Bôdiharma’s mystic or esoteric Buddhism had no such influences to steady and sober it, and its aberrations were wilder than the fancies of our delirium. The supernatural pretensions of mysticism have always been disallowed or condemned in Christianity by overwhelming healthy-minded majorities, but the consequence of the practice of Esoteric Buddhism was believed by all to be supernatural power. An adept in it professed to see through all ages and worlds, and move through space by a sheer exercise of will. All the phenomena of modern spiritualism may have been witnessed in India and China two thousand years ago—yea, centuries perhaps before Buddha appeared. The first pretenders to these mysteries were the Indian Yogis and the medicine-men of savage and barbarous races.[396] The “Neo-Buddhism” and “Theosophy” of to-day simply confront us in the cast-off yellow rags of these pitiful superstitions. Their disciples attempt to warm themselves and to walk in the light of the unhallowed flames which the deluded followers of Bôdiharma believed they could kindle. In whatever way the phenomena of spiritualism are to be explained—and one cannot say what phenomena may emerge when the human mind is abandoned to vacuity, and the human will to an ungoverned fancy—we may be certain that investigation of them will never disclose the reality of benign supernatural power. What capabilities may be dormant in humanity no one can tell. Christ who redeemed us is the prophecy of what He can make us. He had supernatural power because His being accorded perfectly with the Heavenly Father’s will; but supernatural power as manifested by Christ is very different indeed from the ludicrous exhibitions of the “spiritualists.” Christ’s supernatural power was not manifested just in their ways, and certainly not by their methods; will it ever be acquired?[397]