Sidonia the Sorceress V1

is spouse, and Doctor Gerschoviu

referred to Dr. Gerschovius, and asked him how the prophets of God differed from those of the devil. Whereupon the docto

forth, therefore, dressed in black robes, their horses also caparisoned with black hangings, and the Duchess ordered a hundred wax lights for the ceremony. Sidonia alone declined attending, and gave ou

te, which she had purchased privately, and practised night and morning in place of learning the catechism, she played a low, soft air, to attract their attention. So all the young knights looked up; and when Prince Ernest arrived he looked up

ment, then, give

ve half my life to learn it properly. There is no

, lady, and the cold ai

air rather refreshes me; and besides, I fe

y; I must attend to the

l young maiden no sooner heard this than she opened her door. The Prince at the same instant opened his to let out the smoke, and their eyes met, when Sidonia uttered a feeble cry and fell fainting upon the floor. The Prince, seeing this, flew to her, raised her up, and trembling with emotion, carried her back to her room and laid her down upon the bed. Now indeed it was well for him that he had given that promise to Ulrich. When Sidonia after some time slowly opened her eyes, th

rosemary with her own hand upon the head of the corpse, and a little prayer-book beside it, open at that fine hymn "Pauli Sperati" (which also was sung over the grave). Then the husband laid a tin cruc

s if a sermon were about to be preached; and the doctor, seeing this, stroked his beard, and he begun as follows: [Footnote: Perhaps some readers will hold the rationalist doctrine that no prophecy is possible or credible, and that no mortal can under any circumstances see into futurity; but how then can they account for the wonderful phenomena of animal magnetism, which are so well authenticated? Do they deny all the facts which have been elicited by the great advance made recently in natural and physiological philosophy? I need not here bring forward proofs from the ancients, showing their universal belief in the possibility of seeing into futurity, nor a cloud of witnesses from our modern philosophers, attesting the truth of the phenomena of somnambulism, but only observe that this ve

t; or, by supposing that there is an innate latent divining element in our own natures, which only becomes evident and active under certain circumstances, and which is capable of revealing the future with more or less exactitude just as the mind can recall the past. For past and future are but

Kerner-but at all events one thing is certain, the facts are there; only ignorance, stupidity, and obstinacy can deny them. The cause is still a subject of speculation, doubt, and difficulty. It is only by a vast induction of facts, as in natural philosophy, that we

. For as the Laplander grew frenzied, and foamed at the mouth, so it has been with all false prophets from the beginning. Even the blind heathen called prophesying mania, or the wisdom of madness. The secret of producing this madness was known to them; sometimes it was by the use of roots or aromatic herbs, or by exhalations, as in the case of the Pythoness, whose incoherent utterances were written

to them from one common tradition. Witches, it is well known, made frequent use of potions, and as all somnambulists assert that the seat of the soul's greatest activity is in the stomach, it is not incredible what Van Helmont relates, that having once tasted the root napellus, his intellect all at once, accompanied by an unusual feeling of ecstasy, seemed to remove from his brain to his stomach.] Furt

that somnambulists never remember upon their recovery what they have uttered during the crisis. Therefore phenomena of this class appear to belong, in some things, to that of the divining frenzy, though in others to quite a different category of the divining life.] Further, you may observe that the false prophets can always prophesy when they choose, Satan is ever willing to come when they exorcise him; but the true prophets of

llo, and also that all oracles were bought with gold, and the answer depended on the weight of the sack. As Ezekiel notices, xiii. 19; and Micah iii. 8. Further, the holy prophets suffered all manner of persecution for the sake of God, a

what men desire in riches, health, or advancement-in short, temporal matters alone. Whereas God's people, in addition to temporal concerns, preached repentance and holiness to the Jewish pe

rprised if they sometimes spoke truth, as the Lapland wizard has done, for the devil's power is superior to man's, and he can see events which, though close at hand, are yet hidden from us, as a father can foretell an approaching storm, though his little son cannot do so, a

therefore they all from the beginning testified of the Saviour that was to come, and rejoiced in His day as if they really beheld Him, and all stood together as brothers in one place, and at

, for a greater Prophet than the Lapland wizard has said, "I am the resurrection and the life, whosoever believeth in Me shall never die." [Footnote: In addition to the foregoing distinctions between the Satanic and the holy prophets, I may add the following-that almost all the diviners amongst the heathen were women. For instance, Cassandra, the Pythia in Delphi, Triton and Peristh?a in Dodona, the Sybils, the Velleda of Tacitus, the Mandragoras, and Druidesses, the witches of the Reformation age; and in fine, the modern somnambules are all women too. But throughout the whole Bible we find that the prophetic power was exclusively confer