1875.] Human Levitation. 39 
never natural, he must know that neither was Christ so, 
nor Adam, nor any pre-adamite man, mammal, or ascidian ; 
that no virgin ever bore the head or progenitor of a new 
race, to be superior to her ancestral one. Now, since 
Aristotle’s eternity of generations is by general consent now 
exploded, it seems, on the whole, more probable that this 
thing may have sometimes happened; even as many times 
as the earth contains distinct organic species. But if only 
once; or if but one planet has once been overtaken by 
steam enough to deluge it totally in one day ; or if a bodily 
levitation, like those of Mr. Home, testified by the editor of 
this journal, by Lord Lindsay, and many others, has only 
once occurred to any man; then each of these occurrences 
is sometimes natural. Under what conditions, we may 
never be able the least to define, but whatever happens we 
must call natural, whether the naturalness be clear to few 
or many, to all or none of us. Wecan only hold it to be 
within the regular course or evolution of the Eternal Evolver, 
*‘ with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning,” 
and whose machinery more than one ancient termed “ His 
wheels” (Ezek.,i., 16; Dan.,vii.,g); the continuity of which, 
through miracle and non-miracle alike, the former seer 
surely not obscurely intimates. ‘‘ Whithersoever the spirit 
was to go, they went, and turned not.” No reversal or 
instant of interruption in the Evolver’s laws. ‘‘ When the 
living creatures went, the wheels went by them.” ‘‘ When 
those stood, these stood ;’—‘‘for the spirit of the living 
creature was in the wheels,’”—not away, or distinct from 
the mechanism. And though wheel be within wheel, and 
“as for their circles, they were so high that they were 
dreadful,” yea, worshipped ; and in these days, no less than 
Ezekiel’s, it has been ‘‘ cried unto them in my hearing, O 
Wheel ;” yet is this twice repeated that they are “full of 
eyes,” and that the living spirit is not distinct from, but is 
*“*in the wheels.” 
Neither spiritualists nor admitters of historical miracle, 
then, believe, as they are taxed with doing, any interruption 
of natural law. We as fully hold the continuity and eternity 
of evolution and its laws as Sir William Grove does. But 
to the false charge of our holding this superstition, 
there is added the boast that modern practical science has 
abandoned the same, and insists on absolute continuity. 
This is no truer than the above, as an example from those 
making most practical claim to science will show. While 
the Sydenham Crystal Palace was building, in August, 1853, 
a scaffolding fell and killed some men, so that an inquest 
