themselves and others, not only demoralized, but to some extent, perhaps, crazed them.  It is truly a marvel that their physical constitutions did not break down under the exhausting excitements, the contortions of frame, the force to which the bodily functions were subjected in trances and fits, and the strain upon all the vital energies, protracted through many months.  The wonder, however, would have been greater, if the mental and moral balance had not thereby been disturbed.

Perpetual conversance with ideas of supernaturalism; daily and nightly communications, whether in the form of conscious imposture or honest delusion, with the spiritual world, continued through a great length of time,—­as much at least as the exclusive contemplation of any one idea or class of ideas,—­must be allowed to be unsalutary.  Whatever keeps the thoughts wholly apart from the objects of real and natural life, and absorbs them in abstractions, cannot be favorable to the soundness of the faculties or the tone of the mind.  This must especially be the effect, if the subjects thus monopolizing the attention partake of the marvellous and mysterious.  When these things are considered, and the external circumstances of the occasion, the wild social excitement, the consternation, confusion, and horror, that were all crowded and heaped up and kept pressing upon the soul without intermission for months, the wonder is, indeed, that not only the accusers, prosecutors, and sufferers, but the whole people, did not lose their senses.  Never was the great boon of life, a sound mind in a sound body, more liable to be snatched away from all parties.  The depositions of Ann Putnam, Sr., have a tinge of sadness;—­a melancholy, sickly mania running through them.  Something of the kind is, perhaps, more or less discernible in the depositions of others.

Let us, then, relieve our common nature from the load of the imputation, that, in its normal state, it is capable of such inconceivable wickedness, by giving to these wretched persons the benefit of the supposition that they were more or less deranged.  This view renders the lesson they present more impressive and alarming.  Sin in all cases, when considered by a mind that surveys the whole field, is itself insanity.  In the case of these accusers, it was so great as to prove, by its very monstrousness, that it had actually subverted their nature and overthrown their reason.  They followed their victims to the gallows, and jeered, scoffed, insulted them in their dying hours.  Sarah Churchill, according to the testimony of Sarah Ingersoll, on one occasion came to herself, and manifested the symptoms of a restored moral consciousness:  but it was a temporary gleam, a lucid interval; and she passed back into darkness, continuing, as before, to revel in falsehood, and scatter destruction around her.  With this single exception, there is not the slightest appearance of compunction or reflection among them.  On the contrary, they seem to have