The Identity Of Primitive Christianity And Modern Spiritualism (Volume 2)

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int. Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. INSENSIBILITY TO FIRE. " Lo, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire, and they have nc hurt. . . . And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellors, being gathered together saw these men upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their heads singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed them. . . .-Dan. iii. 25, 27. THE same power here manifested in the protection of the bodies of the three Hebrews against the destructive action of fire, has, though in a less conspicuous manner, been exercised by spirits in all ages, and 1 have no doubt that many times where persons suspected of crime have been compelled to resort to the ordeal by fire, certain spirits finding themselves able to exercise this power through the mediumistic qualities of the accused, and from sympathy with their misfortunes, have rendered them proof against its usual effects so that they have passed through the trial unscathed. This mode of testing the innocence or guilt of an accused person, had its origin in remote antiquity, and until a comparatively recent period was resorted to in many European states, as a means of deciding certain cases where extraneous evidence was lacking, and in all ages there have been instances in which persons have borne the test successfully, and thus the faith of the ignorant and superstitious in this ordeal was sustained, and the institution itself perpetuated. The manner in which the ordeal was conducted in Europe, we ascertain from various writers, among them Blackstone. " Fire ordeal," he says, " was performed either by taking up in the hand unhurt, a piece of red-hot iron of one, two, or three pounds weigh, or else by walking barefoot and blindfold, over red-hot ploughshar...

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