We learn from such accounts that there prevails among all men, at all ages, a carefully repressed, but almost irresistible belief in supernatural occurrences, and in the close proximity of the spirit world. This belief is neither to be treated with ridicule nor to be objected to as unchristian, since it is an abiding witness that men entertain an ineradicable conviction of the immortality of the soul. No arguments can ever destroy in the minds of the vast majority of men this innate and intuitive faith. We may decline to believe with them the existence of supernatural agencies, as long as no experimental basis is offered; but we ought, at the same time, to be willing to modify our incredulity as soon as an accumulation of facts appear to justify us in so doing. Our age is so completely given up to materialism with its ceaseless hurry and worry, that we ought to hail with a sense of relief new powers which require examination, and which offer to our intellectual faculties an untrodden field of investigation, full of incidents refreshing to our weary mind, and promising rich additions to our store of knowledge. It can hardly be denied that there is at least a possibility of the existence of a higher spiritual power within us, which, often slumbering and altogether unknown, or certainly unobserved during life, becomes suddenly free to act in the hour of death. This may be brought about by the fact that at that time the strength of the body is exhausted, and earthly wants no longer press upon us, while the spiritual part of our being, largely relieved of its bondage, becomes active in its own peculiar way, and thus acquires a power which we are disposed to call a magic power. This power is, of course, not used consciously, for consciousness presupposes the control over our senses, but it acts by intuitive impulse. Hence the wide difference existing between the so-called magic of charmers, enchanters, and conjurors, justly abhorred and strictly prohibited by divine laws, and the effects of such supreme efforts made by the soul, which depend upon involuntary action, and are never made subservient to wicked purposes.