The deluding and heart-steeling power of false conceptions of the devil,
combined with clear faith that he could get access to external things only
through human covenanters with himself, and also with belief that it was
an imperative duty of Christian men to slay such persons as even spectral
evidence or statements of clairvoyants pointed to as being in league with
him, is perhaps manifested as strikingly and sadly in the case of Rebecca
Nurse, as in that of any other person tried and executed at Salem--or
indeed anywhere, in any age. The spirit-form or apparition of this
venerable lady--venerable not only for years then bordering upon
fourscore, but for a long life of active beneficence; for strong good
sense; for Christian graces; for being the good wife of one and mother and
mother-in-law of several as good, respectable, and useful men as the
Village contained. Character and domestic connections so shielded her that
nothing short of mighty power could fix upon her a blasting crime.
Her spirit-form or apparition had been seen by several members of the
circle, and charged with having tempted them to evil and tormented them
prior to the 23d of March; on the 24th she was brought before the
magistrates and subjected to examination. The occasion was well fitted to
put to severe test existing fealty to a fearful creed. Well might the
magistrate then say to the prisoner, as he did, "What a sad thing it is
that a church member ... should be thus accused and charged." Especially
_sad_ it must have been in this case, because the accused had long been,
and well deserved to be, regarded as one of the most venerable and
esteemed of all the "mothers in Israel" residing in the region there and
round about. Some sympathy was on her side, for when she said, "I can say
before my Eternal Father I am innocent, and God will clear my innocency,"
the magistrate responded, "There is never a one in the assembly but
desires it."
This venerable matron was then, and for scores of years had been, beloved
and respected wherever known for her beautiful domestic, social, and
religious course. Even such a one, however, was drawn in and crushed by
the fierce and whirling zeal that was impelling community into headlong
and frenzied fight for God and Christ against the _Devil_. Age and virtue
were insufficient to arrest or divert the rushing storm which
hallucination devil-ward then generated and propelled. A benighting creed,
like a huge nightmare, lay down upon, and held down, both reason and all
the kindlier sentiments, while it evoked and allowed free play to harsh
and murderous propensities. Whither either natural brilliancy or natural
attraction drew clairvoyant eyes most intently, thither were the accusing
girls swayed to lead the whelming force. Why should they lead to, or
rather why fix upon, the beloved and venerated Mrs. Nurse?
We may not find in the old records as full and distinct evidence that she
was constitutionally impressible by either mesmeric or spirit force, as
many others are now seen to have been--we may miss conclusive _proof_ that
she was a magnet either drawing to or emitting from itself psychological
forces unconsciously, and thence either becoming herself psychologized or
yielding out substances from her own system which might cause, or be made
instrumental in causing, marked changes in other human organisms. Still,
several facts indicate that she may be assigned a place among the
sensitives.
Mrs. Nurse, Mrs. Easty, and Mrs. Cloyse--three sisters--whose maiden name
was Towne, were eminently intelligent, efficient, respectable, and
respected matrons, and yet were all accused, tried, and the elder two were
executed because their spirit-forms or apparitions had been seen by
clairvoyants. The records contain a statement made at the time, in these
words: "It was no wonder they were witches, _for their mother was so
before them_." Often "blood will out" whatever its quality. Three noble
daughters bespeak a good mother, and yet, for some reason, Mrs. Towne had
been called _a witch_. The properties of the parent reappeared in her
children, and rendered them visible by the inner or clairvoyant sight of
others. Perception of their spirit-forms and of influences thence
emanating caused the accusing girls to name these good women as their
tormentors. Visibility as spirits or apparitions, and effluxes from their
systems, were their crimes.
Though members of the accusing circle had been demonstrative for several
weeks, and probably had attracted to their bedsides or homes nearly every
person in the town who could move abroad, yet, at the time of her
examination, Mrs. Nurse had not been to see any of them. Her age and
infirmities alone might well have excused her. But when asked why she had
not visited the sufferers, she added to a statement of her years and
debility, that "by reason of _fits_ that she formerly used to have," she
had not been to see them. Remembrance of her own past fits--not
recent--not impending fits--but fits which "she _formerly_ used to have,"
deterred her from going to the presence of the fit-afflicted. The question
was repeated thus: "_Why_ did you never visit these afflicted persons?"
_Ans._ "Because I was afraid _I should have fits, too_." Why afraid of
such result? Obviously she felt a secret apprehension that her coming in
contact with emanations from these mysteriously fit-afflicted ones, or
into close sympathy with them, would bring upon herself again such fits as
"she formerly used to have." From this comes forth spontaneously the
inference that she suspected that the nature and source of her own former
fits, and of those then transpiring in youthful forms, were so nearly
allied, that under the general law which makes like produce its like, she
was liable to have again generated within herself, in her old age, such
sufferings as she had experienced some time in previous years. In our view
she was correct in her supposition that she herself was constitutionally
liable to just such handlings as the jumping-jack girls were receiving.
Her own fears bespeak the probability that Mrs. Nurse was very impressible
by mind not her own--that she was highly mediumistic; and we ascribe her
persecution to her impressibility. Natural law led to designation of both
this woman and her sisters as the devil's covenanted servants. Their creed
blinded her persecutors to moral perceptions in certain emergencies, and
made them reason falsely concerning the source and purport of spectral
data. The presumed mediumistic properties of her mother, together with her
own apprehension that presence with the girls might bring renewal of her
own old fits, indicate that she probably was quite mediumistic. There is,
however, no clear indication that she was at any time so far developed as
to see or hear spirits or specters, nor that her own selfhood ever yielded
up to another's use her physical organs of speech or action.
Mr. Parris, who, by request from the magistrates, took minutes of the
questions and responses at the trial of Mrs. Nurse, states that the tumult
in court was very disturbing, and intimates that it was difficult to
furnish a very reliable account of the transactions. Also Mrs. Nurse was
quite deaf and otherwise infirm, so that it is doubtful whether she always
correctly understood the questions put to her, or that she held her mental
faculties under such control as enabled her to give pertinent answers at
all times. She is reported as expressing belief that the accusing girls
were "not acting against their wills." Therein, if she was correctly
understood, she differed from the court and most beholders of the
children. Then the court remarked, "If you think it is not unwillingly,
but by design, you must look upon them as murderers." Probably all others
made that inference, and yet the accused did not. She distinctly denied
that she looked upon them as _murderers_, and only called them
"distracted." Crazy, and yet voluntary, seems to have been the view she
took of the girls; they were voluntary, but not responsible actors. Their
own wills, guided by their own intellects in disordered condition,
produced the fearful allegations. This was her charitable view.
The power of human will to resist fits like those which the afflicted
endured is brought up for consideration when we find enfeebled Mrs. Nurse
afraid that visiting the suffering girls might induce recurrence of such
fits as she "formerly used to have." She seems to have surmised the
probable existence of such contagion in the air surrounding the sufferers
as in her weak state she might be unable to ward off; and it is possible
that memories of her own success when she was strong, in baffling
fit-producers may have persuaded her that young persons possess power to
withstand such operators, whether intelligent or merely physical, even
though the old may not.
What human wills can do deserves most careful notice, and was well
illustrated in the case of little Elizabeth Parris. She was only nine
years old, and was one of the first, if not the very first, to be
distressed by fits and pinchings at the Village,--was the one whom Tituba
loved, and was specially unwilling, and yet was forced, to pinch. Upham
says, "She seems to have performed a leading part in the first stages of
the affair, and must have been a child of remarkable precocity." Drake, in
vol. iii., Appendix, says, "Parris appears to have been very desirous of
preventing his daughter Elizabeth from participating in the excitement at
the village. She was sent by her father, at the commencement of the
delusion, to reside at Salem, with Captain Stephen Sewall. While there,
the captain and his wife were much discouraged in effecting a cure, as she
continued to have sore fits. Elizabeth said that the great Black-man came
to her and told her, that if she would be ruled by him, she should have
whatsoever she desired, and go to a _golden city_. She related this to
Mrs. Sewall, who immediately told the child it was the devil, and he was a
liar, and bade her tell him so if he came again; which she did
accordingly.... The devil ... unaccustomed in those days to experience
such resistance ... never troubled her afterwards." It is generally true,
that if one strenuously resist the visitings of any spirit, whether it be
Gabriel or Beelzebub, the spirit cannot long maintain close access. If the
account just given, relating to Elizabeth Parris, be correct, she both saw
and heard what she, the actual and unsophisticated observer of his form
and features, called the "black man,"--who, as Mather states clairvoyants
generally say, "resembles an Indian." But Mrs. Sewall, adopting the usage
of the time, ignorantly called this semblance of an Indian "THE DEVIL."
Yes, the little girl, after her removal from home and _The Circle_, and no
doubt without young confederates, continued to have sore fits, and also to
see and to hear with her inner organs of sense during quite a long time.
"The captain and his wife were much discouraged in effecting a cure." The
discouragement shows that the process of cure was slow and prolonged;
eventually, however, the desired result was reached. The remedy is
indicated. Will-power wrought out the cure. The patient's own will was
aroused and armed with a resolute purpose to close up, and to keep
constantly and firmly closed, her own spirit loopholes through which only
could she see or hear the black man, or be influenced by him. A strong
will, steadily set against the entrance of a disembodied spirit, or
against perception of such, generally, though not always, effects its
purpose. The wills of companions and advisers, if working in harmony with
the resisting one, greatly increase its resisting power. Mrs. Sewall, and
the captain too, no doubt kept their wills set against the visiting black
man, till will-force generated an aura whose outgoing waves he could not
breast, and by which the girl's inner perceptives were firmly bandaged and
made dormant. Were the fits and visions which the isolated child continued
to have for a time after she was sent from home nothing other than her own
voluntary pranks and feignings? She was not author of them. The black man,
or Indian, then acted through and upon her till it was no longer in his
power to perform mighty works there because of unbelief, which had grown
up and hardened into an impervious wall of seclusion.
Knowledge, gained by our personal observation in 1857, enables us to state
distinctly that the late Professor Agassiz, a man strong in body, mind,
and will, (while arrangements were being made for himself and several
associate professors for an investigation of spirit manifestations at the
Albion in Boston,) demanded for himself at the very outset, and was
granted, exemption from obligation to sit in a circle. Through all the
sessions which followed he kept most of the time on his feet, walking
vigorously back and forth, and manifesting symptoms of great uneasiness.
We then had heard that he formerly had been mesmerized, and therefore
suspected that he feared that if he sat quietly down in the presence of
mediums, he "should have fits too." His own account of his experiences
under the hands of Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend we have given at length in
a recent work, published by Colby & Rich, Boston, entitled "Agassiz and
Spiritualism." We now gladly use what seems fitting occasion to state our
own belief, that his demand for personal exemption from compliance with a
rule which it was customary, fair, and important to enforce upon every
person present at a seance, and that his restlessness and disturbing
movements all sprung from a motive much more in harmony with the high
character and principles of that illustrious man, than are disparaging
ones which have often been ascribed to him. In our judgment,
_self-protection_ was his motive, and not design to disturb harmony, and
thus frustrate manifestations. His former experience had taught him that
even over his firm mental resistance another's mind had entered his body
and taken it out from under his own control; therefore he well might
apprehend that, if not very cautious, he again "might have fits," or might
become "a Saul among prophets."
We have already substantially said that the blinding, infuriating, and
bloodthirsty beliefs of former days are perhaps in no case more distinctly
and deplorably manifested than in the lawless, barbarous treatment to
which good Rebecca Nurse was subjected by a court and people who sought to
do, and believed that they were doing, acceptable service to God, or, at
least, offensive service to the devil. Spectral evidence against her, and
that alone, was allowed to outweigh the merits of a long and beneficent
life. The jury first brought her in _not_ guilty. This verdict, surprising
the court, induced it to express apprehension that the jurors had not
given due weight to certain expressions which the prisoner had uttered;
whereupon _the jury itself requested permission_ to retire and hold
further deliberation; and even such a privilege was granted them! They
retired, reversed their verdict, pronounced her _guilty_, and she was
sentenced to be hanged. Afterward the governor of the province granted her
reprieve; and yet he soon revoked his own clement act. Probably neither
jury, nor the governor, was convinced that she was guilty of the crime
charged; nevertheless, both were forced by popular demand to let the
reputation and life of this eminently good woman fall a sacrifice before
infatuation and frenzy which the erroneous creed of the times engendered.