The claim has never been given up; the practice never wholly disappeared.

So also with the Roman Catholic communion.

There has been there a succession of saints and of seers who have always claimed to be in direct touch with other worlds, and who have claimed and exercised the powers of those worlds manifestly on the physical plane.
To-day in the Roman Catholic Church similar phenomena are said to occur, and certainly the evidence offered for these phenomena is far more easily verifiable than the evidence offered for such phenomena in the earlier centuries of the Christian story.

So also among the Hindus it is more easy to prove nowadays the powers possessed by a yogi, than it is to prove the possession of those powers thousands of years ago in the obscurity of the earlier days of Hinduism.
Consequently you find amongst Roman Catholics and Hindus a definite belief that these things are still possible; and the only thing that either will say with regard to their happening is that the greater descent of the people as a whole into materiality has made the possession of these powers a far rarer qualification of a believer in one or other of the religions, than was the case in the early days of enthusiasm, and of a greater outpouring of spiritual life.

There is no doubt, so far as Christianity is concerned, that the sacred books of the Christians entirely support the Roman Catholic contention.