Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/199

Rh have gained for it. The concurrent testimony of all ages and nations can hardly create a presumption, unless it be assumed that there have been no universal errors. The assertion that the opinion could become universal only by its truth compels the assumption that all universal opinions are true. To prove that the dead are seen no more, or cannot appear to living beings, is of course impossible. But that a thing cannot be proven impossible is not a reason for believing it actual. No one can demonstrate that the spirit of Mahomet is not now embodied in the present Sultan of Turkey, but no one believes it. Belief in apparitions, common in all ages, generally dying out in the middle of the last century, was revived in the antagonisms created by the excesses of materialistic and infidel opinions, which denied the truth of the miracles recorded in the Christian Scriptures. John Wesley says, "It is true that the English in general, and indeed most of the men in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old wife's fables." He expresses great sorrow at this, and adds, "If but one account of the intercourse of men with superior spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (deism, atheism, materialism) falls to the ground." The discussion of Mr. Wesley's views of the relation of witchcraft to true Christianity is not in place here. His testimony as to the opinions of men of his time is the best of which the case admits, and the assertion quoted concerning the value of proof of that kind in the then pending conflicts with the free-thinkers justifies the use made of it by Dr. Hibbert in his "Philosophy of Apparitions," published not more than forty years after Wesley's death.

Two subjects which have a bearing upon any theory of apparitions, telepathy and modern spiritualism, are