Browne considers the oracles as evidently and indubitably supernatural, and founds all his disquisition upon that postulate.

Taking the terms "revelation" and "inspiration" in the unsophisticated sense which they have borne not only in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but in almost all the great ethnic religions as well, we may inquire into the different sorts and degrees of the control exercised by the presumably supernatural agents over the recipient of such influence.

But a new element was about to appear upon the troubled stage, and a new figure, one whose doings, however liberally we may discount the more purely supernatural part of them, strikes us even now as little short of miraculous.

On a dark night in the month of December, just as Alonzo had played one of his bewitching airs, with his wonted execution, and was engaged, in converse sweet, with the enraptured Carlotta, an extraordinary and seemingly supernatural noise suddenly proceeded from a distant part of the hallowed ground where Alonzo sacrificed at the shrine of love.