Concerning witchcraft, some take for granted that there is no such thing. But it is a very convenient thing to the enemy, in the case of ignorant and superstitious minds, to do that which establishes his authority in a way most suited to their state, and he has done so the wide world over. I grant that much of it is imposture, but an accurate examination of facts shows a kind of power, which is not merely human, exercised over men. When this power is gained and in the hands of men, it is used to deceive and impose on credulity. But how came this influence all over the world? The devil — some mischievous, terror-striking, corrupt being — has got himself worshipped by means of some influence over men’s minds. That is a fact. Those who have carried on the mysterious influence and have been delivered from it have acknowledged the greater part to be imposture, but they have also declared that they were under an unknown influence at times. Take the history of the oracles. I doubt not corruption, but they existed, and there was a mysterious influence. So of various effects beyond human power. The cessation of oracles when Christianity began to prevail, the undoubted deliverance of persons laboring under certain distressing symptoms during and subsequent to the apostles’ days, and the fact of man’s universal sense of some superior agency (as shown in terror and evil that no righteous mind will attribute to the true God) all concur to prove that there is an evil power exercising a real influence over the bodies and minds of men. I do not doubt there is superstition and imposture, but the world’s history shows the existence of an unknown power acting on the minds and bodies of men — a power from which Christianity entirely delivers.
They have assumed that science has left all witchcraft, possession and the like far behind in the dark, and in the light they have, these things dare not show themselves. But they delude themselves. If men are complete infidels, trusting their puny reason, there is no need of superstition to dazzle them with what is false, for they are stone-blind already. But in the middle of their pretended light, phenomena like spirit-rapping, the putting people to sleep and taking their minds, in a certain sense, into possession, and the identical necromancy of which we read in Scripture are still seen. That there is a vast deal of deception I have no doubt, but they have not explained and cannot explain the half of it. Witchcraft is not gone.
J. N. Darby, adapted