“But,” Mr. Wilson replied, “what, then, is the power of sympathy or imagination? That is a question I cannot answer. I yield to the power, enjoy it, and question it not. Begin to question it, and it is gone. I know well that philosophers call the power I speak of under one aspect, love, under another, sympathy, under another, imagination, under still another, faith, but what it is in itself they cannot tell me. Be it what it will, it is demonic, supernatural, an element in human nature, of which men in all ages have had glimpses, but of which none of us have as yet had any thing more. The history of our race everywhere bristles with prodigies. These prodigies were once regarded as miracles, and supposed to be wrought by the finger of God; now an unbelieving age treats them as impostures, cheats, fabrications, proving only people’s love of the marvellous, their natural proneness to superstition, and the ease with which they can be gulled by the crafty and the designing. I believe them, for the most part, real. I believe that there are times when man has a power over the elements, and can make the spirits obey him. Who knows but the time may come, perhaps is now near, when the law by which this power operates will be discovered, and this power, which has hitherto been irregular and transient in its manifestations, will became common and regular, and therefore bear the marks of a fixed and permanent law of nature? “But, call it what you will, it is not identical with the human will, nor in my opinion is it, strictly speaking, a property of human nature. It is an overshadowing, an all-pervading power, identical, most likely, with that Power which creates and manifests itself in the universe. We can avail ourselves of it, not because it is ours, but by placing ourselves in harmony with it, within its focal range, and suffering its rays to be all concentred in us.” “That is substantially my own view,” remarked Mr. Winslow, “and I regard mesmerism as revealing the regular and permanent means by which we can avail ourselves of that creative and miracle-working power. I do not pretend that man is thaumaturgic in himself, as distinguished from the Being from whom his life emanates, but by virtue of his union with the Fountain of All Force.” “I think,” said Mr. Sowerby, an ex-Methodist elder, “that by magnetism, we shall be able to explain the operations of the Holy Ghost, and the mysteries of regeneration.” “More likely,” interrupted Mr. Cotton, “the operations of Satan, and the Mystery of Iniquity.” “Yes, but in a sense thou dost not mean,” interposed Obediah Mott, a Hicksite Quaker. “Thou knowest how difficult it is for thee to explain the Popish miracles, many of which thou knowest come exceedingly well attested. Mesmerism will show thee, that they were wrought by mesmeric influences.”