ces. Religion
welcomes them as miracles divine or diabolical. Scepticism produces
a reaction, and 'where no gods are spectres walk'. Thus men cannot,
or, so far, men have not been able to escape from the conditions in
which marvels flourish. If we are savages, then Vuis and Brewin
beset the forest paths and knock in the lacustrine dwelling perched
like a nest on reeds above the water; tornaks rout in the Eskimo
hut, in the open wood, in the gunyeh, in the Medicine Lodge. If we
are European peasants, we hear the Brownie at work, and see the
fairies dance in their grassy ring. If we are devoutly Catholic we
behold saints floating in mid-air, or we lay down our maladies and
leave our crutches at Lourdes. If we are personally religious, and
pass days in prayer, we hear voices like Bunyan; see visions like
the brave Colonel Gardiner or like Pascal; walk environed by an
atmosphere of light, like the seers in Iamblichus, and like a very
savoury Covenanting Christian. We are attended by a virtuous sprite
who raps and moves tables as was a pious man mentioned by Bodin and
a minister cited by Wodrow. We work miracles and prophesy, like Mr.
Blair of St. Andrews (1639-1662); we are clairvoyant, like Mr.
Cameron, minister of Lochend, or Loch-Head, in Kintyre (1679). If
we are dissolute, and irreligious like Lord Lyttelton, or like
Middleton, that enemy of Covenanters, we see ghosts, as they did,
and have premonitions. If we live in a time of witty scepticism, we
take to the magnetism of Mesmer. If we exist in a period of learned
and scientific scepticism, and are ourselves trained observers, we
may still watch the beliefs of Mr. Wallace and the experiments
witnessed by Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins.

Say we are Protestants, and sceptical, like Reginald Scot (1584), or
Whigs, like De Foe, we then exclaim with Scot, in his Discovery of
Witchcraft (1584), that minor miracles, moving tables, have gone out
with benighted Popery, as De Foe also boasts in his History of the
Devil. Alas, of the table we must admit eppur si muove; it moves,
or is believed by foreign savants to move, for a peasant medium,
Eusapia Paladino. Mr. Lecky declares (1865) that Church miracles
have followed Hop o' my Thumb; they are lost, with no track of white
pebbles, in the forest of Rationalism. {26a} And then Lourdes comes
to contradict his expectation, and Church miracles are as common as
blackberries. Enfin, mankind, in the whole course of its h