injuries, and the perception of matters beyond the reach of our senses in healthy life. Rigid and long-continued fasting, reduced sleep on a hard couch, and an utter abstinence from all other thoughts or sentiments but such as connect themselves directly with a higher life, never fail to produce the desired effect. By such means the whole nature of man is finally changed; not only in the legitimate relations existing between body and mind, but also in those which connect man with nature; the changes are, therefore, as much physiological as psychical. They result at last in the acquisition of a power which in the eyes of the mystics is identical with that promised in Mark xvi. 18. "They shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them." Extraordinary as the accounts of the sufferings and the exceptional powers of mystics appear to us, they are in many instances too well authenticated to allow any serious doubt. Thus a famous ascetic, Rosa of Lima, was actually injured by healthy food, but on many occasions instantaneously strengthened by a mere mouthful of bread dipped into pure water; Bernard of Clairvaux lived for a considerable time on beech-leaves boiled in water, and Maria of Oignys once subsisted for thirty-five days on the holy wafer of the sacrament, which she took daily. Mystics who, like the latter, derived bodily sustenance as well as spiritual comfort from the Eucharist, are frequently mentioned in the annals of the Church. Others, again, succeeded by constant and extreme excitement to heat their blood to such an extent that they became insensible to outward cold, even when the frosts of winter became intolerable to others. The heart itself seems to be affected by such extreme elation; in Catherine of Siena its violent palpitations and convulsive jerkings could be both seen and felt, when she was in a state of ecstasis, and the heart of Filippo Neri was found, after death, to have been considerably enlarged, and actually to have broken two ribs by its convulsive spasms. Among the rarer but equally well-established magic phenomena of this class must be counted the temporary suspension of the law of gravity. Like the Brahmins of India, who have long possessed the power of raising themselves unaided from the ground and of remaining suspended in the air, Christian mystics also have been seen, more than once, to hang as it were unsupported high above the ground. They quote, in support of their faith in such exceptional powers, the fact that Habakkuk also was seized by an angel and carried away through the air, while even the Saviour was taken by the devil to an exceeding high mountain on the top of the temple, cases in which the laws of gravity must have been similarly suspended.