1875.] Human Levitation. 57 
his namesake of old upon the lake of Galilee, or the two 
prophets, or Joshua’s priests long before; and in the sight 
of the ferryman, and many others on each bank, both walk 
across, wetted ‘“‘hardly above the feet,’’* though all knew 
the river to be, when lowest, never fordable at this place, 
and it was now in a high flood. 
As bearing on the dark séance question, it may be re- 
marked that each of these four passages was after sunset, 
though none, like that in the gospels, after midnight. 
Again, Christians who may be inclined to suppose their 
Master’s works of any kind necessarily unequalled, must 
be reminded that if so, they make him to have prophesied 
falsely in John, xiv., 12. 
A singular feature alleged of Mr. Home, and of levitated 
inanimate objects, occasionally has been their rapid gyratory 
movement. Precisely the same is recorded of an early 
medizval case, the Flemish nun, Christina, who was liable, 
when conversing on the Lord, to be caught from her sisters 
and spun like a top;t and the same occurred in some of the 
trances into which similar conversations would throw Peter 
of Alcantara. Instead of rising to the level of the tops of 
trees, or being shot into the church as from a bow, he was 
sometimes hurried with a speed ‘‘as that of the wind” 
(though old and infirm), and without touching the ground, 
through various passages, to either his cell or the church, 
where he would then remain for hours insensible. Once, 
on hearing the words In principio erat Verbum, &c., chanted, 
he thus rolled away like a wheel, but raised a cubit from 
the ground.{ 
* The expression ‘‘dry shod” in the Old Testament, may very probably, 
even in the Hebrew, and still more so in the lost tongue whence Samuel 
translated it, have meant only with dry body garments. 
+ ‘*Cum ipsis aliquando sedendo loqueretur de Christo, subito et inopinaté 
Tapiebatur 4 spiritu, corpusque ejus velut trochum ludentum puerorum in 
vertiginem rotabatur, ita quod ex nimia vehementia vertiginis nulla in corpore 
ejus membrorum forma discerni posset.” 
t ‘“‘Accensus spiritu genua et caput inflectens, implexusque tanquam rota 
volatu celerrimo ad portam conventus, indeque per alias portas sine ulla 
lzsione ferebatur, ultra cubitum a terra elevatus ; usquedum coram SSS. _ Sa- 
cramento in ecclesia, in altissima, extasi raptus substitisset.” It should be 
remarked that the grace of ‘‘maceration bestowed on this saint, and the 
physical toughness implied, were perhaps unequalled. His nightly sleep was 
less than two hours, with the forehead leaniny against a wooden rest, his cell 
being, to prevent any posture but kneeling, planned two feet by four, and too 
low to admit of rising. For forty-six years he went in all weathers bare- 
headed and without sandals; and after washing his clothes, would wear them 
dripping wet. Before his daily flogging, he thought it necessary in winter to 
make the skin more sensitive by exposure to the frosty air. He ate usually 
but once in three days, and sometimes fasted for eight ; and so admirable, said 
St. Theresa (who preserved these particulars), was the attenuation of his body 
and limbs, that they resembled a bundle of roots. 
VOL. V. (N.S.) I 
