160 Human Physiology. 



vitation is suspended ; a man or woman is seen standing in the 

 air, or gliding through it, as all, perhaps, sometimes dream of 

 doing. Heavy articles of furniture rise, and are sustained in 

 the same manner. 



In all ages and nations of which we have records, the ghosts 

 or spirits of the departed have appeared to the living. They 

 have been seen, heard, and felt by so many persons, that the 

 testimony to the reality of such appearances is overwhelming. 



The power of spirit over matter has been shown in all 

 miracles ; in healing the sick, making the blind to see, the deaf 

 to hear, and the sudden change of material conditions, as the 

 instantaneous healing of abscess and cancer ; and it has been 

 shown no less, and in our own day, by the suspension of the 

 action of heat, as well as gravitation. Many living persons in 

 England, of the highest intelligence, have seen the human body 

 take on a condition in which fire would not burn it ; when an 

 incandescent coal would not even singe the skin or burn a hair. 



Facts that prove the power of spirit over matter and force 

 are found not only in the Holy Scriptures, but in the history of 

 the Church and the Lives of the Saints, and such facts, presented 

 to the senses, or received upon the testimony of honest and 

 intelligent witnesses, have converted great multitudes of people 

 in Europe and America from materialism to a belief in immor- 

 tality ; and this seems to be the chief intention and use of all 

 supernatural manifestations. Whether the spirits making these 

 manifestations are good or evil, whether they speak truth or 

 falsehood, they prove to us the great fact of a spiritual existence. 



