"We know that Christ, while walking on the waves, did not sink,
and that he and Elijah were carried up into heaven. What became
of their material bodies we cannot tell, but they were certainly
superior to the force of gravitation. We have no reason to
believe that in miracles any natural law was broken, or even set
aside, but simply that some other law, whose workings we do not
understand, became operative and modified the law that otherwise
would have had things its own way. In apergy we undoubtedly have
the counterpart of gravitation, which must exist, or Nature's
system of compensation is broken. May we not believe that in
Christ's transfiguration on the mount, and in the appearance of
Moses and Elias with him--doubtless in the flesh, since otherwise
mortal eyes could not have seen them--apergy came into play and
upheld them; that otherwise, and if no other modification had
intervened, they would have fallen to the ground; and that apergy
was, in other words, the working principle of those miracles?"

"May we not also believe," added Cortlandt, "that in the
transfiguration Christ's companions took the substance of their
material bodies--the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon--from
the air and the moisture it contained; for, though spiritual
bodies, be their activity magnetic or any other, could of course
pass the absolute cold and void of space without being affected,
no mortal body could; and that in the same manner Elijah's body
dissolved into air without the usual intervention of
decomposition; for we know that, though matter can easily change
its form, it can never be destroyed."

All assented to this, and Ayrault continued: "If apergy can