regularly
swinging object may be made to swing regularly by repeated and timed
blows. A doctor will magnetise water and cure his patient therewith. He
will magnetise a cloth, and the cloth, laid on the seat of pain, will
heal. He will use a powerful magnet, or a current from a galvanic cell,
and restore energy to a nerve. In all cases the ether is thrown into
motion, and by this the denser physical particles are affected.

A similar result accrues when the materials used in a Sacrament are
acted on by the Word of Power and the Sign of Power. Magnetic changes
are caused in the ether of the physical substance, and the subtle
counterparts are affected according to the knowledge, purity, and
devotion of the celebrant who magnetises--or, in the religious term,
consecrates--it. Further, the Word and the Sign of Power summon to the
celebration the Angels specially concerned with the materials used and
the nature of the act performed, and they lend their powerful aid,
pouring their own magnetic energies into the subtle counterparts, and
even into the physical ether, thus reinforcing the energies of the
celebrant. No one who knows anything of the powers of magnetism can
doubt the possibility of the changes in material objects thus indicated.
And if a man of science, who may have no faith in the unseen, has the
power to so impregnate water with his own vital energy that it cures a
physical disease, why should power of a loftier, though _similar_,
nature be denied to those of saintly life, of noble character, of
knowledge of the invisible? Those who are able to sense the higher forms
of magnetism know very well that consecrated objects vary much in their
power, and that the magnetic difference is due to the varying knowledge,
purity, and spirituality of the priest who consecrates them. Some deny
all vital magnetism, and would reject alike the holy water of religion
and the magnetised water of medical science. They are consistent, but
ignorant. But those who admit the utility of the one, and laugh at the
other, show themselves to be not wise but prejudiced, not learned but
one-sided, and prove that their want of belief in religion biases their
intelligence, predisposing them to reject from the hand of religion that
which they accept from the hand of science. A little will be added to
this with regard to "sacred objects" generally in Chapter XIV.

We thus see that the outer part of the Sacrament is of very great
importance. Real ch