takes place _occasionally_ between, the soul and that God through whose
power alone she continues to exist.

In other words, the existence of miracles is probable rather than
otherwise. A miracle is an event in which the laws of nature are
interrupted by the intervention of Divine agency, usually for the
purpose of bringing the soul of man into a conscious contact with the
inhabitants of the invisible world. With more or less exactness of
similitude, a miracle establishes between God and man, or between other
spiritual beings and man, that same kind of intercourse which exists
between different living individuals of the human race. Such a conscious
intercourse is indeed asserted by infidels as well as by atheists,
to be, if not impossible, at least so utterly improbable, that it is
scarcely within the power of proof to make it credible to the unbiased
reason. Yet surely the balance of probability inclines to the very
opposite side. If there _is_ a God, and our souls _are_ in communication
(of some kind) with Him, surely, prior to experience, we should have
expected to be habitually conscious of this communion. And now that we
see that we are not at any rate habitually so, still the burden of proof
rests with those who allege that such conscious intercourse _never_
takes place. Apart from all proof of the reality of any one professed
miracle, the infidel is bound to show _why_ all miracles are improbable
or impossible; in other words, why man should never be conscious of the
presence and will of his ever-present God.

Protestants, however, and even weak Catholics, regard the record of one
of those mysterious lives, in which the soul of a man or woman has been
repeatedly brought into this species of communion with invisible beings,
as a tale which, though it is just possible that it may be true, is yet,
on the face of it, so flagrant a violation of the laws of nature, as