the idea yet more deeply into

the mind of the Church.  On the 7th of December, 1484, Pope

Innocent VIII sent forth his bull Summis Desiderantes.  Of all

documents ever issued from Rome, imperial or papal, this has

doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest shedding of innocent

blood.  Yet no document was ever more clearly dictated by

conscience.  Inspired by the scriptural command, "Thou shalt not

suffer a witch to live," Pope Innocent exhorted the clergy of

Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers, and

especially those who by evil weather destroy vineyards, gardens,

meadows, and growing crops.  These precepts were based upon

various texts of Scripture, especially upon the famous statement

in the book of Job; and, to carry them out, witch-finding

inquisitors were authorized by the Pope to scour Europe,

especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for their use--the

Witch-Hammer, Malleus Maleficarum.  In this manual, which was

revered for centuries, both in Catholic and Protestant countries,

as almost divinely inspired, the doctrine of Satanic agency in

atmospheric phenomena was further developed, and various means of

detecting and punishing it were dwelt upon.[250]



[250] For the bull of Pope Eugene, see Raynaldus, Annales Eccl.,

pp. 1437, 1445.  The Latin text of the bull Summis Desiderantes

may now be found in the Malleus Maleficarum, in Binsfeld's De

Confessionibus cited below, or in Roskoff's Geschichte des

Teufles (Leipsic, 1869), vol. i, pp. 222-225.  There is, so far

as I know, no good analysis, in any English book, of the contents

of the Witch-Hammer; but such may be found in Roskoff's

Geschichte des Teufels, or in Soldan's Geschichte der

Hexenprozesse.  Its first dated edition is that of 1489; but

Prof. Burr has shown that it was printed as early as 1486.  It

was, happily, never translated into any modern tongue.





With the application of torture to thousands of women, in

accordance with the precepts laid down in the Malleus, it was

not difficult to extract masses of proof for this sacred theory

of meteorology.  The poor creatures, writhing on the rack, held

in horror by those who had been nearest and dearest to them,

anxious only for death to relieve their sufferings, confessed to

anything and everything that would satisfy the inquisitors and

judges.  All that was needed was that the inquisitors should ask

leading questions[251] and suggest satisfactory answers:  the

prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later to

give the answer required, even though they knew that this would

send them to the stake or scaffold.  Under the doctrine of

"excepted cases," there was no limit to torture for persons

accused of heresy or witchcraft; even the safeguards which the

old pagan world had imposed upon torture were thus thrown down,

and the prisoner MUST confess.



[251] For still extant lists of such questions, see the

Zeitschrift fur deutsche Culturgeschichte for 1858, pp. 522-528,

or Diefenbach, Der Hexenwahn in Deutschland, pp. 15-17.  Father

Vincent of Berg (in his Enchiridium) gives a similar list for use

by priests in the confession of the accused.  Manuscript lists of

this sort which have actually done service in the courts of Baden

and Bavaria may be seen in the library of Cornell University.





The theological literature of the Middle Ages was thus enriched

with numberless statements regarding modes of Satanic influence

on the weather.  Pathetic, indeed, are the records; and none

more so than the confessions of these poor creatures, chiefly

women and children, during hundreds of years, as to their manner

of raising hailstorms and tempests.  Such confessions, by tens of

thousands, are still to be found in the judicial records of

Germany, and indeed of all Europe.  Typical among these is one on

which great stress was laid during ages, and for which the world

was first indebted to one of these poor women.  Crazed by the

agony of torture, she declared that, returning with a demon

through the air from the witches' sabbath, she was dropped upon

the earth in the confusion which resulted among the hellish

legions when they heard the bells sounding the Ave Maria.  It is

sad to note that, after a contribution so valuable to sacred

science, the poor woman was condemned to the flames.  This

revelation speedily ripened the belief that, whatever might be

going on at the witches' sabbath--no matter how triumphant Satan

might be--at the moment of sounding the consecrated bells the

Satanic power was paralyzed.  This theory once started, proofs

came in to support it, during a hundred years, from the torture

chambers in all parts of Europe.



Throughout the later Middle Ages the Dominicans had been the main

agents in extorting and promulgating these revelations, but in

the centuries following the Reformation the Jesuits devoted

themselves with even more keenness and vigour to the same task.

Some curious questions incidentally arose.  It was mooted among

the orthodox authorities whether the damage done by storms should

or should not be assessed upon the property of convicted witches.

The theologians inclined decidedly to the affirmative; the

jurists, on the whole, to the negative.[252]



[252] For proofs of the vigour of the Jesuits in this

persecution, see not only the histories of witchcraft, but also

the Annuae litterae of the Jesuits themselves, passim.





In spite of these tortures, lightning and tempests continued, and

great men arose in the Church throughout Europe in every

generation to point out new cruelties for the discovery of

"weather-makers," and new methods for bringing their machinations

to naught.



But here and there, as early as the sixteenth century, we begin

to see thinkers endeavouring to modify or oppose these methods.

At that time Paracelsus called attention to the reverberation of

cannon as explaining the rolling of thunder, but he was

confronted by one of his greatest contemporaries.  Jean Bodin, as

superstitious in natural as he was rational in political science,

made sport of the scientific theory, and declared thunder to be

"a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil spirits, and hurled

downward with a great crash and a horrible smell of sulphur."  In

support of this view, he dwelt upon the confessions of tortured

witches, upon the acknowledged agency of demons in the

Will-o'-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in the one

hundred and fourth Psalm, "Who maketh his angels spirits, his

ministers a flaming fire."



To resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was

dangerous indeed.  In 1513, Pomponatius, professor at Padua,

published a volume of Doubts as to the Fourth Book of Aristotle's

Meteorologica, and also dared to question this power of devils;

but he soon found it advisable to explain that, while as a

PHILOSOPHER he might doubt, yet as a CHRISTIAN he of course

believed everything taught by Mother Church--devils and all--and

so escaped the fate of several others who dared to question the

agency of witches in atmospheric and other disturbances.



A few years later Agrippa of Nettesheim made a somewhat similar

effort to breast this theological tide in northern Europe.  He

had won a great reputation in various fields, but especially in

natural science, as science was then understood.  Seeing the

folly and cruelty of the prevailing theory, he attempted to

modify it, and in 1518, as Syndic of Metz, endeavoured to save a

poor woman on trial for witchcraft.  But the chief inquisitor,

backed by the sacred Scriptures, the papal bulls, the theological

faculties, and the monks, was too strong for him; he was not only

forced to give up his office, but for this and other offences of

a similar sort was imprisoned, driven from city to city and from

country to country, and after his death his clerical enemies,

especially the Dominicans, pursued his memory with calumny, and

placed over his grave probably the most malignant epitaph ever

written.



As to argument, these efforts were met especially by Jean Bodin

in his famous book, the Demonomanie des Sorciers, published in

1580.  It was a work of great power by a man justly considered

the leading thinker in France, and perhaps in Europe.  All the

learning of the time, divine and human, he marshalled in support

of the prevailing theory.  With inexorable logic he showed that

both the veracity of sacred Scripture and the infallibility of a

long line of popes and councils of the Church were pledged to it,

and in an eloquent passage this great publicist warned rulers and

judges against any mercy to witches--citing the example of King

Ahab condemned by the prophet to die for having pardoned a man

worthy of death, and pointing significantly to King Charles IX of

France, who, having pardoned a sorcerer, died soon

afterward.[253]



[253] To the argument cited above, Bodin adds: "Id certissimam

daemonis praesentiam significat; nam ubicunque daemones cum

hominibus nefaria societatis fide copulantur, foedissimum semper

relinquunt sulphuris odorem, quod sortilegi saepissime

experiuntur et confitentur."  See Bodin's Universae Naturae

Theatrum, Frankfort, 1597, pp. 208-211.  The first edition of the

book by Pomponatius, which was the earliest of his writings, is

excessively rare, but it was reprinted at Venice just a half-

century later.  It is in his De incantationibus, however, that he

speaks especially of devils.  As to Pomponatius, see, besides

these, Creighton's History of the Papacy during the Reformation,

and an excellent essay in Franck's Moralistes et Philosophes.

For Agrippa, see his biography by Prof. Henry Morley, London,

1856.  For Bodin, see a statement of his general line of argument

in Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, chap. 1.





In the last years of the sixteenth century the persecutions for

witchcraft and magic were therefore especially cruel; and in the

western districts of Germany the main instrument in them was

Binsfeld, Suffragan Bishop of Treves.



At that time Cornelius Loos was a professor at the university of

that city.  He was a devoted churchman, and one of the most

brilliant opponents of Protestantism, but he finally saw through

the prevailing belief regarding occult powers, and in an evil

hour for himself embodied his idea in a book entitled True and

False Magic.  The book, though earnest, was temperate, but this

helped him and his cause not at all.  The texts of Scripture

clearly sanctioning belief in sorcery and magic stood against

him, and these had been confirmed by the infallible teachings of

the Church and the popes from time immemorial; the book was

stopped in the press, the manuscript confiscated, and Loos thrown

into a dungeon.



The inquisitors having wrought their will upon him, in the spring

of 1593 he was brought out of prison, forced to recant on his

knees before the assembled dignitaries of the Church, and

thenceforward kept constantly under surveillance and at times in

prison.  Even this was considered too light a punishment, and his

arch-enemy, the Jesuit Delrio, declared that, but for his death

by the plague, he would have been finally sent to the stake.[254]



[254] What remains of the manuscript of Loos, which until

recently was supposed to be lost, was found, hidden away on the

shelves of the old Jesuit library at Treves, by Mr. George

Lincoln Burr, now a professor at Cornell University; and Prof.

Burr's copy of the manuscript is now in the library of that

institution.  For a full account of the discovery and its

significance, see the New York Nation for November 11, 1886.  The

facts regarding the after-life of Loos were discovered by Prof.

Burr in manuscript records at Brussels.





That this threat was not unmeaning had been seen a few years

earlier in a case even more noted, and in the same city.  During

the last decades of the sixteenth century, Dietrich Flade, an

eminent jurist, was rector of the University of Treves, and chief

judge of the Electoral Court, and in the latter capacity he had

to pass judgment upon persons tried on the capital charge of

magic and witchcraft.  For a time he yielded to the long line of

authorities, ecclesiastical and judicial, supporting the reality

of this crime; but he at last seems to have realized that it was

unreal, and that the confessions in his torture chamber, of

compacts with Satan, riding on broomsticks to the witch-sabbath,

raising tempests, producing diseases, and the like, were either

the results of madness or of willingness to confess anything and

everything, and even to die, in order to shorten the fearful

tortures to which the accused were in all cases subjected until a

satisfactory confession was obtained.



On this conviction of the unreality of many at least of the

charges Flade seems to have acted, and he at once received his

reward.  He was arrested by the authority of the archbishop and

charged with having sold himself to Satan--the fact of his

hesitation in the persecution being perhaps what suggested his

guilt.  He was now, in his turn, brought into the torture chamber

over which he had once presided, was racked until he confessed

everything which his torturers suggested, and finally, in 1589,

was strangled and burnt.



Of that trial a record exists in the library of Cornell

University in the shape of the original minutes of the case, and

among them the depositions of Flade when under torture, taken

down from his own lips in the torture chamber.  In these

depositions this revered and venerable scholar and jurist

acknowledged the truth of every absurd charge brought against

him--anything, everything, which would end the fearful torture:

compared with that, death was nothing.[255]



[255] For the case of Flade, see the careful study by Prof. Burr,

The Fate of Dietrich Flade, in the Papers of the American

Historical Association, 1891.





Nor was even a priest secure who ventured to reveal the unreality

of magic.  When Friedrich Spee, the Jesuit poet of western

Germany, found, in taking the confessions of those about to be

executed for magic, that without exception, just when about to

enter eternity and utterly beyond hope of pardon, they all

retracted their confessions made under torture, his sympathies as

a man rose above his loyalty to his order, and he published his

Cautio Criminalis as a warning, stating with entire moderation

the facts he had observed and the necessity of care.  But he did

not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare

publish it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the world

anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the work to

him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to be

published in the Protestant town of Rinteln.



Nor was this all.  Nothing shows so thoroughly the hold that this

belief in magic had obtained as the conduct of Spee's powerful

friend and contemporary, John Philip von Schonborn, later the

Elector and Prince Archbishop of Mayence.



As a youth, Schonborn had loved and admired Spee, and had

especially noted his persistent melancholy and his hair whitened

even in his young manhood.  On Schonborn's pressing him for the

cause, Spee at last confessed that his sadness, whitened hair,

and premature old age were due to his recollections of the scores

of men and women and children whom he had been obliged to see

tortured and sent to the scaffold and stake for magic and

witchcraft, when he as their father confessor positively knew

them to be innocent.  The result was that, when Schonborn became

Elector and Archbishop of Mayence, he stopped the witch

persecutions in that province, and prevented them as long as he

lived.  But here was shown the strength of theological and

ecclesiastical traditions and precedents.  Even a man so strong

by family connections, and enjoying such great temporal and

spiritual power as Schonborn, dared not openly give his reasons

for this change of policy.  So far as is known, he never uttered

a word publicly against the reality of magic, and under his

successor in the electorate witch trials were resumed.



The great upholders of the orthodox view retained full possession

of the field.  The victorious Bishop Binsfeld, of Treves, wrote a

book to prove that everything confessed by the witches under

torture, especially the raising of storms and the general

controlling of the weather, was worthy of belief; and this book

became throughout Europe a standard authority, both among

Catholics and Protestants.  Even more inflexible was Remigius,

criminal judge in Lorraine.  On the title-page of his manual he

boasts that within fifteen years he had sent nine hundred persons

to death for this imaginary crime.[256]



[256] For Spee and Schonborn, see Soldan and other German

authorities.  There are copies of the first editions of the

Cautio Criminalis in the library of Cornell University.

Binsfeld's book bore the title of Tractatus de confessionibus

maleficorum et sagarum.  First published at Treves in 1589, it

appeared subsequently four times in the original Latin, as well

as in two distinct German translations, and in a French one.

Remigius's manual was entitled Daemonolatreia, and was first

printed at Lyons in 1595.





Protestantism fell into the superstition as fully as Catholicism.

In the same century John Wier, a disciple of Agrippa, tried to

frame a pious theory which, while satisfying orthodoxy, should do

something to check the frightful cruelties around him.  In his

book De Praestigiis Daemonum, published in 1563, he proclaimed

his belief in witchcraft, but suggested that the compacts with

Satan, journeys through the air on broomsticks, bearing children

to Satan, raising storms and producing diseases--to which so many

women and children confessed under torture--were delusions

suggested and propagated by Satan himself, and that the persons

charged with witchcraft were therefore to be considered "as

possessed"--that is, rather as sinned against than sinning.[257]



[257] For Wier, or Weyer,s ee, besides his own works, the

excellent biography by Prof. Binz, of Bonn.





But neither Catholics nor Protestants would listen for a moment

to any such suggestion.  Wier was bitterly denounced and

persecuted.  Nor did Bekker, a Protestant divine in Holland, fare

any better in the following century.  For his World Bewitched,

in which he ventured not only to question the devil's power over

the weather, but to deny his bodily existence altogether, he was

solemnly tried by the synod of his Church and expelled from his

pulpit, while his views were condemned as heresy, and overwhelmed

with a flood of refutations whose mere catalogue would fill

pages; and these cases were typical of many.



The Reformation had, indeed, at first deepened the superstition;

the new Church being anxious to show itself equally orthodox and

zealous with the old.  During the century following the first

great movement, the eminent Lutheran jurist and theologian

Benedict Carpzov, whose boast was that he had read the Bible

fifty-three times, especially distinguished himself by his skill

in demonstrating the reality of witchcraft, and by his cruelty in

detecting and punishing it.  The torture chambers were set at

work more vigorously than ever, and a long line of theological

jurists followed to maintain the system and to extend it.



To argue against it, or even doubt it, was exceedingly dangerous.

Even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, when

Christian Thomasius, the greatest and bravest German between

Luther and Lessing, began the efforts which put an end to it in

Protestant Germany, he did not dare at first, bold as he was, to

attack it in his own name, but presented his views as the

university thesis of an irresponsible student.[258]



[258] For Thomasius, see his various bigraphies by Luden and

others; also the treatises on witchcraft by Soldan and others.

Manuscript notes of his lectures, and copies of his earliest

books on witchcraft as well as on other forms of folly, are to be

found in the library of Cornell University.





The same stubborn resistance to the gradual encroachment of the

scientific spirit upon the orthodox doctrine of witchcraft was

seen in Great Britain.  Typical as to the attitude both of Scotch

and English Protestants were the theory and practice of King

James I, himself the author of a book on Demonology, and nothing

if not a theologian.  As to theory, his treatise on Demonology

supported the worst features of the superstition; as to

practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of Reginald Scot,

The Discoverie of Witchcraft, one of the best treatises ever

written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he

applied his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the

tempests which beset his bride on her voyage from Denmark.

Skilful use of unlimited torture soon brought these causes to

light.  A Dr. Fian, while his legs were crushed in the "boots"

and wedges were driven under his finger nails, confessed that

several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve from the port

of Leith, and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the

princess.



With the coming in of the Puritans the persecution was even more

largely, systematically, and cruelly developed.  The great

witch-finder, Matthew Hopkins, having gone through the county of

Suffolk and tested multitudes of poor old women by piercing them

with pins and needles, declared that county to be infested with

witches.  Thereupon Parliament issued a commission, and sent two

eminent Presbyterian divines to accompany it, with the result

that in that county alone sixty persons were hanged for

witchcraft in a single year.  In Scotland matters were even

worse.  The auto da fe of Spain was celebrated in Scotland under

another name, and with Presbyterian ministers instead of Roman

Catholic priests as the main attendants.  At Leith, in 1664, nine

women were burned together.  Condemnations and punishments of

women in batches were not uncommon.  Torture was used far more

freely than in England, both in detecting witches and in

punishing them.  The natural argument developed in hundreds of

pulpits was this:  If the Allwise God punishes his creatures with

tortures infinite in cruelty and duration, why should not his

ministers, as far as they can, imitate him?



The strongest minds in both branches of the Protestant Church in

Great Britain devoted themselves to maintaining the superstition.

The newer scientific modes of thought, and especially the new

ideas regarding the heavens, revealed first by Copernicus and

Galileo and later by Newton, Huygens, and Halley, were gradually

dissipating the whole domain of the Prince of the Power of the

Air; but from first to last a long line of eminent divines,

Anglican and Calvinistic, strove to resist the new thought.  On

the Anglican side, in the seventeenth century, Meric Casaubon,

Doctor of Divinity and a high dignitary of Canterbury,--Henry

More, in many respects the most eminent scholar in the

Church,--Cudworth, by far the most eminent philosopher, and Dr.

Joseph Glanvil, the most cogent of all writers in favour of

witchcraft, supported the orthodox superstition in treatises of

great power; and Sir Matthew Hale, the greatest jurist of the

period, condemning two women to be burned for witchcraft,

declared that he based his judgment on the direct testimony of

Holy Scripture.  On the Calvinistic side were the great names of

Richard Baxter, who applauded some of the worst cruelties in

England, and of Increase and Cotton Mather, who stimulated the

worst in America; and these marshalled in behalf of this cruel

superstition a long line of eminent divines, the most earnest of

all, perhaps, being John Wesley.



Nor was the Lutheran Church in Sweden and the other Scandinavian

countries behind its sister churches, either in persecuting

witchcraft or in repressing doubts regarding the doctrine which

supported it.



But in spite of all these great authorities in every land, in

spite of such summary punishments as those of Flade, Loos, and

Bekker, and in spite of the virtual exclusion from church

preferment of all who doubted the old doctrine, the new

scientific view of the heavens was developed more and more; the

physical sciences were more and more cultivated; the new

scientific atmosphere in general more and more prevailed; and at

the end of the seventeenth century this vast growth of

superstition began to wither and droop.  Montaigne, Bayle, and

Voltaire in France, Thomasius in Germany, Calef in New England,

and Beccaria in Italy, did much also to create an intellectual

and moral atmosphere fatal to it.



And here it should be stated, to the honour of the Church of

England, that several of her divines showed great courage in

opposing the dominant doctrine.  Such men as Harsnet, Archbishop

of York, and Morton, Bishop of Lichfield, who threw all their

influence against witch-finding cruelties even early in the

seventeenth century, deserve lasting gratitude.  But especially

should honour be paid to the younger men in the Church, who wrote

at length against the whole system:  such men as Wagstaffe and

Webster and Hutchinson, who in the humbler ranks of the clergy

stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that by so doing

they were making their own promotion impossible.



By the beginning of the eighteenth century the doctrine was

evidently dying out.  Where torture had been abolished, or even

made milder, "weather-makers" no longer confessed, and the

fundamental proofs in which the system was rooted were evidently

slipping away.  Even the great theologian Fromundus, at the

University of Louvain, the oracle of his age, who had

demonstrated the futility of the Copernican theory, had foreseen

this and made the inevitable attempt at compromise, declaring

that devils, though OFTEN, are not ALWAYS or even for the most

part the causes of thunder.  The learned Jesuit Caspar Schott,

whose Physica Curiosa was one of the most popular books of the

seventeenth century, also ventured to make the same mild

statement.  But even such concessions by such great champions of

orthodoxy did not prevent frantic efforts in various quarters to

bring the world back under the old dogma:  as late as 1743 there

was published in Catholic Germany a manual by Father Vincent of

Berg, in which the superstition was taught to its fullest extent,

with the declaration that it was issued for the use of priests

under the express sanction of the theological professors of the

University of Cologne; and twenty-five years later, in 1768, we

find in Protestant England John Wesley standing firmly for

witchcraft, and uttering his famous declaration, "The giving up

of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible."  The

latest notable demonstration in Scotland was made as late as

1773, when "the divines of the Associated Presbytery" passed a

resolution declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring

the general scepticism regarding it.[259]



[259] For Carpzov and his successors, see authorities already

given.  The best account of James's share in the extortion of

confessions may be found in the collection of Curious Tracts

published at Edinburgh in 1820.  See also King James's own

Demonologie, and Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland, vol. i,

part ii, pp. 213-223.  For Casaubon, see his Credulity and

Incredulity in Things Natural, pp. 66, 67.  For Glanvil, More,

Casaubon, Baxter, Wesley, and others named, see Lecky, as above.

As to Increase Mather, in his sermons, already cited, on The

Voice of God in Stormy Winds, Boston, 1704, he says: "when there

are great tempests, the Angels oftentimes have a Hand therein. .

. . Yea, and sometimes, by Divine Permission, Evil Angels have a

Hand in such Storms and Tempests as are very hurtful to Men on

the Earth."  Yet "for the most part, such Storms are sent by the

Providence of God as a Sign of His Displeasure for the Sins of

Men," and sometimes "as Prognosticks and terrible Warnings of

Great Judgements not far off."  From the height of his erudition

Mather thus rebukes the timid voice of scientific scepticism:

"There are some who would be esteemed the Wits of the World, that

ridicule those as Superstitious and Weak Persons, which look upon

Dreadful Tempests as Prodromous of other Judgements.

Nevertheless, the most Learned and Judicious Writers, not only of

the Gentiles, but amongst Christians, have Embraced such a

Persuasion; their Sentiments therein being Confirmed by the

Experience of many Ages."  For another curious turn given to this

theory, with reference to sanitary science, see Deodat Lawson's

famous sermon at Salem, in 1692, on Christ's Fidelity a Shield

against Satan's Malignity, p. 21 of the second edition.  For

Cotton Mather, see his biography by Barrett Wendell, pp. 91, 92;

also the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria in this work.  For

Fromundus, see his Meteorologica (London, 1656), lib. iii, c. 9,

and lib. ii, c. 3.  For Schott, see his Physica Curiosa (edition

of Wurzburg, 1667), p. 1249.  For Father Vincent of Berg, see his

Enchiridium quadripartitum (Cologne, 1743).  Besides benedictions

and exorcisms for all emergencies, it contains full directions

for the manufacture of Agnes Dei, and of another sacred panacea

called "Heiligthum," not less effective against evil powers,--

gives formulae to be worn for protection against the devil,--

suggests a list of signs by which diabolical possession may be

recognised, and prescribes the question to be asked by priests in

the examination of witches.  For Wesley, see his Journal for

1768.  The whole citation is given in Lecky.







IV.  FRANKLIN'S LIGHTNING-ROD.





But in the midst of these efforts by Catholics like Father

Vincent and by Protestants like John Wesley to save the old

sacred theory, it received its death-blow.  In 1752 Franklin made

his experiments with the kite on the banks of the Schuylkill;

and, at the moment when he drew the electric spark from the

cloud, the whole tremendous fabric of theological meteorology

reared by the fathers, the popes, the medieval doctors, and the

long line of great theologians, Catholic and Protestant,

collapsed; the "Prince of the Power of the Air" tumbled from his

seat; the great doctrine which had so long afflicted the earth

was prostrated forever.



The experiment of Franklin was repeated in various parts of

Europe, but, at first, the Church seemed careful to take no

notice of it.  The old church formulas against the Prince of the

Power of the Air were still used, but the theological theory,

especially in the Protestant Church, began to grow milder.  Four

years after Franklin's discovery Pastor Karl Koken, member of the

Consistory and official preacher to the City Council of

Hildesheim, was moved by a great hailstorm to preach and publish

a sermon on The Revelation of God in Weather.  Of "the Prince of

the Power of the Air" he says nothing; the theory of diabolical

agency he throws overboard altogether; his whole attempt is to

save the older and more harmless theory, that the storm is the

voice of God.  He insists that, since Christ told Nicodemus that

men "know not whence the wind cometh," it can not be of mere

natural origin, but is sent directly by God himself, as David

intimates in the Psalm, "out of His secret places."  As to the

hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by

the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting that God

showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the body before

impressing the conscience.



While the theory of diabolical agency in storms was thus drooping

and dying, very shrewd efforts were made at compromise.  The

first of these attempts we have already noted, in the effort to

explain the efficacy of bells in storms by their simple use in

stirring the faithful to prayer, and in the concession made by

sundry theologians, and even by the great Lord Bacon himself,

that church bells might, under the sanction of Providence,

disperse storms by agitating the air.  This gained ground

somewhat, though it was resisted by one eminent Church authority,

who answered shrewdly that, in that case, cannon would be even

more pious instruments.  Still another argument used in trying to

save this part of the theological theory was that the bells were

consecrated instruments for this purpose, "like the horns at

whose blowing the walls of Jericho fell."[260]



[260] For Koken, see his Offenbarung Gottes in Wetter,

Hildesheim, c1756; and for the answer to Bacon, see Gretser's De

Benedictionibus, lib. ii, cap. 46.





But these compromises were of little avail.  In 1766 Father

Sterzinger attacked the very groundwork of the whole diabolic

theory.  He was, of course, bitterly assailed, insulted, and

hated; but the Church thought it best not to condemn him.  More

and more the "Prince of the Power of the Air" retreated before

the lightning-rod of Franklin.  The older Church, while clinging

to the old theory, was finally obliged to confess the supremacy

of Franklin's theory practically; for his lightning-rod did what

exorcisms, and holy water, and processions, and the Agnus Dei,

and the ringing of church bells, and the rack, and the burning of

witches, had failed to do.  This was clearly seen, even by the

poorest peasants in eastern France, when they observed that the

grand spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which neither the sacredness

of the place, nor the bells within it, nor the holy water and

relics beneath it, could protect from frequent injuries by

lightning, was once and for all protected by Franklin's rod.

Then came into the minds of multitudes the answer to the question

which had so long exercised the leading theologians of Europe and

America, namely, "Why should the Almighty strike his own

consecrated temples, or suffer Satan to strike them?  "



Yet even this practical solution of the question was not received

without opposition.



In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially

in Massachusetts, to Franklin's rod.  The Rev. Thomas Prince,

pastor of the Old South Church, published a sermon on the

subject, and in the appendix expressed the opinion that the

frequency of earthquakes may be due to the erection of "iron

points invented by the sagacious Mr. Franklin."  He goes on to

argue that "in Boston are more erected than anywhere else in New

England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken.  Oh!

there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God."



Three years later, John Adams, speaking of a conversation with

Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says:  "He began to prate upon the

presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the

lightning from the clouds.  He railed and foamed against the

points and the presumption that erected them.  He talked of

presuming upon God, as Peter attempted to walk upon the water,

and of attempting to control the artillery of heaven."



As late as 1770 religious scruples regarding lightning-rods were

still felt, the theory being that, as thunder and lightning were

tokens of the Divine displeasure, it was impiety to prevent their

doing their full work.  Fortunately, Prof. John Winthrop, of

Harvard, showed himself wise in this, as in so many other things:

in a lecture on earthquakes he opposed the dominant theology;

and as to arguments against Franklin's rods, he declared, "It is

as much our duty to secure ourselves against the effects of

lightning as against those of rain, snow, and wind by the means

God has put into our hands."



Still, for some years theological sentiment had to be regarded

carefully.  In Philadelphia, a popular lecturer on science for

some time after Franklin's discovery thought it best in

advertising his lectures to explain that "the erection of

lightning-rods is not chargeable with presumption nor

inconsistent with any of the principles either of natural or

revealed religion."[261]



[261] Regarding opposition to Franklin's rods in America, see

Prince's sermon, especially p. 23; also Quincy, History of

Harvard University, vol. ii, p. 219; also Works of John Adams,

vol. ii, pp. 51, 52; also Parton's Life of Franklin, vol. i, p.

294.





In England, the first lightning conductor upon a church was not

put up until 1762, ten years after Franklin's discovery.  The

spire of St. Bride's Church in London was greatly injured by

lightning in 1750, and in 1764 a storm so wrecked its masonry

that it had to be mainly rebuilt; yet for years after this the

authorities refused to attach a lightning-rod.  The Protestant

Cathedral of St. Paul's, in London, was not protected until

sixteen years after Franklin's discovery, and the tower of the

great Protestant church at Hamburg not until a year later still.

As late as 1783 it was declared in Germany, on excellent

authority, that within a space of thirty-three years nearly four

hundred towers had been damaged and one hundred and twenty

bell-ringers killed.



In Roman Catholic countries a similar prejudice was shown, and

its cost at times was heavy.  In Austria, the church of

Rosenberg, in the mountains of Carinthia, was struck so

frequently and with such loss of life that the peasants feared at

last to attend service.  Three times was the spire rebuilt, and

it was not until 1778--twenty-six years after Franklin's

discovery--that the authorities permitted a rod to be attached.

Then all trouble ceased.



A typical case in Italy was that of the tower of St. Mark's, at

Venice.  In spite of the angel at its summit and the bells

consecrated to ward off the powers of the air, and the relics in

the cathedral hard by, and the processions in the adjacent

square, the tower was frequently injured and even ruined by

lightning.  In 1388 it was badly shattered; in 1417, and again

in 1489, the wooden spire surmounting it was utterly consumed; it

was again greatly injured in 1548, 1565, 1653, and in 1745 was

struck so powerfully that the whole tower, which had been rebuilt

of stone and brick, was shattered in thirty-seven places.

Although the invention of Franklin had been introduced into Italy

by the physicist Beccaria, the tower of St. Mark's still went

unprotected, and was again badly struck in 1761 and 1762; and

not until 1766--fourteen years after Franklin's discovery--was a

lightning-rod placed upon it; and it has never been struck

since.[262]



[262] For reluctance in England to protect churches with

Franklin's rods, see Priestley, History of Electricity, London,

1775, vol. i, pp. 407, 465 et seq.





So, too, though the beautiful tower of the Cathedral of Siena,

protected by all possible theological means, had been struck

again and again, much opposition was shown to placing upon it

what was generally known as "the heretical rod," but the tower

was at last protected by Franklin's invention, and in 1777,

though a very heavy bolt passed down the rod, the church received

not the slightest injury.  This served to reconcile theology and

science, so far as that city was concerned; but the case which

did most to convert the Italian theologians to the scientific

view was that of the church of San Nazaro, at Brescia.  The

Republic of Venice had stored in the vaults of this church over

two hundred thousand pounds of powder.  In 1767, seventeen years

after Franklin's discovery, no rod having been placed upon it, it

was struck by lightning, the powder in the vaults was exploded,

one sixth of the entire city destroyed, and over three thousand

lives were lost.[263]



[263] See article on Lightning in the Edinburgh Review for

October, 1844.





Such examples as these, in all parts of Europe, had their effect.

The formulas for conjuring off storms, for consecrating bells to

ward off lightning and tempests, and for putting to flight the

powers of the air, were still allowed to stand in the liturgies;

but the lightning-rod, the barometer, and the thermometer,

carried the day.  A vigorous line of investigators succeeding

Franklin completed his victory, The traveller in remote districts

of Europe still hears the church bells ringing during tempests;

the Polish or Italian peasant is still persuaded to pay fees for

sounding bells to keep off hailstorms; but the universal

tendency favours more and more the use of the lightning-rod, and

of the insurance offices where men can be relieved of the ruinous

results of meteorological disturbances in accordance with the

scientific laws of average, based upon the ascertained recurrence

of storms.  So, too, though many a poor seaman trusts to his

charm that has been bathed in holy water, or that has touched

some relic, the tendency among mariners is to value more and more

those warnings which are sent far and wide each day over the

earth and under the sea by the electric wires in accordance with

laws ascertained by observation.



Yet, even in our own time, attempts to revive the old theological

doctrine of meteorology have not been wanting.  Two of these, one

in a Roman Catholic and another in a Protestant country, will

serve as types of many, to show how completely scientific truth

has saturated and permeated minds supposed to be entirely

surrendered to the theological view.



The Island of St. Honorat, just off the southern coast of

France, is deservedly one of the places most venerated in

Christendom. The monastery of Lerins, founded there in the fourth

century, became a mother of similar institutions in western

Europe, and a centre of religious teaching for the Christian

world.  In its atmosphere, legends and myths grew in beauty and

luxuriance. Here, as the chroniclers tell us, at the touch of St.

Honorat, burst forth a stream of living water, which a recent

historian of the monastery declares a greater miracle than that

of Moses;  here he destroyed, with a touch of his staff, the

reptiles which infested the island, and then forced the sea to

wash away their foul remains.  Here, to please his sister,

Sainte-Marguerite, a cherry tree burst into full bloom every

month; here he threw his cloak upon the waters and it became a

raft, which bore him safely to visit the neighbouring island;

here St. Patrick received from St. Just the staff with which he

imitated St. Honorat by driving all reptiles from Ireland.

Pillaged by Saracens and pirates, the island was made all the

more precious by the blood of Christian martyrs.  Popes and kings

made pilgrimages to it; saints, confessors, and bishops went

forth from it into all Europe; in one of its cells St. Vincent

of Lerins wrote that famous definition of pure religion which,

for nearly fifteen hundred years, has virtually superseded that

of St. James.  Naturally the monastery became most illustrious,

and its seat "the Mediterranean Isle of Saints."



But toward the close of the last century, its inmates having

become slothful and corrupt, it was dismantled, all save a small

portion torn down, and the island became the property first of

impiety, embodied in a French actress, and finally of heresy,

embodied in an English clergyman.



Bought back for the Church by the Bishop of Frejus in 1859, there

was little revival of life for twelve years.  Then came the

reaction, religious and political, after the humiliation of

France and the Vatican by Germany; and of this reaction the

monastery of St. Honorat was made one of the most striking

outward and visible signs.  Pius IX interested himself directly

in it, called into it a body of Cistercian monks, and it became

the chief seat of their order in France.  To restore its

sacredness the strict system of La Trappe was

established--labour, silence, meditation on death.  The word thus

given from Rome was seconded in France by cardinals, archbishops,

and all churchmen especially anxious for promotion in this world

or salvation in the next.  Worn-out dukes and duchesses of the

Faubourg Saint-Germain united in this enterprise of pious

reaction with the frivolous youngsters, the petits creves, who

haunt the purlieus of Notre Dame de Lorette.  The great church of

the monastery was handsomely rebuilt and a multitude of altars

erected; and beautiful frescoes and stained windows came from the

leaders of the reaction.  The whole effect was, perhaps, somewhat

theatrical and thin, but it showed none the less earnestness in

making the old "Isle of Saints" a protest against the hated

modern world.



As if to bid defiance still further to modern liberalism, great

store of relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true

cross, of the white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns,

sponge, lance, and winding-sheet of Christ,--the hair, robe,

veil, and girdle of the Blessed Virgin; relics of St. John the

Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Paul, St.

Barnabas, the four evangelists, and a multitude of other saints:

so many that the bare mention of these treasures requires

twenty-four distinct heads in the official catalogue recently

published at the monastery.  Besides all this--what was

considered even more powerful in warding off harm from the

revived monastery--the bones of Christian martyrs were brought

from the Roman catacombs and laid beneath the altars.[264]



[264] See the Guide des Visiteurs a Lerins, published at the

Monastery in 1880, p. 204; also the Histoire de Lerins, mentioned

below.





All was thus conformed to the medieval view; nothing was to be

left which could remind one of the nineteenth century; the "ages

of faith" were to be restored in their simplicity.  Pope Leo XIII

commended to the brethren the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas as

their one great object of study, and works published at the

monastery dwelt upon the miracles of St. Honorat as the most

precious refutation of modern science.



High in the cupola, above the altars and relics, were placed the

bells.  Sent by pious donors, they were solemnly baptized and

consecrated in 1871, four bishops officiating, a multitude of the

faithful being present from all parts of Europe, and the sponsors

of the great tenor bell being the Bourbon claimant to the ducal

throne of Parma and his duchess.  The good bishop who baptized

the bells consecrated them with a formula announcing their

efficacy in driving away the "Prince of the Power of the Air" and

the lightning and tempests he provokes.



And then, above all, at the summit of the central spire, high

above relics, altars, and bells, was placed--A

LIGHTNING-ROD![265]



[265] See Guide, as above, p. 84.  Les Isles de Lerins, by the

Abbe Alliez (Paris, 1860), and the Histoire de Lerins, by the

same author, are the authorities for the general history of the

abbey, and are especially strong in presenting the miracles of

St. Honorat, etc.  The Cartulaire of the monastery, recently

published, is also valuable.  But these do not cover the recent

revival, for an account of which recourse must be had to the very

interesting and naive Guide already cited.





The account of the monastery, published under the direction of

the present worthy abbot, more than hints at the saving, by its

bells, of a ship which was wrecked a few years since on that

coast; and yet, to protect the bells and church and monks and

relics from the very foe whom, in the medieval faith, all these

were thought most powerful to drive away, recourse was had to the

scientific discovery of that "arch-infidel," Benjamin Franklin!



Perhaps the most striking recent example in Protestant lands of

this change from the old to the new occurred not long since in

one of the great Pacific dependencies of the British crown.  At a

time of severe drought an appeal was made to the bishop, Dr.

Moorhouse, to order public prayers for rain.  The bishop refused,

advising the petitioners for the future to take better care of

their water supply, virtually telling them, "Heaven helps those

who help themselves."  But most noteworthy in this matter was it

that the English Government, not long after, scanning the horizon

to find some man to take up the good work laid down by the

lamented Bishop Fraser, of Manchester, chose Dr. Moorhouse; and

his utterance upon meteorology, which a few generations since

would have been regarded by the whole Church as blasphemy, was

universally alluded to as an example of strong good sense,

proving him especially fit for one of the most important

bishoprics in England.



Throughout Christendom, the prevalence of the conviction that

meteorology is obedient to laws is more and more evident.  In

cities especially, where men are accustomed each day to see

posted in public places charts which show the storms moving over

various parts of the country, and to read in the morning papers

scientific prophecies as to the weather, the old view can hardly

be very influential.



Significant of this was the feeling of the American people during

the fearful droughts a few years since in the States west of the

Missouri.  No days were appointed for fasting and prayer to bring

rain; there was no attribution of the calamity to the wrath of

God or the malice of Satan; but much was said regarding the

folly of our people in allowing the upper regions of their vast

rivers to be denuded of forests, thus subjecting the States below

to alternations of drought and deluge.  Partly as a result of

this, a beginning has been made of teaching forest culture in

many schools, tree-planting societies have been formed, and

"Arbor Day" is recognised in several of the States.  A true and

noble theology can hardly fail to recognise, in the love of

Nature and care for our fellow-men thus promoted, something far

better, both from a religious and a moral point of view, than any

efforts to win the Divine favour by flattery, or to avert Satanic

malice by fetichism.