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Good morning. Here’s a tale for those of you who haven’t had enough of Halloween: forensic scientists have reconstructed the face of an 18th century witch. Her name was Lilias Adie. In 1704, she confessed to sorcery and died in prison before she could be executed. She was then buried on the coast of Scotland under a large stone – most probably to prevent her body from rising from the grave. Three hundred years later, scientists have recreated an image of her face from photographs of her skull. Lilias looked like a perfectly ordinary, sweet old lady. And why wouldn’t she? Either she was innocent of the charge or maybe a local healer – either way, the 21st century person looks upon killing witches with horror. To us, the superstitious and dangerous party in this story wasn’t Lilias but whoever threw her in jail, and thank goodness we don’t live in a world where that happens anymore. Except that we do. Accusations of witchcraft are still common in parts of Africa. And the whole world over, the notion of the “witch hunt” has evolved from an act of specific religious intolerance to the levelling of any unjust charge rooted in hysteria. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible used the Salem witch trials of colonial Massachusetts as a metaphor for the anti-communist panic of America in the 1950s, when lives were ruined by the accusation of being a Marxist. That was something that wasn’t supposed to happen in the United States, a country founded on the principle of freedom of thought. But any society can forget itself and descend, with frightening speed, into cruelty – and find all sorts of excuses to justify it or ignore it. When an injustice of any sort occurs, a person of moral conviction obviously has to sympathise with the victim. For me, as a Christian, this creates an historical irony: I’m on the side of the so-called witch against her so-called Christian judges. In fact, I would go further. I would argue that the falsely accused witch is Christ-like in the sense that she is a blameless victim, sacrificed by a community that has been corrupted by its own failings. Perhaps poor Lilias was the target of someone’s jealousy? Or blamed for a bad harvest? Hate, panic and ostracising someone - locking them up or putting them beyond our walls - is simply not a Christian act. To attack others for their beliefs, for their way of life, so often betrays a lack of confidence in your own. It is always a hypocritical and typically weak society that persecutes others.