The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-02-07
DEAoNol oGY REVLYED.
Have Mediaovai Expectations Survived in
 Modern Practices?

Modern Practices?
 Some of us have been a good deal startled and interested in the accounts which have come over here of the devil
 worship which is now going on in Paris
 and other places In France writes Sir
 Walter Besant inl the Queen" The
 persons who have adopted this singular form of worship are said to be priests defroques--i e., forbidden for criminal reasons the performance of the mass
 and women whose minds have been de-
 ranged or perverted by breeding over religious difficulties. We need not dwell
 here upon the horrible blasphemies of
 the Black Mass; they concern the physician and the philosopher, not the general public; but the thing itself concerns the reader of history, because it explains in great measure the old witch stories, the traditions of devil worship, and the sabbat or orgy where the worshipers assembled. Just as these
 poor, perverted creatures insanely
 gather together at the present. day, so
 they gathered five hundred years ago; then, not in chapel and in crowded cit
 ies, but on hilltops and in forests. And
 then, as now, to one after the other came strange experiences, hallucina-
 tions and visions; every breath of the
 night breeze was a kiss of the fiend; every echo of song and prayer was the gift of new power, and at the end the
 witch came back poor and hungry and
 cold and half starved, to her humble
 cottage, but proud in the power of doing
 evil to her enemies.
 You think all this is impossible. Con- slider, however, the things which people apparently sane do believe this very day. Only yesterday the scientific men of Cambridge were declaring the tricks of a charlatan to be the work of spirits. There is nothing too ridiculous for peo- pie to pretend And remember that in the days of witchcraft the belief was universal and questioning in visible, ccrporeal devils, in magic, in miracle, and in easy communication between this world and the other I believe that in some form or other, this perverted wor- ship, this submission to the power of evil, has continually been carried on. submit the following as an illustra- ton of the absolute sincerity of faith in miracles and magic which formerly existed. It is the history of Kenelnl, young King of Mersia He succeeded his father at the age of seven, and was placed under the tutelage of his aunt, Quandrida. This princess, ambitious and interruptions, thought that, if her nephew were out of the way, she might
 succeed and reign in his place. She therefore suborned one of the Royal Guard, Ascobert by name, and per- suaded him to murder the boy. There upon Quandrida took possession of the throne, and for brief space enjoyed the pleasures of power, tempered by the bangs of conscience Mark, how ever, what followed. A white dove flew over the Great Altar of St. Peter at Rome-all the way from Mercia to
 Rome-and dropped paper upon it
 which no one could read, because it was in English. But an angel came after the dove and read it for them, thus:
 'In the pasture of the cows, Kenelm,
 son of the king, lies under a thorn, headless." :"
 Quandrida, in a great rage at the dis
 covery and at all the singing of psalms ! and thanksgiving for miracles, put her head out of the window and began, for some artful sorcery, to sing the psalm | backward. Wonderful to relate, her eyes fell out of her head upon the Psalter which she held. Long years afterward they showed the very Psalter