■MM ■%ffiffi%%%8/?&2. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ©|ap ©npptgfti Ifo Shelf^Z4-0 1 rOr4fc UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHY OF MENTAL HEALING. BY WILLIAM I. aiLL, A. M. ,1 s /C BOSTON : H. H. CARTER & KARRICK, PUBLISHERS, 3 Beacon Street. 1887. CX3 "RZ.4-6 1 / Copyright, i88 7> by C. A. GILL. C. M. A. Twitchell, Printer, 319 Washington Street, Boston. PREFACE The earnest advocacy and the practical exemplification of the power of mental healing, and their rapid diffusion, rank among the most striking phenomena of our times. Immense is the good, both physical and metaphysical which has thus been accomplished. Great, too, is the intellectual impulse which has hence been imparted to thousands of minds who have been led by this move- ment to grapple vigorously with the most subtle and pro- found of metaphysical problems, in their hopeful effort to understand the philosophy of mental healing. That these efforts have, in some cases, been rather crude, is only what were to be expected. All the earlier and initial efforts of thought in any direction, have been crude compared with the matured results of later times. The geocentric theory of astronomy preceded the Coper- nician. The phenomena of Paleontology had numerous ludicrous explanations before the modern doctrine of geology was born and reared. All the sciences have exemplified the same psychological law. Psychology and metaphysics have been no exception. Considered in this light, even the crudest of the writing on this sub- ject which in recent years have so rapidly issued from the press, deserve respectful consideration. Partially IV PREFACE. under this cover the author may hope for some indul- gence for the imperfections of the following exposition of Pneumatopathy. It ought to be some improvement on its predecessors in the same line ; and this, as it is hoped, may be found to be true. This only can justify its publication, and certainly nothing less will commend it to the public and secure readers. Some writers will doubtless think that certain falla- cious notions might have been better passed over in silence. But those which have been noticed are wide-spread, and by many people they are deemed of supreme importance and infallibly true ; and, as thence armed with divine authority to denounce whatever does not bow to them. They are eminently and painfully obstructive, and they divide into hostile camps, parties which ought to be only friendly rivals and fraternal co- operatives in a great common cause. These fallacies, too, are especially repulsive to the understanding of in- telligent lookers on ; and they thus operate widely and powerfully as an injurious prejudice against our whole cause. Besides, it helps to a more definite conception and understanding of a truth to view its proofs negatively as well as positively, by seeing the refutation of its oppo- sites. It thus becomes more clearly marked off from rival error, and shines both by direct radiation and reflected light. Some there are who would rather have us wrap up the errors exposed, for fear the exposure will hurt the cause. But truth cannot be harmed by truth, and a studied con- cealment is calculated to excite distrust, and indicates insincerity or a lack of a genuine conviction of the verity PREFACE. V of the principles avowed. In the personal ministration and the practical application of truth there is a sphere for the exercise of prudence. But in philosophy there is no such call for delicacy. We want the truth, pure and simple, sharply discriminated from error. Here it is supposed there are no personal or party interests to be conserved or promoted, and that the one only interest to be considered is the removal of error and the advance- ment of the truth. It is a ground of frequent regret that the friends of mental healing are divided into numerous opposing schools. The regret is natural, but equally natural is the occasion of it. Such schools are inevitable till dog- matism and mere theoretic speculation give place to the method of science; and, in the meanwhile, these schools are doing their best to show up a portion of supposed truth. They are educating each other and the world. This will continue till each discerns its own errors, and appreciates what is true in the theory of its opponents, so that they can come together and "have all things common." One of the defects of much of our Pneumatopathic literature is its want of a critical spirit and faculty. Two or three of our earlier writers are well read and have a fund of ideas. But they lack discrimination, and betray too little of the discipline which should mark the qualified expositor of philosophy. They are apt to quote passages from various writers without compre- hending them, and use them without due discrimination. They make other men's books obscure their own. One or two cases of this kind the author has thought fit to notice, by way of example and suggested caution. While VI PREFACE. we ought to be acquainted with the world's thought, we ought to know its value and significance before we attempt to use it, and so use it with critical intelligence. One of the most important desiderata in our moral and intellectual life is a strong conviction without dog- matism. Without strong conviction there is no moral power, and nowhere, is there more need than in the vocation of mental healing. There is good and rational ground for such conviction, and there is really no want of conviction among us on this great subject. The danger and fault here is that this conviction may extend to incidental notions and degenerate into dogmatism. It is also a danger into which some among us have fallen very deeply, and they should serve as a warning to others. While strong in his own convictions, the author propounds no dogmas for others to adopt. Minds which are chiefly woven of the strands of cus- tom, and especially if all their interests are of the same fabric, are disposed to describe mental healers in con- temptuous epithets, as quacks and charlatans. We excuse some of them on the score of their strong prov- ocation, which is of the same kind as that of the ex- cited and turbulent shrine-maker of Ephesus. But still we are tempted to retort by throwing a stone into their fragile house of crystal. Nothing on earth that has stood through ages has ever been marked by various forms of false pretense so much as the brotherhood of these administrators of physicial poisons for medicine. Even a degenerate priesthood has scarcely surpassed them here, for these from the nature of the case could impose on themselves more readily than the physical doctors. The patron saint of these doctors among the PREFACE. Vll Greeks, who were the national genius of the world, was Hippocrates. His name is still held in memory and ex- alted honor for his supposed extraordinary medical wis- dom. We have some records which show the quality of that wisdom. It is said, for instance, that he claimed to cure grave maladies by such things as the pulverised eye of an insect, the tooth of a fox, the horn of a goat, the heart of a mouse, the blood of a white pup, the bile of a turbulent heifer. Not a partical better than these are the most honored medicines of modern times, of which abundant proof can easily be furnished. Within a cen- tuary they have become systematically worse, because uniformly poisonous, with their deadly qualities concealed under the terms of a dead language. For " the healing art " and for many physicians we have the highest respect ; but we claim a right to attempt to im- prove on their method ; and this is the head and front of our offending as Pneumatopathists. The author here offers to the world a little of what he thinks it needs and will accept. But it is of no value as a dogma, but only as a stimulant to the intellectual and spiritual life of some to whom it may be adapted ; and from various quarters the author has been glad to derive the instruction and development which have prompted him to undertake the work here offered to the public ; and especially, and with distinguished consideration, it is hereby dedicated to the service of his fellow-workers and investigators in this noble field of metaphysical toil. CONTENTS. PART FIRST. Pneumatopathy in Relation to Historic Evolution. CHAPTER I. PAGE Rise of Pneumatopathy into Acknowledged Importance, . I CHAPTER II. Different Phases of the Subject, ...... 17 PART SECOND. Pneumatopathy in Relation to God and Creation. CHAPTER III. Existence and Nature of God, 24 CHAPTER IV. Man as God's Idea and Creature, ...... 29 PART THIRD. Pneumatopathy in Relation to Law. CHAPTER V. Nature and Origin of Law, 39 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER VI. PAGE Laws of the Divine Activity, 48 CHAPTER VII. Classes of Laws, 54 CHAPTER VIII. Grades of Laws, 60 CHAPTER IX. Normal Action of Law, 63 PART FOURTH. Pneumatopathy in Relation to Good and Evil. CHAPTER X. Nature and Origin of Evil, . . ' * m 65 CHAPTER XI. Reality of Evil and of Transcient Good, .... 70 CHAPTER XII. Creation of Evil, . 84 CHAPTER XIII. No Room for Evil and God, . , 89 CHAPTER XIV. Fear as a Source of Evil, 92 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. PAGB A Priori Theology, 96 CHAPTER XVI. God's Knowledge of Evil, 98 PART FIFTH. Pneumatopathy in Relation to Mind and Matter. CHAPTER XVII. Materialistic Pneumatopathy, ....... 106 CHAPTER XVIII. Dualistic Pneumatopathy, . . . . . . .110 CHAPTER XIX. Man as the Image of God, . . ... . . 121 CHAPTER XX. Sense-consciousness Identifies Body with Mind, . . . 122 CHAPTER XXI. Dreams as Proof that all is Mind, ..... 124 CHAPTER XXII. Insanity and Mesmerism as Proof that all is Mind, . . 132 CHAPTER XXIII. The Scientific Method of Psychology, 135 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XXIV. PAGH iomy of Sense, 139 CHAPTER XXV. The Function of Sense, 141 CHAPTER XXVI. No Mortal Mind, 148 CHAPTER XXVII. Reality of Sensible Phenomena and Mortal Thought, . 151 CHAPTER XXVIII. Interpret, not Contradict, the Senses, 159 CHAPTER XXIX. Philosophical Realism the Logical Basis of Pneumatopathj, 165 PART SIXTH. Pneumatopathy in Relation to Other Senses, especially psychology, physiology and Therapeutics. CHAPTER XXX. Spirit and Spirits, . 168 CHAPTER XXXI. On Knowing the Forms of Disease, 171 CHAPTER XXXII. Health of Sense, Relative to the Super-sensible Life, . 173 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXIII. PAGE Healing Power of the Human Mind, . . . . • . 175 CHAPTER XXXIV. Endowment and Science of Healing, 214 CHAPTER XXXV. Modern "Witchcraft, . . . 218 CHAPTER XXXVI. Divine Agency in Healing, ....... 223 CHAPTER XXXVII. Super-sensible Maladies, 230 CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Essential Principle of Pneumatopathy, : 233 CHAPTER XXXIX. Synopsis of Pneumatopathy, . . . . . . . 238 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. PAET FIRST, PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO HISTORIC EVOLUTION. CHAPTER I. RISE OF PNEUMATOPATHY INTO ACKNOWLEGED IMPORTANCE. Pneumatopathy is a precise and comprehensive term to designate the theory and practice of mental healing. It may be used comprehensively to designate all such theories. In that significance it has a distinct and pre- eminent place in the circle of human thought, and is a much needed word. There is perhaps no other term in- ventable that can properly and completely fill so lofty and large a place. One writer has proposed phrenop- athy to fill this office. But that term properly denotes the pathology of the brain, and belongs wholly to the phrenologists, who have long ago appropriated the first part of the term, and that which is the most distinctive. It is plainly far too material to express the theory and practice of pure mental healing. Another writer proposes psychopathy to express all this. This is much better than phrenopathy. It is more 2 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. supersensible. But it is not sufficently intellectual. Psyche, like our word soul, very frequently ranks men- tally below our word spirit and the Greek word pneuma. When soul and spirit, psyche and pneuma are used dis- tinctively, psyche and soul denote rather the emotional power of our supersensible nature, while mind and spirit and pneuma denote the superior and more intellectual element. Now it is this higher element which needs expression, as this is the agent which heals, and so the first part of our word falls naturally into position, while the second. part of the word expresses the sensitive part of our nature on which the active intelligence operates. Pneumatopathy is therefore the perfect expression of the great idea of mental healing, and comprehends all possible theories. For this end we have formed it, and we use it in this significance. Some distinctive epithet will then be necessary to express any one of the different theories of mental healing. The author prefers the epithet " Christian " to all others, because he believes that his theory is in spirit and tendency eminently Christian. He might have been content with the preadopted phrase " Christ- ian Science;" but it stands for some ideas which are equally unchristian and unscientific, and the adoption of the phrase would seem to sanction those errors. Besides, the term science is not distinctive. Christian theology is Christian science, but it is not the science we have in view. We therefore want a term which defines our par- ticular science as mental healers, and that is found in Pneumatopathy, and the adjective, Christian, defines it still further as expressive of characteristic Christian principle on this subject. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 3 The subject of Pneumatopathy rises in recognized importance with the progress of human intelligence. But among some of the lower conditions of our race the "medicine men " have a place of power, and it is a strik- ing, verefiable fact that their methods are largely mental. They operate on the imagination and on the hope and fear of their patients. Their method has generally been curtly disposed of as an appeal to superstition ; and so the intrinsic mentality of the curative (and sometimes destructive) action has been overlooked. From the be- ginning the curative action has been mental, even when men did not understand their own mental processes. A scientific analysis of this was impossible before the dawn of modern science. Mind-healing of some kind has been an element more or less prominent in all religions. In the noblest of them all it is conspicuous; and in Jesus and his most eminent apostles it becomes the very atmosphere on which are fed and borne their historic name and fame. Their wonders in mind-healing seem to be the fragrant and incorruptible spices in which all their other excellencies are embalmed and preserved to future ages. The Christian Church Catholic has always claimed a special endowment of mind-healing virtue as her perpetual her- itage from the Lord, though many protestant divines, from sectarian impulses, have denied the claim to all but the Apostolic Church, or to times not much later. Other protestant divines of equal note have allowed that all churches ought in some degree to have and verify a power of this kind. In recent times, the question has been carried outside the pale of the Church and divested of its supernatural 4 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. aspect. Admitting the frequent recurrence of certain wonderful phenomena, the new question has been raised, whether we cannot reduce them to the operation of known laws of mind or of organized matter. We shall then widen, they say, our knowledge and divest miracles of their specially marvelous element ; and by some it is supposed that we shall extrude God, as well as all super- naturalism, from the sphere of the knowable and even of the conceivable. The initial essays of what may be called the modern movement were very crude. Here the sense rules, and makes experiments and decrees for spirit. At first Mr. Mesmer thought the healing agent was magnetic. He, therefore, used magnetic iron tractors, which he traced over the bodies of his patients. After seeing Gasner achieve the same results by manipulation, he inferred that the healing virtue was in his body. It was thence denominated animal magnetism, alias mesmerism. Then from the labors of others it became designated as elec- tro-biology and vital electricity. Finally our savants, like Carpenter and Braid, have found it all out, and have resolved it into the effect of mental concentration and expectant attention and hypnotism. This indicates progress. The cause and agent are now alleged to be wholly mental. This moves in our line and reaches to our outposts. It is wrong only by incompletness. As hypnotism, it is a repression of thought. As expectant attention, it is a mental surrender to error by surrender to the expected. We want an explanation which is com- plete and wide awake, and thoroughly mental, and this we think is furnished in Christian Pneumatopathy, in brief outline. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 5 It was in the light given to it here that I at first un- derstood the phrase " Christian Science." I liked the phrase, both from my religious feelings and scientific convictions. I wanted to see Christianity more scien- tifically and philosophically conceived and expounded ; and I indulged the hope that this was one of the great lines of its progress. But having found myself here mistaken, I adopted a term which is at once precise and comprehensive and significant — Pneumatopathy. Pneumatopathy cannot be the enemy of any of the sciences, or hostile to any honest line of intellectual labor and research. It can assimilate them, as it must, if it be true. In fact as all is mind, all of them are branches of Pneumatopathy. Their adherents do not know this, because they do not understand Pneumatop- athy and the fundamental verity on which it stands, that all is mind. From this principle it follows that all sensible phenomena are only a lower department of men- tal phenomena. Hence, on the other hand, anatomy, surgery and physiology are no enemies to Pneumatop- athy, but aids, and subordinate forms in which it works. The same holds true of all the other physicial sciences, so far as their procedure is just and truly scientific. Pneumatopathy is the focal center of them all, and claims the service and allegience of all ; just as the head claims the service and allegience of all the members of the body. We therefore bespeak the attention and good will and co-operation of all parties ; and we are sure they will not disappoint us, though they may not accord with us in all our claims and doctrines. Pneumatopathy is therefore not necessarily opposed either to clairvoyance or mesmerism or spiritualism, or 6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. any other class of manifestations which legitimately tend toward a fuller knowledge and development of the mental powers of man. Pneumatopathy is not an icon- oclast, but an architect, and is glad to employ all the arts and sciences as her builders, excavators, masons, sculptors, and decorators ; and she alone is judge of their relative duties and positions, and she draws the plan and makes the assignment of places for all. A new intellectual era is dawning. A new signifi- cance is going to be attached to all human things, whence new forces in all directions will be evolved All things are changing, and that in the line of progress; and progress is always in the line of augmented mental- ity and spirituality. All the forms of disease are chang- ing, and also the method of treating them. They are becoming evermore closely allied with the nervous sys- tem and the brain, and so with the mind ; and their treatment must therefore have a growing quality of mentality. The regular physicians are learning to rely less on physicial medicine and more on mental con- ditions. Therefore, to make this subject a topic of special and chief study must be wise, and in accordance with the march of the human mind. The lower and sensible forms of action and influence are not to be neglected and despised. Nothing what- ever should be so treated. All things, all phenomena? have a place and an effective relation to everything else, and true science consists in observing these relations. Nothing is more fully agreed on in modern times than that all things constitute a unity of forces and convic- tions. Free-thinker and orthodox unite in this. There- fore the sensible and the supersensible have a living CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 7 relation to each other. That does not mean that the relation is all on one side, that there is anywhere an action without an equal reaction. It therefore does not mean that while mind acts on body, body does not act on mind ; on the other hand, that body acts on mind without any reaction from mind. Therefore both are to be the subject of careful study and investigation, and both to be used according to their normal and vital relations. But as the supersensible is the superior, and the evi- dent end of the sensible, this should receive the greater attention, should be treated with the greater respect, and in its light all else should be contemplated. The supersensible mind should rule, and all lower forces should be treated as subordinate, and as of value only in relation to this. Thus mind should be made practi- cally and theoretically the end of all and the king of all. In medicine, or the healing art, therefore, Pneumatop- athy is the pathy which covers and includes all others that are legitimate, and puts them all in their proper relations and positions relative to each other, and to the whole, the pneuma or spirit. Hence the sober, scientific precision of our method- It is, like all true science and philosophy, limitless in its breadth. It has no artificial boundaries and exclusive- ness. Nor is it a blind, empirical eclecticism. It is broad by principle, and what it excludes or includes is so treated by law. It is forever the focal point of all thought and action ; and except as we are working in a line toward that focus we are not working philosophic- ally. Here we rest our case ; and on this issue we appeal to the expanding thought of the world, confident 8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. of a coming great success, and for which we both labor and wait. Pneumatopathy involves an entire system of meta- physics, religion and theology. Without all this, one may have considerable gifts of mental healing, just as one may be a good man without being a profuncl student in the science of religion and morals. Yet knowledge is always power ; and men of intelligence will always try to understand their own mental processes and the laws of the universe, sensible and supersensible. The more thorough is their knowledge and the more full and clear their comprehension of the philosophy of this subject, the more firm and unwavering will be their mental action in the process of mental healing. The theory, well understood, is thus a living power in its practical application. This book is but an epitome of the thoughts and facts, and valuable truths, which belong to the subject on which it treats. It is presented as a guard against some very foolish and wild notions, which have gained currency under the name of Christian Science, and as a broader and more philosophical exposition of the found- ations and laws of mental healing, or the broader subject of Pneumatopathy. Some writers on the subject of mental healing, have done well. Respectable in learning, and patient in the accumulation of a certain class of data, they have pre- sented a strong array of evidence of the power of mind over the body; they have also done something, one of them in particular, Rev. W. F. Evans, in expounding the philosophy of the subject ; but they are exces- sively one sided at the best. They have never recog- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 9 nized the converse fact, that the body has a power, large and various, over the supersensible faculties; and therefore they cannot do anything by way of a scientific exposition of the relations of the two classes of phe- nomena. Further, they do not take into consideration, what should be obvious to all who affirm that mind is the only reality and substance, that the body is mind, a congeries of modes of mind, the lower forms, in which the mind is self-manifested, and that the same is true of all of the phenomena of the external world, and all organisms, external to our own. This oversight creates another hiatus in our work, and reveals a task of the first importance, which has not been conceived, much less performed, namely, an exposition of the subject which reduces all phenomena to one all-embracing mental unity, and furnishes the laws by which in unity all are governed ; a Pneumatopathy which covers all the know- able, whether it be called matter or spirit, body or mind, and which also therefore utilizes all phenomena in their proper relations to others, thus disclosing a panopathy as the expression of Pneumatopathy. The author, from his pre-college days, has been occu- pied to a large extent in studies which are vitally allied with the present theme, and in those earlier days he became a firm believer in egoistic idealism, or the doc- trine that all is mind, that whatever is immediately known is the ego, and its concious modes. This he has studied and expounded from a purely philosophical aspect during many years in the past ; and it is only in recent years that he has been led to connect it directly with the healing agency, while he has always seen that it removed all the scientific difficulties pertaining to the IO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. conception of miracles, and that it brings them more directly within the range of an extensive attainability among men ; yet he treated it irrespective of its direct practical bearing upon the profession of mental healing, while conscious of its application thereto. Of late years he has made it a special study in this line and direction, and has devoted to this study most of his time. This book is set forth in the hope that it will serve as an initial guide to inquirers on this subject, and also as a text-book in classes studying it under the direction of a competent teacher. The author is far from wishing to imitate those who oppose all reading except one book. " Prove all things." Read all, and sift the chaff from the wheat. All have some good in them, some more than others, and so far all have much room for improvement, which is sure to come from trained minds who study the subject for the love of it and for the advancement of truth. The author has not gone into detail in proving the fact or the power of mental healing. It is assumed that that has been already well and variously performed. Examples are innumerable, and generally familiar ; the only question that remains concerns the law which the facts exemplify. This law, or set of laws, which consti- tute the science of the subject, is the great quest. A book on philosophy should not be a mere advertise- ment, and therefore little is herein said of the author. He is lost in the great principles unfolded. The Truth is everything. Its power is great, and often wonderful. We have been again and again surprised in the course of our practice and observation to see its operation, to see how mental action in the Truth and the Spirit has been CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. II a power both great and rapid in its effect. This is as it should be, because mind is all, and its supersensible action is of a higher rank than sensible action. Let us now consider some of the causes of the sudden rise of Pneumatopathy into power and influence, as indi- cative of its future influence and triumphant reign. The sudden rise of this subject into almost universal prominence is one of the most striking psychological phenomena in history. Waves of special thought and feeling of great power have occasionally swept over communities, and for a period defied all the powers of resistance from the scoffer and preacher, and the pro- saic utterance of the common earthly duties and demands ; and then after a while they have ebbed away and been soon forgotten. Mental healing may be one of these mental tidal waves of transient and unhealthy influence. So some contend. Time alone can tell, for the conviction of all, though some of us can prophesy with strong assurance and to the conviction of many. One of the causes of its rapid emergence into pro- minence is a powerful reaction against the materialism which our age has developed. Evolution has been con- ceived materialistically. All who received it thoroughly were supposed to be logically materialists. Hence a sort of materialistic monism was very prevalent and very confident, if not also very dogmatic. Against this all our higher and more spiritual facul- ties revolted. Men who could not rebut evolution could not admit its alleged and apparent materialistic con- clusion. They therefore resorted to every possible evasion, and were ready to welcome every ally in their work. Among these allies appears the doctrine of men- 12 . CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. tal healing, and the set of ideas associated with it by all parties. Mental healing appeals to the senses, and can be tested by all. Health is welcomed by all, and the healing is supposed to prove the independent power of mind. If all this is true, it is more than any form of materialism can stand. It is, therefore, one of the most natural and powerful reactions against materialism. Another of these reactive agencies against material- ism is modern spiritualism ; and it is very powerful. Its adherents are numerous and its influence is very subtle and wide spread. If it is true, it furnishes sen- sible proof of our conscious existence after the disso- lution of our grosser organism ; and this is incompatible with the doctrine that our conscious life is only either a mode or an effect of this organism. But then this very extensively degenerates into a peep and mutter, hide and seek effort at intercourse with imperfect fellow-creatures, while the great God, the supremest of all facts and potencies, is by many forgot- ten or ignored, and even denied. This is every way pernicious, and infinitely degrading. It would in the end be little better than materialism itself ; because a self-conscious Being of infinite perfection is the only guarantee of our eternal welfare in the ultimate and everlasting domination of the right and the true. Hence to many minds of a spiritual order, the vulgar spiritualism is offensive. These want a spiritualism which is more exaltedly spiritual. They want the Infi- nite Spirit to be made all in all, and matter to be nothing but a transient and sensible phenomenon ; and all finite beings but the self-conscious reflectors of the infinite consciousness. These by the ruling quality of their CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 3 minds are pneumatopathists. On this basis they nat- urally seek to explain all the phenomena of mental heal- ing ; and from this disposition they naturally oppose the doctrine that the healing is done by disembodied human agencies, irrespective of God, and without a direct ref- erence to him as the only ultimate power. But then this is only an accident, a temporary and rudimentary feature of spiritualism, not its essential quality, and this objectionable feature may soon pass away, and lofty minds may hold to a spiritualism which is not obnoxious to these obj ections, and which also violates no law of mind. As we are agencies of the divine healing power, it is conceivable that God may, under certain conditions, use us for the same work, after we have passed from this life, revealing a spiritualism which is rational, devout and holy and lovely. Another cause is the manifest progress in psychical knowledge and interest in all psychical studies. The age has come to see that matter is an insignificant factor compared with mind, that mind is nature's king, as sci- ence is everywhere proving. Even physical science pays homage to mind, as the source of all its victories. We are thus led to an indefinite surmise as to the extent of the power of mind over matter ; and are quite ready to welcome any apparent proof of its direct power over disease and all bodily infirmities. Some are doubtless too ready to believe and to accept coincidences as causes. At all events these things have helped to bring a very great and sublime thought to the front, and it will not retire to the rear till it is compelled by the resistless power of opposing scientific evidence. The progress of idealistic conception has also had an 14 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. influence in the same direction. All modern Germans are idealists of one type or another, and English psych- ologists, and even the Scotch, have been unable to resist its claims, so that they are almost unanimous in admit- ting that all we directly know are subjective states, thus making all phenomena mental, all forms and sensible objects, modes of mind. So mind, as conscious subject, is the only known reality and power. What is the ex- tent of this power we know not. We are continually discovering new laws, which are all laws of mind ; and who shall say that we shall not disclose a law and power of direct healing ? None. We cannot prove the nega- tive ; and others may have satisfactory evidence of the affirmative. This is the result toward which have tended the labors of all the great thinkers of modern times. When Descartes, "the father of modern philosophy," sought for a certain and indisputable fact, he found it in thought. He said, he knew he thought. Thought was a certainty, which no one can logically dispute, because in disputing they exercise thought and confess a thought which they dispute. This, then, he discovered, is all we know of the sensible world, that it is a form of thought. This is all he is entitled henceforth to affirm of it. The known world is a vast congeries of subjective states. The next great thinker was an Englishman, John Locke. While less consistent and clear than Descartes, he adopted his predecessor's method. His immortal work is a study of ideas. He too has found that we know nothing directly beyond our own ideas. This he constantly affirms and nowhere contradicts. These ideas, however, often represent things beyond ourselves ; CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 5 and in this light he makes them the subject of profound investigation, not without some confusion, but always clear in the affirmation that our subjective states, and what they imply, are our only certain knowledge. Here the subject was taken up and handled with original force by George Berkeley, afterward Bishop of Cloyne, Ireland. He treated with much elaboration the negative aspect of the question. If, he argued, we know nothing but our ideas and feelings, then we have no reason for affirming the existence of matter, and matter is only an unmeaning word for an unknown nothing, — unless we simply appropriate it to designate the sense-class of our ideas ; and in this sense he used the term, which is the correct use of it. A little later in Germany the question was resumed with original and extraordinary power by Emanuel Kant. He also conceded that all sensible phenomena are known only as subjective states, that the known world is simply a series of experiences or thoughts and feelings. From that day to this few metaphysicians have raised any question on this point ; and it is more generally agreed on among philosophers to-day than any other question which was ever disputed. The subjective or egoistic nature of all phenomena is, therefore, one of the settled points in modern metaphysics. This historic survey of the evolution of thought shows that this doctrine has come to stay. It is the effect of human development and intellectual ripeness. It is the settled and almost unanimous conclusion of scientific and philosophical investigations prolonged through the ages. It is a result to which all intellectual labors have tended and contributed. Affirmed at the very dawn 1 6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. of human thought, it has always been violently opposed by the less profound thinkers, till in our own times op- position among philosophers now dies away, and its truth is conceded even by material scientists, as seen in such eminent names as Tyndall, Clifford, and Huxley and Spencer. The last is a philosopher who begins with sense and tries to end in sense. These historic facts are a very strong guarantee that the Pneumatopathy which is based on them has a warrant in the nature of things. It has come in the order of human progress. It is the normal and healthy point of all the ages of human thought. It could not come sooner, because the intellectual world was not ripe for it, was incompetent to produce or entertain and understand it. For the counter reason it could not longer be delayed. It is naturally forced on the attention of thinkers, and it compells respect. It cannot retire, for the world does not recede. It cannot be dismissed, because it is equally important and true, and its truth grows daily clearer, though it still needs more perfect exposition, which it is destined to receive, and thence to grow in power. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 7 CHAPTER II. DIFFERENT PHASES OF THE SUBJECT. The question has been presented in various and con- flicting forms and phases. It began under the influence of pantheistic thought. Man is but one of the phases of Deity, and one of the nobler, if not the noblest, of the divine manifestations. According to this, man is God's eternal idea or eman- ation or self-reflection, and therefore intrinsically perfect. Hence there is no assignable limit to his power for good, and let him but perfectly realize his unity with God, all evil is at once destroyed. Error and disease are only illusion ; and corrected thought in securing divine energy destroys them. This is often associated and united with what may be called the nihilistic phase of mental healing. It neces- sarily belongs to the pantheistic phase. If God is all and God is good, then there cannot be any evil at all. Evil, so called, is absolutely nothing, or at the most is only a seeming. As to which of these it is there is a division in the ranks. The more extreme view is, on the pantheistic assump- tion, the more logical. If God is all and infinitely good, then absolutely there can never be a particle of evil, either in reality or seeming ; for the evil seeming IS CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. is an error of thought and feeling, which is impossible in infinite good. If it is known to exist as a belief, or seeming, or claim, it is known to exist as a mode of mind. Now there is no other known existence than this, no other reality. Mind, and its modes or thoughts, are the only realities. Whatever has an existence as a belief, or as a feeling, has for the time being a real existence as a known mental state, which modern psychology confesses is all of reality we ever know ; and that there is not anything else, because these are substance as well as quality ; since intelligence, life, love and other qualities are declared (and rightly, I think) to be substance. Hence to admit the seeming, or belief, or claim of evil is to admit the substantial reality of evil. On the other hand, if there is absolutely no evil, then there is nothing for God or man to do in the way of healing, or any other method of removing evil, and there is never any such action of divine or human goodness and power. The whole doctrine of Chistian Science is thus self-stultified. It contradicts its own fundamental principle whenever it speaks of evil and its removal or destruction. Not much better is the position of those who flee from this absurdity to the position that evil exists as a "claim," or as a " belief," as a seeming but not as a reality. To say it is not real because it does not exist as right and true, does not escape the difficulty. It only confuses itself by an ambiguous use of the word real. Whatever is false and deceptive we call unreal, because it has no true and abiding foundation and support in the nature CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 19 of things and the immutable economy of God. But while in that sense we pronounce it unreal, we affirm in that very thought that is an actual claim on our belief as the true and the right. In other words we pronounce it to be real as a (false) mode of thought ; but unreal as an affirmation that it is in harmony with God and all his universe. If we deny the existence of evil even as a mode of our own mind we contradict universal experience. We are all conscious of suffering, of various kinds of suffer- ing, and often very severe. To say that this suffering and sufferer are not we, but only mortal mind, is only a verbal and meaningless evasion. They may be mortal mind for aught we may be supposed to know in the present state of discussion ; but it is perfectly certain that they are we, because they are our own feel- ings, we ourselves feeling so and so. Of two minds, one mortal and the other immortal, we know nothing. We directly know one mind only, and that one is the subject of both joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, whether it be mortal or immortal. We hope its sorrows and pains are for the most part mortal, and its higher joys immortal. But it is certainly the same one individual which is conscious of both ; and so we all say "/suffer" and "/enjoy" so and so, the same one subject and ego as the ultimate substantial unity of all classes of feeling. Another phase in which this doctrine is presented by one person and a few disciples is what may be described as the phase of divine incognizance. This is based on the doctrine of the absolute unreality of evil. If evil has no manner of existence, it cannot be known. If it 20 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. has a modal existence, it can be known as a mode of the minds which feel it ; and omniscience must so know it. This does not make God the subject of the evil. He knows it as only a mode of finite minds and as perfectly contrasted with his own modes. When Jesus discerned and condemned hypocrisy he was not himself a hypo- crite ; but just the opposite, as he implicitly affirms. Such absurd limitation of the divine cognizance can- not be necessary or helpful to anything good. The use made of it in healing is wholly illogical. Evil, it is said, is an unreality, erroneously believed in as real. God cannot have such a false belief, and so does not know anything about it. But that last does not follow. We may know thoughts which we do not believe to be true and real. We may know that another is subject to an illusion from which we are free, that there are false beliefs which we repudiate. Much more, infinitely more, must this be true of God. He must know all, or he is not omniscient, is not God, — must know all good as in harmony, and all evil as in disharmony, with himself. To destroy error does not require the destruction of all thought or knowledge of error. If we mistake a moonshine simulacrum for a man, and then correct our- selves, we do not destroy the thought, but only dispel an illusion, a false belief, and the knowledge of the past illusion remains. So we may know that others are still under illusion from which we are free. An illusion is a belief that the false and unreal are true and real. The destruction of the illusion is not the destruction of all knowledge and thought on the subject, but the percep- tion that what was taken for true and real is not so : it is to know it as it is, as a false mental action. That is CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 21 the only possible destruction of error. So God helps men to destroy error by helping them to know it as he knows it, that it is error and not truth. I have no fellowship with those who are so very much impressed with the supreme importance of their special exposition of the metaphysical method that they have labored to reduce it to an absolute formula, to which they deem it necessary to conform in order to heal or do any real good ; and who deem conformity with the method as infallible in its results. The formula is thus an unfailing talisman. It makes the person and his character of no account. The self-seeking Jews could use Paul's formula in vain, or to their own defeat ; and character was necessary. Here the devils know the formula, no matter about Paul or Jesus. The people who cure by faith may be supposed to come in here. But they really belong to a class by themselves. They are of the old theology, both in method and spirit. They are not rationalists or scien- tists, but strictly supernaturalists of the old type. They do not pretend to refer their healing to any law, but wholly to the special will of God. He is the only explanation and rationale. He has made his promises in the Word and he must fulfill them ; and since he is our Father, it seems reasonable that he should make and fulfill such promises ; and we therefore ought to ask him in child-like faith. — That is all. At last there emerges an effort to expound mental healing on the basis of materialism. It is said that there are very fine fluids or gases which pass from the healer to the party to be healed, and this effects and explains the beneficial results ; and further that by the regular 22 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. laws of sense we can impress another person so that his own mental action will impart health to his body by generating therein a proper normal and healthy action. I think also that other schools sometimes descend to this, or come very near to it ; and no doubt it has its place as an expresson of sensible law and its effect. There is good ground for the assurance that the doc- trine of mind healing, or Pneumatopathy, is to become a permanent power, and to become enshrined in institutions, and the study of it will be associated with psychology, hygiene and medical science. Its power is indicated by the fact that mental healing is admitted and advocated by men of various schools, who agree in this, though dis- agreeing in everything else. That there are limitations is to be expected ; and that there are failures disproves not the cases of real success. Its failures are likely to diminish in proportion as studied skill makes progress, and as more faith in its agency fills the air. Then, too, it will get a better average of hopeful cases ; as it gets chiefly the doctors' castaways now. The actual practice of healing is of course the great end. But how to do it, how to secure the power and develope it is a very important question. The develop- ment of the power has been very manifest since theories of the mode of its action have been broached and studied. There must be laws which govern it ; and these we ought to find out, and in time it will be done. Then we shall have a science of mental healing; and the science will regulate the practice. Some claim that their particular theory is demon- strated by the healing agency of its advocates. But that argument is equally good for several opposing CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 23 theories, and so proves nothing distinctive for any. We may be good healers without being good expounders of the law and principle of healing, just as many an orator is unable to philosophize well on his own oratory. Theories must find a more scientific justification than that. It will probably be found in the end that all theories have some truth and much error ; and the task of the honest and patient investigator will be to find the com- mon elements, and to sift the adventitious from the necessary. It may be found also that there are elements of power which come into operation only under certain conditions, and these elements and said conditions will in that case need to be determined. I propose to enter into an earnest inquiry into these questions, and to be as thorough as my ability and present opportunities will allow. My opportunities and inducements for the study are unusual, both from past mental habits and present and recent associations and duties. 24 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. PAET SECOND. PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO GOD AND CREATION. CHAPTER III. EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF GOD. It was an ancient maxim that all roads lead to Rome, and that was the great thought of Rome, and on that she acted with characteristic vigor and skill. It is equally true that all lines of thought and feeling lead to God. This is evidently the great thought of God, on which he has necessarily acted in the construction of the universe and the conscious faculties of man. All intellectual procedure in this direction may not be very logical ; but in that direction it is always pointing and looking, notwithstanding all the opposing suggestion of sense and a short-winged logic. The intuitions of moral sentiment, the direct affirmation of the Best as the Real discloses a lofty strength and energy which laughs at the dull plodding of a sense-bound understanding. This position I have myself reached through trial and discovered failure of all the other methods of reaching God. This is not a logical procedure from experience, nor is it even a very strong induction from experience. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 25 But it is vastly better. It is the highest action of the highest faculty of our being and its affirmation and con- clusion are the highest conceivable. To this faculty, or to one in whom this power is well developed, every form of experience is made the oc- casion of its action ; and from every position it mounts at once to God ; and there it rests in the consciousness of a divine benefaction, a holy hope and peace, and a manful bravery and strength to sustain the burden of human life. Is he in distress, or does he behold with pity and sorrow the misery of others ? He conceives and desires relief and satisfaction for the suffering. But this can be assured only on the supposition that there is a Being of Infinite Perfection. He, and he only, can and must make this all perfectly good and satisfactory, so that what we know not now we shall know hereafter. Is he in the enjoyment of many pleasures, possessed of large resources ? He must wonder how it comes, and he can have no guarantee of the permanence of his hap- piness, except in the favor of an immutable Being of Moral Perfection. Is he baffled and awed with the mystery of existence? He cannot but recognize the limitation of his mental power ; and by contrast he must think of an Infinite Intelligence who absolutely comprehends all things and all possibilities, and who therefore can and will gradu- ally unfold it to finite minds according to their progress. This gives repose, patience, hope ; and inspires rational and moderated effort. Such an one will be ready enough to discern the signs of mind in nature ; but he will not be likely to be blind 26 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. to opposing signs in this sphere of induction from sensible data. He does not wish to carry on the great- est and most sacred of all contests on this low plain where the enemy has the advantage of position. He will " look to the hills whence cometh his help ; " and thither he will ascend, and there in the loftiest and most im- pregnable fastnesses he can easily and triumphantly maintain his cause ; and from that position too he can command all the plain which is covered by his long range guns, and there he will sing his song : "A mighty fortress is our God." While this noble character thinks that God is more or less manifest in the sensible world, and while he is well pleased with those who seem to see very clearly a reflec- tion of the divine excellence in this natural mirror, yet he is tempted to think (and to their credit) that it is their supersensible vision which has unwittingly trans- ferred its noble image to this lower surface and object. He is very sure there is mind in nature, because there is mind in himself. If he comes from nature, nature is mind or the creature of mind ; and as sensible nature is clearly inferior to his own conscious supersensible self, it cannot be his author, and implies an infinitely higher power beyond. So it is always from himself, from his better and nobler self, that he directly vaults to God as the end, the hope and the final and perfect explana- tion of all things. The more his nobler nature is developed, the more perfectly assured does he feel that in this procedure, he is under no delusion, and destined to no disappoint- ment ; and conversely the more constant and perfect his mental action, the stronger is the proof he has CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 2J and gives, of his large development in the supreme quality and power of a finite being, — communion with the Infinite. On every hand he meets with signs of misery and pain and woe. Where is the evidence of divine goodness ? is the inferential inquiry ; and echo answers where ; for there is no light for those who dwell only or chiefly on this class of phenomena. Hence the man of spiritual intuition brings within his range a new world, a world of higher rank, yet itself a world of suf- fering ; and from this he gathers the hope and prophesy of a coming perfect satisfaction. Through all the misery goodness shines ; and love, love pure, perfect, boundless, becomes absolutely unreserved ; and all manifested in suffering and by means of suffering for the good of other sufferers. He may not know why there is so much misery, nor how to reconcile it all with infinite love. But he knows well that there must be somehow an infinite love-power underlying the universe, or else whence these many and mighty jets and out- bursts, hot spouting geysers of pure goodness in all times and lands ? They presuppose a worthy source. They are the finite expression of an infinite and eternal quality. They cannot be self-made, and they cannot have a cause inferior to themselves. Their source and cause we call God. The sciences allied to sense, and abutting in sense, help the supersensible and superselfish thought, and show this to be the proposed end of all inferior things and forms of life. This is beginning to be seen by the better class of evolutionists, like John Fiske ; who has well expounded the law of progress to be from the 28 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. sensible to the supersensible, from the non-moral to the moral and spiritual, from all the lower to the higher and the highest forms of consciousness, and the latter as the manifest final cause of the former. Thus intel- ligent goodness is seen to animate and preside over all things, even the lowest and the darkest. This Deity, of course, is not a person in the old sense of a mask, or the later sense of organic form. This excluded notion is not the doctrine of the orthodox Christian Theism of the ages. It is only a very small number of inferior minds in the Christian Church that have given God a sensible form, and their number is growing less as human intelligence makes progress. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 29 CHAPTER IV. MAN AS GOD'S IDEA AND CREATURE. As the infinite self-consciousness, God must have eternal ideas ; and as eternal, they must be immutable. These ideas must embrace all things that ever were or are, or shall be ; because of the infinity of their sub- ject. But while the ideas of God are necessarily eternal, it does not follow that all the things they denote are eter- nal. Thus, his idea of goodness is eternal and immu- table, and his goodness is eternally enduring ; but all the forms which goodness wears are not eternal. These come and go as occasion calls for them ; and immutable goodness itself generates these different forms. The eternal has temporal forms, and the immutable varies in its modes. In like manner eternal power and goodness may be forever varying its agency in creating finite and mu- table forms of power, in accordance with his eternal ideas. Immutable and eternal ideas, then, involve temporal mutations, and it is the essential nature and power, not the form of the power, which is immutable. Nothing can ever destroy, or diminish, or change its nature, so that it shall become other, or less than it was in its quality and power. Infinite goodness, for instance, can never be anything less, or else than that ; but it may ex- ercise itself in an infinite diversity of forms. 30 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Plato held that these ideas of God are the archetypes of all creation and give their form and rational force and significance to all finite, or created things. In this he was sublime, and no doubt, he was essentially cor- rect. Indeed, the eternal ideas of God must inform all creation, because they inform all the divine action itself, and he could not act irrespective of them. But Plato goes farther, and contemplates these ideas as effluences, mental images and forms and forces, which emanate from God and become an integral portion, and the supremely rational and authoritative portion, of each finite individuality, at least if they belong to the rank of rational beings ; and it is the power of evolving these ideas which makes creatures rational. In this sense man is made a partaker of the divine nature. Ideas were supposed to come from God, about as beams of light, on the corpuscular theory, were supposed to come from the sun and strike objects and enter into them. This is the way M. Cousin expounds Plato on this subject. The psychological error which this involves demands some attention. It is now nearly universally conceded that a man's thoughts are himself in such and such mental states. God's ideas are therefore God himself, and his eternal ideas are his eternal mental states. Now if these ideas constitute man, either in whole or part, man is so far God and God is man. This is not only pantheism, but it is absolute mental confusion. For if the word God means anything it is contradistin- guished from the speaker. So of every other term by which God is designated. If we call him our Father, we distinguish him from ourselves as his children ; and CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 3 I a creature is conceived as other than its Creator. On the theory in question we ought to drop all the distinc- tive terms applied to Deity, and simply say ; we, or we and others. These are God and all the God ever know- able, for we can surely never directly know more of God than his ideas, that is ourselves. And so it turns out we can never know more than ourselves in knowing God. But then it is enough to know ourselves if we are God or God is we. Awe-struck with the terrible darkness into which we are plunged, we must hastily retire from so false and self-stultifying a position. God's ideas are simply him- self, the pure intellectual forms of his own infinite and eternal intelligence. They are not man, nor angel, nor son, nor emanation, nor effluxes of or from him ; but they are himself only, and nothing else yesterday, today and forever. His ideas of his creatures are the eternal egoistic archetypes according to which in due con- nections he creates them. The modest doctrine which identifies man with God will of course be humble enough to find itself taught in Scripture. We are, therefore, reminded that we are said to be "partakers of the divine nature," that "God is all in all," that besides him there is none else. We are all familiar with those words, with never a doubt of their meaning, or that their meaning is radically different from that which is here attributed to them. We are partakers of the divine nature in virture of our being created in the image and likeness of God, and in virtue of being the recipients of constant blessed effects of the gracious agency of God on our minds. God is all in all, and the only one in the sense, that apart from him 32 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. we should be nothing, and there could be nothing without him, so that compared with him all else are nothing. This exposition accords with a habit of speech familiar to all languages, and no other has ever been entertained till in our own age the pantheistic interpretation was found necessary to bolster a jangle of incoherent words. As much as any other one I desire to honor God ; but I should prefer a different method to that of those who make God one with man, or man one with God, in substance. That method either makes too much of men or too little of God. Neither Spinoza or the left-winged Hegelians can blind us here. It is better to be simple Christians. All God's ideas are necessarily perfect, as we have said; but the meaning of the word perfection varies relatively to the object to which it is applied. We have heard of "a perfect ass," of "a perfect fraud," as well as of " a perfect logician " and " perfect candor," and " a perfect saint." But in all sincerity and in good ac- cord with the best usage of all languages, we call that perfect which is thoroughly well adapted to the end of its existence, or which conforms in detail to its type. A machine is pronounced perfect when it is perfectly adapted to the work it has to do. It is perfect in that relation. But that affirmation does not necessarily imply that it is perfect in any other relation. Indeed •it is rather supposed to be the more imperfect in every other relation, for the very reason of its perfection here. The more perfect anything is in its adaptation to any one particular, it is by consequence the less adapted to any- thing else ; and the more complicated it is in this adapt- ation, the less it is adapted to various other things. An CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 33 ordinary railway car is good for its object, but that per- fection there disqualifies it for being pronounced per- fect or at all practical as a pony chaise. A watch may be perfect for keeping time, but it is not good as an article of diet. In the organic and mental world the same principle operates with more conspicuous power. Any develop- ment beyond a certain degree always withdraws power and attainment from other quarters. There has never been any universal genius. The men who have been preeminent in some relations have never had the same preeminence in all directions. It was said that Ole Bull was perfect at the fiddle, and Litzt at the piano. But all concede that their perfection did not go far beyond these points, and that it was attained even with their native genius in that direction only by foregoing culture and development in other directions, where thousands far surpass them. Now God's ideas of his creatures must be contem- plated as creatures; that is, as finite; and as having various relations to each other and to himself; and their perfection must consist in their entire conformity with these relations. All this, so far from implying that men have existed from all eternity and are absolutely and immutably perfect, implies just the contrary. Nothing but God has existed from eternity, and his eternal ideas are himself. His eternal ideas of man are perfect, because they comprise a conception of all the excellence and all the limitations of a finite being. According to this idea God has made man as a real, concrete, self-conscious individual. He is thus the expression of the eternal 34 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. idea of God. In this sense only can it be truly said that man is perfect, or that he has existed with God or in the mind of God from all eternity. God's plans and purposes are from eternity; but as they are unfolded under an order of time, they have to follow a law of creation, generation and development. We, and God's thought and purpose concerning us are not the same, but infinitely different, one being man and the other God, since God's thought and purpose are God and nothing else ; and God's thought and purpose are real- ized in us by our creation and development according to a law of eternal reason. Now God's eternal idea of man is his eternal ideal of man. But a divine eternal ideal can never be realized in time, however extended. It will require all eternity for its attainment, that is, it will never be attained, for- ever advancing, but never nearing a terminus. Thus everlasting progress is a primary law and the normal process and condition of all finite beings. The concrete reality never answers perfectly to the abstract ideal. There is no perfect right line or curve or any other geometrical figure. So the ideal of a finite creature can never be absolutely attained. No matter how exalted and noble a creature may be, or supposed to be, we can conceive a loftier excellence as still possible. Relative to the ideal, imperfection is a charac- teristic of all finite beings forever. Relative to the law of their action and of the end of their existence they may be pefect. Relative to the law and end of all action, they may be perfect, though they are the subjects and victims of error and suffering ; because through error and suffering CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 35 they may be making sure progress and better progress than were otherwise possible to them. In that case their present perfection consists in going through such error and evil in just that way; because it is right and conducive to their ultimate highest dignity and felicity, and to the glory of God and the well-being of his creation. As the Bible speaks of creation, of man as God's creature, man cannot be eternal, if that statement is accepted. If man and all existence is eternal, we have no Creator and no creature. This certainly goes against all conspicuous Christian thought through all the past centuries ; and to many it appears satirical to call such a notion " Christian Science," and that it had better be called " the opposition of science" and of Christianity. I accept the Christian conviction that there is a Creator and a creation; or in other words, that there is an infinite eternal Being ; and that besides him there is a finite being, not eternal, which began to be at the will of the Infinite, and which by the same will is rendered immortal. The old pagan objection infused into our modern phi- losophy, that there cannot be anything besides God, else he is not infinite, only raises a battle of words, a con- tention raised on the definition of a word. It defines God, or the Infinite, as all that is. The Theistic and Christian thinkers of the world have defined these terms differently. That is the difference between the two parties. To define the infinite as all that is, is an irrational utterance. It contains no glimpse of a principle. Why should that which is be infinite ? To this there is no 36 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. answer. All that is may be finite. That is logically possible. Why then affirm the contrary ? Infinite means etymologically, without bounds ; but whatever is is not necessarily without bounds. Not only that, but if we include spaces, numbers and quantities in the question, which we must if we include all things, then existence must be forever limited ; because whatever these may be, they may be conceivably augmented ; and the attainment of the end of a limit or the limitless is forever impossible. Omit all finite aggregates from the problem, and this fatal difficulty is eliminated. We now deal with being as a simple question, aud therefore with the idea of one Being. Our question is, how shall we define this Being ? Or what is the Infinite ? Our answer to this question should be all comprehensive, logical and final. I know not that any attempt at such an answer has ever been made, unless we consider as such three or four loose statements or suggestions which have obtained dis- tinction in the history of thought. The first of these is found in the Hebrew Scriptures, where they say noth- ing is too hard for God, and nothing is impossible with God. The next utterance is by Anselm, as that than which nothing can be conceived as greater. With the Greek the answer was put into three letters, Pan, and the Hindoo answer was in meaning the same. The last answer we have already refuted. Anselm's answer is obnoxious to the objections which are fatal to that, sub- jectively applied. For if you bring quantity or degree into the question, there is always a beyond or greater to every degree, whether of conception or external reality. There is no degree or quantity beyond which there can- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. %J not be a greater, both in fact and in conception — until we attain that definite Infinite which still remains to be defined. The declared almightiness, for which nothing is too hard, itself requires definition, and one which shall modify its apparent force. For some things are too hard for any one, even for the Infinite. He cannot make a straight curve, nor a round square, nor a finite line without an end or with only one end. All will re- cognize this, and fully assent to it. Why ? Because all see that to do that involves a self-contradiction. That is the proper and final answer. It furnishes this absolute and limitless generalization, negative and positive, that God cannot do anything which involves a self-contradiction y and he can do anything which does not involve a self-con- tradiction. This is the perfect definition of the Infinite. It cannot be said of the finite ; it must be said of the Infinite. This is perfectly explicit and all-comprehend- ing ; and leaves nothing to be conceived as further needed or possible. Here then, we have reached the intelligible and logi- cal foundation, the utterly ultimate of all thought and inquiry on the subject. Now this Infinite is able to create other beings of indefinitely various degrees and kinds of faculty — unless such creation involves a self- contradiction. On those who hold that it does the bur- den of proof lies to show it. To my poor vision it seems perfectly clear that the infinite can make that to be which was not, that he can will it and it shall be and shall stand, that there shall be other beings besides himself, and that these shall sustain to each other and to him certain fixed relations. He is thus able to in- crease the sum of being which is an infinite superiority 'to him who is not able to do this. 38 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Man, then, is not God nor a part of God, but abso- lutely God's creature, not infinite but finite, not eternal but temporal, whose mode of thought and action are al- ways temporal, or under the law of time or the relations of succession ; and his limitations are further indicated by his special conditions, to which so much of his consciousness is subject. Thus all creatures are con- tradistinguished from the Creator eternal and infinite. By the same laws also they can be discriminated from each other ; and by the same means each can discrimi- nate his own mental states and regulate the forms of his own consciousness. He is mentally an occupant of time, and bodily he is an occupant of space, and meta- physically he constitutes both, because both are only modes of his consciousness. As finite and temporal all creatures are happily sub- ject to the law of progress as involved necessarily in the divine ideal of a creature, as well as the human idea. All creatures therefore, where they are not wilfully per- verse, are conscious links in a grand and endless line, rank on rank, ever higher, and each forever rising into the rank above. Here there is no room for despond- ency or ennui. Hope is always alert and always self- fulfilled. Whatever may seem to be a mere delay is only an invisible progress, a gathering of forces which have been expended or scattered ; or to express it otherwise, it is the holding of a position, the maintain- ence of a principle till the cycling of events, the circling of rational seasons, mature the labor and bestow the reward in the expected harvest. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 39 ;p_a_:rt third, PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO LAW. CHAPTER V. NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LAW. The study of law carries us back to the study of the nature of things, and their necessary action ; for their intrinsic nature is the source of all law, whether it be statute law or what is sometimes called natural law. We would not, like some, begin with a "primary belief in the uniformity of nature." " Beliefs " cannot be prim- ary. Besides, I may believe one thing and another man disbelieve it. A belief should be supported by a reason. We have a demonstration drawn from the conception of being as a force. So long as a thing exists it is what it is, and it acts from its nature and according to its nature, because it is the nature or quality which acts, and, therefore, it must act uniformly so long as it exists as it is, and no longer. General laws are thus seen to be an intrinsic and log- ical necessity ; and they are not arbitrary and optional with God, as many Theists have supposed. All things 40 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. are forces, and forces must act according to their nature, uniformly ; and such actions constitute the laws of things ; and God can change these laws only by changing the nature of things, or destroy them only by destroying the things themselves. There are two main conceptions and forms of law. One is that of a command by a personal authority, whether that authority be the enactment of a legislative body, or the decree of a monarch or the revealed will of God. This is the civic and theological conception of law which we call the injunctive law. The other conception is that of a series of phenomena which occur with unde- viating regularity, which are the expression of an un- changing force. (A few men, Positivists, would omit the rast clause.) This is the scientific conception of law, whether physical or psychological, and we will call it the executive law, because it always executes itself. In point of fact, though not in human conception, the executive law is the more primitive and ancient of the two. It exists from of old and from eternity in the nature of God, and in the material universe from its creation, while the conception of it by man is compara- tively quite recent. Injunctive law originates with the earliest consciousness of personal will and power, and this comes long before there is any conception of natural or executive law as an un deviating, regular succession of phenomena. The lowest savages may conceive the for- mer, and act on it steadily, while the conception of the latter implies a considerable degree of mental develop- ment and scientific knowledge. Hence, it is only in modern times that the conception of executive law has become conspicuous, and it is even yet disputed by many CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 41 polemical Theists. The orientals, and the ancient Greeks and Romans, who were far less than we, im- pressed with the regularity of nature, could have but a dim and vacillating notion of the scientific law, and could seldom use the term law definitely in that sense. Yet we have some striking examples of this use of the term law in one ancient Greek writer, who is in some respects the greatest and most famous of them all, and of greater authority. We refer to St. Paul. It will be readily allowed that he was no innovator in science to the injury of religion, and that he was a psychologist, (especially of the moral powers) of no mean rank. His analysis of the propensities and moral powers of the numan soul shows a keen blade wielded with a strong arm and steady nerve. No human motive escapes him, and he fails not to probe the heart to its centre, and to weigh its merits and demirits in a just balance. As a moral anatomist he reveals to us, in the Epistle to the Romans, five laws which are found to operate in the soul of man, though some of them, it is said, do not operate in all men, and in no one do they all operate at the same time. These laws he himself designates as "the law in the members," " the law of sin and death," " the law of the mind," and "the law of the spirit of life." It is evident that by none of these laws does he mean the injunctive law. They are not duties enjoined. They are the methods according to which religion and irreligion, or godliness and ungodliness, or sin and holi- ness, uniformly work in the human heart and life. Perhaps there is not so much difference between these two forms of law as is generally supposed. They have some essential elements in common. 42 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Both are characterized by universality, which includes uniformity. That is, they are not selective and capri- cious. They apply, without exception, to all of a class, any exception or deviation from one straight line of operation being their violation. Both are instinct with rewards and penalties. Conformity confers benefaction ; transgression is visited with suffering more or less. Especially are some of our psychological laws fraught with benefaction or malefaction, according as they are respected or disregarded. The executive law is the primary and ulterior source whence the injunction law is derived. Heretofore it has been generally supposed among Theistic divines that the injunctive is the true and original type of law, and that the scientific or injunctive law is only entitled to the name of law, partly as an accomodation and figure of speech, and partly on the assumption that it is the crea- ted expression of the design and will of Deity. It is very natural that such a view should have long prevailed, because the conception of the injunctive law r necessarily came first in the order of time in consequence of man's early and prolonged ignorence of the course of nature, external and internal, and his incapacity to discern gen- eral forces and trace uniformities. Hence, when unifor- mities began to be observed, they were designated by the term law, because they bore some resemblance to the operation of the injunctive law, while only the latter was deemed to be law, real and proper. In our times the executive law has attained a rank of acknowledged intrinsic dignity and significance. But a consistent con- ception and philosophy of it is yet wanting. This law God himself obeys in all his action. Created CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 43 laws and rules are created by him just as they are, because the immutable force of his own nature rendered them necessary. The necessity is only from himself, and is a good and wise and holy necessity, because he is intrinsically wise and good and holy, so that he "cannot lie," and "cannot deny himself." In the creation of the material universe God has created material forces, and these forces necessarily have their own laws or modes of uniform operation, from which they can never deviate, except as they are made to do so by the power which created them, or by some power endorsed and delegated by him. In giving to matter, so-called its properties, God has given to it its laws. The same holds true of all the powers of sensation and physical action which, so far as is known to us, are states of our consciousness. We know that they have their laws or modes of uniform operation, and because of this we know how to use them. If they were not regular and uniform in their action relative to each other and the external world, we should be in utter confusion, and existence would be impossible. The same train of remark applies to the interior powers of emotion, of in- tellection, and, to some extent, of volition. In short, moral law, civil law, all statute or injunctive law, all fore- thought or volitive action, presuppose the executive law of involuntary uniformities. The executive law is thus presented to us with a sig- nificance which makes it one of the sublimest of all possible conceptions. It extends to all possible phenom- ena, from the centre to the circumference of all things and from the Deitv himself to the smallest atom. There 44 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. is not a mote in the light or the darkness in all the vast variety of universal being that can escape the sweep of the boundless radius-vector of the scientific law. This law is but the form in which all things operate, and it springs from the very essence of all being as quality or force, whence its co-extension with all being as showing the nature of all. All other laws spring out of this, and this is their justification. God springs out of the laws of his own nature and those of man. The trite proposition that law implies a law-giver, may, with equal truth, be reversed or converted. A law-giver implies a law. He cannot give what he does not possess, and he cannot absolutely create a moral law. It is not an arbitary enactment of him as Creator. It is coeval with him as the eternal perfect person. It rules him, as his subjective, masterful selfhood, and determines his actions alike in creation and government. Holding to the truth of the doctrine of creationism, we are, not withstanding, compelled to affirm that erection could never be purely arbitrary, of the will alone, as volition, but must be dictated by the whole nature of the Infinite Perfection, which is eternal and immutable, and which necessitates certain modes of uniform operation. Thus the law given by the great Law-giver implies another law which dominates the law-giver himself ; and this primary and ulterior law, which is the law of the divine nature, is an unchanging force ; and because unchanging, it operates uniformly, and necessitate the law which is laid on us in the revelation of his will. The doctrine of the necessity of general laws is based on the conception of all being as a force. God's being is a nature, a quality or force. According to his nature CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 45 or quality or force He necessarily acts ; and had he been different in his nature or attributes, he would have acted differently and with different results. Hence, it is that we judge of his character by his works. The created uni- verse is the manifestation of the divine powers and dis- position so far as they are known or knowable, because it is the necessary effect of the operation of these powers. This principle holds good of all possible existences. Nothing but force or power can do or suffer anything ; and according to the nature and degree and connection of the force will be its doing and suffering. It is thus we do and must judge men and all the inferior creation. God himself, in all his own inner, as well as outer action, must exemplify general law, simply because he is always the same. His nature being unchanged and his action always corresponding with his nature, he must act uniformly ; and that is just what is meant by conformity to general law. He is intelligent, and therefore his nature gives and exemplifies general or uniform laws of intelligence. He is just and good, and therefore exemp- lifies the uniform law or laws of justice and goodness. In like manner external nature and our own nature operate according to what they are, and that operation constitutes their uniform or general laws. All laws are general because they are uniform, else they would be no laws at all. There are no particular laws. Law is but a term which expresses the continuity of force and its consequent and necessited uniformity of operation. Strictly speaking, natural laws are never changed or modified. They can only be annihilated by the annihilation of the substance or force of which they are the effect and expression. They always operate the 46 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. same result in the same connections and circumstances, and never in different connections so that they are in this respect all alike. The interposition of a new power will change the result ; and if this new power is supernatural we shall have miracle, but no violation of our principle, as each power still acts according to its nature. The only pos- sible difference on the score of generality consists in the number of objects of the same nature and connections, and therefore as exemplifying the same law. The falling of a single apple exemplifies the law of gravitation, and this law extends to all tangible objects. It is not the ex- tent but the uniformity of its operation that makes it a law. It would be as truly a law of gravitation if it were confined to apples or to any particular variety of apples, and belonged to all of that class. Indeed, every object has its own laws, laws which are born of its own peculiar nature, a nature which is a peculiar force or combination of forces, and which, there- fore, always operates accordingly. Whatever objects operate alike or according to the same law are by that fact proved to be of the same nature or quality, the peculiar quality being known by the peculiar mode and results of its operation. As natural laws are nothing but the methods in which substances as forces operate, and that, necessarily, from their nature, whether in God or his creation, God cannot dispense with them, nor, in anywise, modify their action and issue, except by a supernatural interposition equal to the annihilation of an old, or the creation of a new force, or substance. As God cannot dispense with general laws, it was not by his "determination," at all, that they were CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 4/ inaugurated. They are, some of them, eternal, and rule all his own action. In the creation of the universe, also, he has no choice between general laws and no general laws, but only between different possible forms, or classes, of general laws. It was his prerogative to determine what kind of forces he would create, and, therefore, what kinds of laws he would inaugurate. He, necessarily, acts according to general laws, from his own power, wisdom and goodness ; and all created things, necessarily, act, or operate, according to general laws, from the natures or qualities which God has given them, whatever they may be. Apparent fortuities are only apparent, and what ap- pear so to one mind will not so appear to another of superior culture and intelligence. Natural laws, as the exponent of natural forces and creative agency, rule here with as much regularity as in the movements of the great celestial orbs. To make this of service in religion, we should show, as we easily can, that general laws being necessary, in spite of omnipotence, the evils which flow from them, whether by nature or the perverse zvill of man, may be no impeach- ment of tJie divine peffection ; and that his use of them does not, as Mill argues, indicate divine limitation. The prevalence of general laws is proof of neither good nor evil, neither wisdom nor folly, neither power now weakness, in the Ruler of the world. It is only the kind of general laws which are of any force on these points or in proof of the character and attributes of God. 48 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER VI. LAWS OF THE DIVINE ACTIVITY. Distinct from nature or the known universe, God has a nature of his own which constitutes his being, his indi- viduality, and his attributes and character. This must be the ground and source of all his action. There can be no other before creation, and after creation there can be no other so high. Hence, as this is eternal nature all Divine action would seem to be a necessity, which, however, is denied on other grounds. It is, therefore, an open question, whether the nature of God admits or excludes the power of alter- native choice and action ; that is, whether alternative freedom or rigid and unvariable necessity is the supreme law of the Divine activity. I stand with those who make the Divine agency a Divine necessity, and affirm, with Arminius, that he is not good, and holy, and wise, by his own free volition, but by eternal subjective necessity, and, with thorough- going Augustinians, that the same necessity determines all his actions in the creation and government of the universe. This Divine necessity, because subjective wholly, is not, in any degree, the effect of any external cause, it being a part of the theory that there is nothing external till it is created by this only eternal and immut- able One. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 49 This Divine necessity has on one side an aspect of freedom, to which we have already adverted. The will itself is really never coerced and never can be. The impossibility is intrinsic and insuperable, for, in order to do this it would have to will against its own volition at the instant of making it, which is self contradictory. In this sense, freedom is the essential and characteristic attribute of will in God or man. This is what we have ment to designate in the phrase already used of volitional freedom. This is very different from, and may or may not be associated with the probationary moral freedom which could actually at any time have done otherwise than it did ; and the former of these is often confounded with the latter, or, rather, made to overslaugh the latter. In contrast with this volitional freedom, it is of the utmost importance to have a clear conception of that which Arminians contend for as the moral and probation- ary freedom which belongs to rational being under moral probation, and constitutes the power and limits the dura- tion of such probation. This is a very peculiar and extraordinary endowment. It is the moral flexor of the soul which, in any circumstances, can turn either way with equal force and to an equal extent. It is superior to all conditions and circumstances of natural force ; so that it can always act for or against what is conceived as duty and right. In this endowment man has a degree of power to change all circumstances for better or worse in their moral influence, and to accept or reject the aid of Divine grace in support of the better force and volition, and in opposition to all evil. If God is infinite and eternal in his moral perfection he must be immutable in his moral condition. In him- 50 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. self, in his own nature, he comprises always infinitely the highest possible motives of action. These motives, it is assumed, are perfectly good, and, therefore, forever must continue to be good, which is implied in his psychological freedom, arid all this implies that he must forever will accordingly. Moral quality is the super-eminent quality, and to be void of it is at the utmost remove from infinite perfec- tion, and in a being of such excellence, moral perfection cannot be supposed to be ever, for a moment, in the slightest degree of jeopardy. Infinite moral perfection must be immutably perfect. Some have strongly dis- counted the moral element from the conception of per- fection, or at least from perfect happiness. Without moral excellence, omnisciense and limitless power would only be boundless imperfection of character, and it would be horrible in proportion to the agent's power of achieve- ment. Toward such a beins: distrust and dread would be o universally the dominant feeling; and his worshipers would be only fawning sycophants, truculent, selfish and ambitious. His rule over his creation would, therefore, necessarily be very unhappy ; and some daring Prome- theus, should such a one ever rise, would be the true hero of the universe, and Shelly's " Prometheus Unbound " would be the ideal drama, and longed-for epic of the world. Infinite perfection must, therefore, be conceived as inclu- ding moral excellence without alloy or limit, or possible eclipse or blot, or diminution of its perfect brightness. Nor could such a non-moral or immoral being be any happier than his subjects. He would view himself for- ever in the clear and perfect light of his own omniscience. He must, therefore, be perfectly cognizent of his own CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 5 I moral defect, and of how much better moral perfection would be. There is also a law of duty to the creature which must control the action of Deity. While he is immutably perfect, we are not thus precluded from applying to him a law which he is known to fulfil. In the very act of creating God puts himself under obligation to the creat- ure, an obligation which varies with the nature, rank and condition of the creature, and because of his infinite per- fection, God must recognize and fulfil this obligation. There is a law of benevolence to be observed toward all. He may not put any of his creature to unnecessary suffering, and he seems bound to give to them some proper scope and advantage corresponding to their nature and dignity, and with due respect to their mutual relation and total effect. But what these are, he is, of course, the only competent judge. There is an obligation under which he rests, of show- ing distinguishing favors to the righteous, as righteous- ness and goodness are elements of supreme excellence and worthiness ; and infinite perfection cannot fail to give them fit recognition and peculiar honor and felicity. As the counterpart of this there is a law which binds the Deity to humble and chastise all wrong or unright- eousness ; yet, still with pity for the transgressor as a sentient being, which is always the proper object of ben- evolent regard. The law of benevolence never dies, only it cannot operate without obstruction on bad charac- ters. It is the moral wrong in them which is the object of detestation and punishment, that its force and viru- lence may be diminished and destroyed, if possible ; after which, if that is ever effected, the benevolence, 52 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. which has always sought their welfare, has free scope again. The denial of natural law in the physical world, was one of the old prescientific pieties, but in these days, it is divested equally of piety and common sense. There is no force in matter, some say, and therefore it can be productive of neither good nor harm. You may eat oyster shells, as one said, and it will be neither better nor worse than eating oysters. Any child can eat green and unripe fruit of any kind, as much as it likes, without harm, and alleged poisons are not poisons at all. Such sayings are not merely follies, they are sins. They know better. They know by experience the power of certain drugs. A false pretense is not only more wicked, but it is more dangerous to society than any error and supersti- tion. To believe that God will suspend physical laws for the benefit of good people may possibly work harm ; but it leaves intact, and may foster the noblest elements of our nature, the moral and spiritual. The pretense that there are no such laws is not only moral ruin to the indi- vidual thus acting, but it opens the door to every vice and every crime, so far as it is allowed. It is a natural and effective pretext for indulgence in every propensity and passion. Why should we not indulge if there are no laws, and if no harm can come from anything we do, as is alleged ? Why should not those who are so inclined drink, swear, lie, cheat, seduce, poison, or do anything else on the plea that it is all nothing, and can result in nothing — at least nothing but an illusion, which again is nothing, and should be dispelled by all powerful minds. When urging mesmeric or other mental action to the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 53 bodily and mental derangement of certain hated parties, one of this class pleads that it was all right, because u They are only myths." If they are only myths, it is right to destroy them. If, as is often alleged, all sensible things are only a lie, it is right to destroy them, and a duty so to do. If there is no law of nature or God which rules them, there can be no law of obligation concerning them. I would not condemn as morally self-abandoned all who adopt the theory we are condemning. I am very certain that some of them are good people, who would abhor the moral implications of their theory, and who from indis- position, combined with logical limitations, have never seen these consequences as the rational and practical result of their principles. I hope all such will feel assured that I wish not to do them any injustice. Far from it. Nothing is more common than to see good people using through ignorance bad and dangerous prin- ciples innocently, and with little direct harm, and without any thought of aught but good. All honor to them. But this should not close our lips against the false prin- ciples and their dangerous tendency. It is, of course, quite obvious that all these people, good and bad, have to use and speak of physical law. They cannot avoid this, any more than they can avoid using and speaking of sun- light, which exemplifies these laws. They can also adduce these expressions in proof of their acknowledge- ment of natural law, and as a rebuttal of our charges. 54 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER VII. CLASSES OF LAWS. There are different classes of laws, which act with a degree of independence of each other. We say a degree of independence, because this independence has its limi- tations. Indeed, there is always a connection, we be- lieve, between all classes of laws ; but, it is often very indirect, and only at certain points, and is far from extending to all particular forms and processes of each class in relation to all the other classes. There must be an ultimate connection, because man is a unity, and all his subjective states of every class have their immediate source in himself, their common subject. But this unity allows a diversity in thought, which, as we have seen, is verified in the facts of experience. This difference of classes of laws implies that from their very nature as geneically or specifically different, they are not related to other classes of laws as directly as they are related to the laws of their own class. Physi- cal laws are more closely and constantly related to each other than they are to supersensible laws ; so that we can often effect sensible results by sensible methods more readily than by purely supersensible action. If we want to build a house, we cannot effect it by simply saying in thought : "Be built, O house." We must use material or sensible methods, many, various and prolonged, or it will never be done. On the other hand, supersensible results CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 55 can be effected mainly or wholly through the exercise of supersensible powers in accordance with supersensible laws. We may use material laws for this end, but we must use them intelligently. We cannot instruct and educate another merely by using articulate sounds. We must ourselves think, and so think that we wisely and effectively use our words for the end in view. Here we see how science enjoins us to study each department by itself, as well as in relation to other de- partments ; and to observe and utilize the laws of each department in special mutual relation, as well as in a larger and less intimate relation to all other departments. Physical laws must first and most closely be studied and followed relative to each other, and then in their common relations to superphysical laws. On the other hand, the department of thought or the higher region of conscious- ness, ought to be studied and investigated, so as to find out the nature and mutual relation of its laws, and then the relation of all to other and inferior departments. This, therefore, teaches that in the science of healing the body through mind, we are not to ignore all physical and organic laws. The orator studies and uses his organ- ism, and the atmosphere, and all the physical elements of the situation to impress the minds of his hearers. Like- wise the philosopher. It is by the use of sensible laws that they attain supersensible ends. If sensible means are necessary for effective work in the upper sphere, how much more so in the sphere of sense itself. We daily rest after labor to recuperate exhausted vigor. We eat and drink daily to repair worn out tissues, and to replace fluids which have evaporated or flowed away. Without this our organic life and vigor could not be long sustained. 56 CHRISTIAN PNEUM\TOPATHY. Whoever stops here must give a scientific reason, if he can, for so doing. But then, no one can stop here. In ten thousand other ways and forms all use sensible means to effect sensible ends. They conform to recognized laws of sense as conditions of gratifying sense. I know not that this principle has ever been questioned, except in one particular department, that of healing the sick — mental treatment. Here we have seen persons come straight from a good dinner to tell a suffering pa- tient not to use any sensible means for their recovery. This is a very strange anomaly. No scientific reason has ever been given for its justification. Nothing but dog- matic assertions have ever been urged on the subject. It is inconsistent with itself ; it is contradicted by all experience ; it is the very opposite of science. It is often as cruel also as it is irrational. I have known met- aphysical doctors refuse to their tortured victims a drop of water to cool their parched tongues, for fear any sub- sequent good results should be attributed to physical agency. One of these sufferers in my congregation, as the family informed me, wanted a little acid and water to relieve a painful alkaline taste in his mouth, and it was forbidden, and the poor man suffered on, and was ulti- mately relieved by death. It is evident that in this matter there is a lack of common sense, as well as of scientific method and prac- tical consistency. It ought to be clear that some physi- cal means should be used for the welfare of the sick, as well as for the healthy and strong. It is the acme of un- feeling folly for the healthy physician to eat, sleep and clothe himself appropriately for his comfort and contin- ued health and vigor, and yet forbid the action of the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 57 same principle in relation to the suffering, the wretched and helpless, who are committed to his care. Allow such a procedure as scientifically just, and there is no form or degree of iniquity and cruelty and neglect which it would not approve and propagate. We, therefore, need here some just and sound princi- ples for our guidance, principles which are the compre- hensive expression of physical and organic laws, and which, at the same time, are in harmony with supersen- sible laws. What these are, and what rules of prac- tical treatment may grow out of them, we cannot here expound in detail. But some things may be said as an index of a whole volume. One of these is that there should always be the best nursing that can be had. This accords with physical and organic law, and all the laws of the heart, social and domestic, and for that reason it accords with all the true laws of mind. Another principle is, that any physical action or property applied or used inwardly or outwardly, if it is known to accord with the known laws of organic want and supply, is to be discreetly used. It may be called food or drink or medicine, or what you like, but it should be used. The only question that can in this connection be reasonably raised is, as to what does conform to this law. Here there is a Call for sound judgment, for scien- tific investigation and experiment, and the ripeness of large experience. A third principle is that whatever will help the healthy metal action of the patient should be studied and utilized. Things which otherwise might seem useless or injurious may thence be turned to good. Still, here, it is evident, 58 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. there is a great need of discretion on the part of the physician. A false step, an ill-judged move may be fatal, or seem so, and subject him to serious censure. But by some means or power he must bring the mind of the patient into a healthy tone as a condition of healing the body ; and if he can do this by mind alone, all the better. A fourth principle is the co-operation of all the differ- ent classes of laws, and of those who are specialists in one or more of them. There is no reason why a Pneuma- topathist should not co-operate with one who is skilled and practised in any of the lines of organic phenomena, whether as physician or surgeon. If he is unsympa- thetic it will be less favorable. But that is only individ- ualistic, and effects not the principle of co-operation. This co-operation is often necessary. If the skilled Pneumatopathist is not scientifically educated in the physical line, it will be sometimes prudent and some- times necessary to have the services of one who is so educated and practised. While each of the various classes of laws has a sphere of its own, and so re- quires to be specially studied and observed, they all have a vital and mutual relation. They are constant co-operatives. So Pneumatopathists and physicists should unite where they are not united in the same person, especially where the case is serious and con- spicuously organic. But the thorough Pneumatopathist will never allow any other practitioner in the art of healing to be anything more than his assistant, or at the most, his associate. All sensible phenomena and action and prescription are subordinate to the supersensible. This should never be forgotten, and we should ordinarily CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 59 refuse to act where this principle is not recognized. Metaphysics takes precedence of physics. It may use physics to some extent for metaphysical ends, and it should never allow itself to be used by physics for physi- cal ends. That would be degradation and perversion. Metaphysics should never even condescend to use its own powers merely for physical ends. It does seek and secure bodily well-being. But it does not stop there. Its object is the elevation of the mind, and through it the promotion of a perfect and all-rounded and immortal health of both the sensible and supersensible faculties as a unity of many spiritual forces. This is the dignity and glory of our science of Pneumatopathy. It presides over all things, and uses them as it sees proper for the attainment of its own supreme objects and results. Let the Pneumatopathist never forget his royal dignity. Let him never leave his throne, except in royal state. Let him always dwell in this supernal region, which is his native air. But let him be civil to all, never cringing nor truckling nor supercilious. To him belongs a sense of quiet and serene elevation of spirit and deportment, which, without effort or special emphasis, unconsciously affirms itself by its superior quality and force, and by the good it performs. Thus conceived, Pneumatopathy is destined to dwell a queen and be no widow, "for her Maker is her Husband." 60 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER VIII. • GRADES OF LAWS. These different classes of laws are also of different grades, one ranking above and one below the other. The sensible ranks below the supersensible, as even the humblest mind readily discerns. From this there grows a law of relative subordination. Everything should be treated as it deserves, and every- thing deserves to be treated according to its value and worth. Now nothing is worth anything, except as and for thought and feeling, and these rise in dignity with their significance and intent. The external world is servant to the animal, and the animal to intelligence, and the highest end of this is the moral action and spiritual life in conscious and purposed harmony with his God and his creation. The intellectual and spiritual life then should rule the physical and organic life, and all the external world, and should rule them perfectly for the highest spirit- ual ends. The more easily, directly and completely it can do this the higher will be its grade of perfection. God can speak and it is clone, can command and it stands fast. We can do this in a small degree only, and for the most part we have to resort to sensible means for the attainment of supersensible and spiritual CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 6 1 issues. The author uses pen and paper to develope his own thought into more articulate fullness and clearness, and the press to instruct or stimulate the thought of others. Just in proportion as any of us can accomplish the higher ends of intelligence without the use of sensible processes, we do it, and we simplify the processes as far as possible. But so far as these proc- esses are necessary from the comparatively low grade of our own spiritual attainment, we are bound by every principle of reason to use with until all zeal and fidelity, and frankly acknowledge it. As food and sleep and rest are found to be necessary to our physical and organic welfare, we use them. If there is anything else which experience has proved in our case to be helpful or nec- essary, then that also ought to be used by us. Such use is not only a sensible or animal use, but a rational and religious use, because it is necessary to their proper exercise and development in our present condition and degree of progress. It is the handmaid of spirit, and spiritual in its object and ultimate issue, and so shares a spiritual dignity and sacredness. Further, according to the doctrine that all is mind, that all forms of sense are modes of mind, the difference between the classes of phenomena and laws is only a difference in the forms and grades of mental states or modes of mental action, and the use of anything what- ever is not the use of anything but mind, and cannot be, since there is'nt anything but mind to use or to be used. "All is mind." Sensible pnenomena are as really mind as supersensible phenomena, only of a lower rank, and to be used so far as necessary, and to be dispensed with when possible to our advantage, and not before. 62 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Health is wholeness, the normal condition. Disease is unwholeness, disruption, derangement, partial dissolu- tion. Hence the supreme law of existence and life is health. But there are grades of health, as there are grades of life. There is the spiritual, the intellectual and the physical or animal ; and all these are the modes or subjective states of the perfect human being, and they are in such a man all in perfect harmony with each other. In case of a difference of claims, the superior in rank should rule the inferior, which has no function, except as the servant of the higher. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 63 CHAPTER IX. NORMAL ACTION OF LAW. A distinction is commonly made between normal and abnormal conditions. This implies an idea of a state which is considered as the right and proper, or the nor- mal condition. This condition is conceived as one in which all the functions of the system are acting in full vigor and in harmonious co-operation. Whatever favors, fosters and coincides with this is, therefore, normal. There is a normal operation of the functions, and these functions can be kept in operation only by being fed and supplied by the materials which in their operation they consume. Hence the supply of these materials must be itself a normal process. Both body and mind need to be fed, and both demand a special kind of food. The body requires sensible food, and the mind requires supersensi- ble food, which, however, has usually to be conveyed by a sensible medium, and in both cases the process of suppy is a normal one. Now we can correct the errors of the mind only by mental medicine. According to the same law we should be supposed able to correct the errors of the body only by bodily correctives or physical medicine. This law, however, is limited in its operation, because it is subor- dinated to the higher law of the mind. This higher law controls the laws of the body to an indefinable extent. 64 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATKY- Just how far and where it operates so that it directly affects the body for good (or evil) is to be determined only by experience. And where it fails, the law of the lower agency is to be brought into operation. We have thus a field both in health and disease for the action of both sets of laws, the sensible and super- sensible, relative to the body. We know that the direct action of the higher set of laws does not suffice for ail the wants of the body in either health or disease, and by a careful, patient, honest and persevering investiga- tion, we must find out the power of mind for the good of the body, and how this power can be promoted, and then by consequence, what are the needs of physical forms for physical needs, and use them accordingly. This only is " science," and it is not unchristian. These laws involve laws of healing. Because there is law everywhere, there is a law of healing. There are laws which may be followed for good or evil, and we know what we are doing and are responsible for it all. Then the mind of God is expressed in these laws, and that mind is good, and so all these laws are good. As goodness is their spirit and end, the same is true of their action when rightly understood and used. Hence, too, they must involve a healing agency, and that agency must in its higher ranges be mental, because supersen- sible laws are supreme, and to a large extent they directly control the sensible, and indirectly they control all other issues of the organic life. Here, pre-eminently, is the future line of progress. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 6$ PAET FOURTH. PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO GOOD AND EVIL. CHAPTER X. NATURE AND ORIGIN OF EVIL. The origin of evil is virtually explained in the exposi- tions already given. It is a dark subject, and a detailed exposition no wise man will be very ready to offer. But there are some principles already indicated which afford all the light that is necessary for our guidance and in- struction ; and these principles are involved in the con- conception of a creature or a finite being. He must be liable to err, must make progress by experience, and the experience may be painful, and in some degree must be painful through the operation of error somewhere. But the result will be worth the pains, under an economy of infinite perfection, which contains this element of initial imperfection arising from the necessary nature of the finite. Further, the moral responsibility of the creature with a power of choosing according to principle, or according 66 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. to opposing inclination, implies the possibility of another quality of evil and good, the voluntary and moral. The perverse action of the moral faculty is evil of a distinct kind — Sin. This is always and forever wholly and only and intrinsically evil. It is never a legitimate means of good. In the sense of sin, " we may not do evil that good may come." This evil can never be of God. For whatever the individual finite cannot and never could avoid or achieve is not their responsibility, and they are not thereby made morally either better or worse for that. And as everything which God has ordained is good in its end, there can be no moral evil except of the crea- ture's generation. This evil will be more or less over- ruled for good by God ; but otherwise it is evil pure and unmitigated, and nothing but evil can its perpetrator ever reap for it in the end. A short lived and inferior pleasure may and often is derived from it, and this is the temptation to the sin. But the ulterior result is and will be degradation and misery, shame and contempt. How they can act thus foolishly is an unanswerable question. This is the ultimate black wall of all moral investigation. The act of sin is irrational and can have no rational explanation. It is the only ulitmate absur- dity, and therefore we leave it as we must, in its native darkness. This again may partially explain the existence of in- voluntary pain, misery and comparative degradation. It has been claimed that, because man is the creature of infinite perfection, he must be perfectly immaculate and immutable. But that does not follow. It would be just as reasonable to infer his infinity from the infinity of his author. As we have seen that finity involves CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 6? possible endless progress, this progress may be from error and evil into truth and good, and then from lower to higher degrees of truth and good. Both of these are necessary to the highest progress in good. The good is the end all along, because it is good. Therefore sound health and correct judgment are the normal state always, and always the will of God. Hence, it is always our duty as far as possible, to heal disease and dispel error. But it is very evident that in the present state of existence we cannot remove all suffering and disease and death. A thousand ills assail men which no care nor human foresight or skill can avert. Some we inherit, some visit us in the cradle, and some dog us all our life. Fire, flood and pestilence, tempests, cyclones and earth- quakes, are beyond the control of ordinary individual skill and power. They come in virtue of forces far be- yond our will and effort. What is their origin and cause? It has been said that God cannot be their cause, be- cause he can be only the author of good. Well, it is true that God can ultimately and in purpose be only the author of good. But he may be the author of seem- ing evil, if that is or may be helpful to the really good. Now the school which makes evil nothing but a seeming and illusion is the most strenuous in denying that God is its cause, and yet they allow that it is a means of good, and permitted for that reason and end. The truth is, that the evil which comes from a source beyond man, and is woven into his very nature, must have its origin ultimately in some good purpose of God, which purpose is best attained through means of the evil. It follows that such evil is only evil to the lower 68 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. faculties, and good to the higher even now, and in the end good to all. Such evil is not really evil, but only seeming, it is "good in disguise," "good in the making." God therefore may reasonably be its author. Now a certain degree of apparent evil to our lower faculties is manifestly necessary to our wellfare, to our instruction, discipline and progress. It belongs appar- ently to the very nature of a finite being, that it must learn by degrees, and by experience and exercise de- velope wisdom and strength. We know no one can become physically strong, vigorous and healthy without exercise, and that implies effort in counteracting the re- action of opposing forces, and this work may be fatiguing and painful. If there is no error, and nothing calculated to mislead, if there is no possibility of mistake, because every thing bears a correct and unmistakable label on its face, then there is no call for intellectual circumspection, and for careful, earnest and patient investigation, with self -cautions against prejudice, misapprehension and false conclusions. In other words, the characteristic excellence of a trained and disciplined intellect, with all the moral worth it involves, is impossible without the necessity of prolonged contest with possible error and the disguises which it wears. In like manner suffering and trial, bereavement, dis- appointment, heavy burdens, great responsibilities and temptations have always proved or developed the heroes and heroines of the world, and made the world sparkle all over it with virtues which otherwise would never have become luminuous. Without temptation there could have been no pioof of virtue, and there could be no temptation, without in some way, a possible loss or suf- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 69 fering through resistance to it. We must therefore con- ceide to the old divines and philosophers their claim that evil as it appears to sense enters into the divine plan of man and the world as a condition of ulterior and higher good. This has also been the conviction of the most pure and nobly devout saints of all the ages. yO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XL REALITY OF EVIL AND OF TRANSIENT GOOD. Now we are pressed with a new question concerning the nature of evil, a question which has recently risen into unprecedented importance. Is it a reality, an illu- sion or an absolute nothing? These are questions which have been answered with equal confidence and incompre- hension in these days. What is reality, is one of the questions involved in these answers. The eternal is real, it is answered. The temporal is just the opposite of the eternal, and there- fore the temporal is unreal. There is no real existence but the eternal. Affirm the reality of the Infinite, and the existence of the finite, being the opposite of this real, is proved to have no existence at all. In like man- ner it is affirmed that God is real as good, true, intelligent and powerful and as real substance ; and as evil, sin and error are the opposite of this real, they are unreal, have no existence. With this superficial conceit and imposi- tion of an empty verbal logic many are satisfied and are suddenly transmuted thereby into magic healers of the world's maladies. It is no use to tell such people that the opposite of eternal, of infinite, of good and of truth, is not unreality, but respectively temporal, finite, bad and false ; and that the latter class may exist as well as the former. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. J\ To others, however, it will be well to point out this fact more distinctly. The argument assumes that oppo- sites and contraries do not exist, that nothing exists except what is concordant and harmonious. This con- tradicts facts. Else I should now have no folly to expose, no error to refute, and no one could have any objection to anything I can say. Logic and reason could have no vocation, if there were nothing and could be nothing to reason against. If opposites do not exist there is then either no infinite reality, or there is no finite reality. One or the other must be discarded. The finite cannot be denied because it is a distinct and constant element of our conscious experience. We feel our limitations every moment in every direction. Relative to each other and to forces outside of our organism, and relative to the tasks of our daily life, we have to be frequently engaged in measur- ing the limited degree of our power and knowledge. We must therefore conclude there is no Infinite, and be atheists, if the opposites, finite and Infinite, cannot both exist. But as theists we must affirm both. If these opposites may co-exist, the principle in ques- tion is destroyed, and other opposites may co-exist — such as good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, truth and error, veracity and hypocrisy. This is not only a logical possibility, but it is a fact so constant and universal and so obvious to all, that I question whether any one has ever been able to so impose on himself, and from earthly motives or otherwise, to so pervert his mental action as to become really pursuaded of the nonexistence of evil, error, sickness and sin. The oft-quoted declaration of James, that sweet and 72 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. bitter waters cannot come from the same fountain, im- plies the existence of both sweet and bitter waters, wherever they originate. It may be true, as he says, that " no fountain yields both salt water and fresh." That, however, is quite possible ; and it is an ascertained fact, that from the same orifice in the earth very different fluids have come at different times, such as pure water, impure water, gas, pitch, oil, flame, vapor, cold water, scalding water. But whatever may be allowed or disal- lowed concerning these fountains, there can be no reason able doubt about the fountain of the human soul. Here James expressly affirms the very contrary of what is attrib- uted to him. Because of his figure of the fountain he is quoted as designing to say that the two opposites can- not come from the human heart. But he says men are here unlike the fountain. Hear him. He says : " The tongue no man can tame, an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless me God, even the Father ; and, therewith curse we men, which are made after the simil- itude of God. Out of the same month proceedeth bless- ing and cursing. My bretheren, these things ought not so to be." He says these things are so, but ought not to be so. James himself in the same letter curses wicked oppressive tyrants, and blesses the honest and faithful poor. He does this as a good and just man. Goodness and Justice forever smile on the right and frown on the wrong. In proportion to the vigor of their blessing for the one is the energy of their curse for the other. This is an ultimate moral necessity. James meant only to rebuke the impious cant which fawns on God, and shows no brotherhood to man, blessing God and cursing man, which ought not to be. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 73 On the same erroneous interpretation and presupposi- tion they say that from God can come only good. Evil can never be a part of his plan or the result of his action. It is a shallow, petty conceit. Evil be to him that evil thinks. If God's design is good, and if he sees, as he must, that the ultimate result will be just what he approves, as infinitely wise and good, then it is all good so far as it concerns his action, notwithstanding the " growing pains " which his creatures feel for a season as a condition of higher and immortal good. There is a popular and qualified sense in which we say that error and evil are unreal, and that only the true and good are real. This however, is not meant to be ulti- mate and metaphysical. In a broad sense we may say, with much practical truth, that the real is the good and true. This has been a suggested thought of the ages ; but it has never become a formulated dogma of Church or Council. Augustine refused to allow to error, evil or sin any proper reality. He affirmed that it was only the absence of good, or the effect of such absence. Many theologians, who have held to the "Augustinian doctrine of grace," have also held this notion. They make all evil and sin to be only the absence, or the effect of the absence, of the divine power and grace ; and they are happy in the thought that by this means they give all glory of all good to God. But Christian Pneumatopathy does not, like those old teachers, saddle God with responsibility for a serious and awful negative. It sees into the question more clearly and profoundly, and makes its affirmations with corre- sponding precision and firmness. It does not teach, as 74 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. they do, that God withholds a possible and needed grace, or favor, or spiritual power, and by so doing necessitates sin, and all forms and degrees of error and evil. It does not consider that this gives any glory to God, but that it blots him with all the darkness consequent on his illiberality. Such a being is not God. God is infinite good, and he is, and does, everything good ; and he with- holds nothing necessary to the perfection of his creatures after their kind. But how shall we determine what is good ? I answer : By the law of harmony. It must be found to be in harmony with all other known and indis- putable good. All truth, all true art, all right action, exemplify this harmony, which is generically the har- mony of pure love, which comprehends all harmonies, and without which all minor harmonies are an ultimate discord. Thoughts, when they are in harmony with eternal Truth and Reality, are good, though they are transient. They are the transient modes in which the eternal Real- ity is manifest, by which the Idea of God shows its own character, and thence the divine character, and reflects him as his image. A similar exposition applies with perfect rigor to the harmonious and beneficent phenom- ena of the visible world in relation to their subject. These phenomena are never anything else or more than subjective states, modes and forms of consciousness. So conceive them, deny to them any existence other than that, deny to them any substance or life or intelli- gence other than Spirit, then you affirm them as Spirit, then you affirm them as spiritual facts, and as such they are not to be put in the catalogue of error, and your conception of them is not error, but truth ; and your use CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 75 of them in this light is not evil, but good ; for all through there is perfect harmony both of thought and action, and all must be in harmony with eternal Love. Let it, how- ever, be remembered, that we have said this only of the good as that which is spiritually harmonious. All dis- cordant elements, whether of sense, or passion, or more refined thought, are to be considered as excluded from this catalogue of truth and good. By their very nature, as discordant, they are excluded from the circle of har- mony, and therefore from the circle of the Good and True. They are a false thought, a deceiver and a cheat. And therefore they are destroyed by correct thought. This error and discord, and their action, constitute the mortal man and mortal thought ; and nothing else is mortal. Nothing that is good or true can be mortal. It belongs to the eternal real. It is a part of the necessary harmony of infinity. It is true that each of these successive forms cannot be eternal ; but their Substance, and Spirit, and Life, and Intelligence can be, and are so. These forms, so far as they are good and spiritually harmonious, are the modes of thoughts, the transient subjective states, of the im- mortal man, whose very Life and Soul and Being are God. As the beautiful azure and vermillion transparencies appear in succession on the surface of the water, and then speedily melt into the common mass, which remains the same through all the history of its bubble evolutions, so the various successive thoughts and phenomena of spiritual life rise and fall in the small sea of the human mind; and these rise nevermore to fall, on the bosom of the Ocean of Infinite Mind. Changless Mind is thus eternally generating immortal reflectors of itself ; ?6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. and these are ever generating reflectors of themselves in the invisible world of supersensible consciousness, and also in the visible world of beauty, loveliness and good- ness ; and this visible excellence is a symbol of the invis- ible and supersensible. Thus conceived, we can see how "the heavens declare his glory, and the firmament showeth his handiwork," that "day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge." Thus all that is truly fair and good is rescued from mean aspertions, and honored as the mirrored excellence, though inadequate, of the Infin- itely Fair and Good. Sin is a peculiar modification of evil. It begins with volition, but it generates false and painful and injurious conditions of body and mind. These bad conditions are not removed by the mere understanding of them, as abnormal and real, as having no base in the essential principle of right and truth and wisdom. Many sinners see and acknowledge all this and see it very clearly, and still continue in their sin. The laws of victory over sin we cannot here stay to expound. We only observe in passing through this stage of our investiga- tion, that a mere understanding of its normal falsity and economic unreality does not necessarily suffice for its destruction. Other potent factors are eqally nec- essary. There is such an experience as illusion, as we are all well aware. The illusive is always said to be unreal. What is the nature of this unreality ? It is simply a false action ot sense or reason. A man with the jaundice is said to see all things yellow. They may be yellow to his sense. That is a real experience. But if he thence CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. JJ infers that all other people have the same sense as him- self, his inference will be false, will not answer to the reality. But while it is untrue and in that sense unreal, it is still a fact as a state and action of his own mind. It is simply unreal in that it has no foundation in the actual world of experience beyond his own notion. A disordered condition of the stomach and nerves is a source of many false sensations, which have no reality beyond their one conscious subject. My father once said that on going to his work at one period he saw huge sacks of wool roll before him on his way, but always keeping out of his reach, and that they were as clear and distinct as any other of the objects of vision. But he knew they were unreal, as we all thus pronounce them. But how unreal ? They were not unreal as subjective states as visual phenomena, for that kind of reality is just what he affirmed, and this kind of reality constituted the point of note and importance. They were unreal only in that they did not conform to a law of universal experience. They had no foundation in the universal economy of nature. They did not respond to the action of the other senses nor to the usual action of sight or to the senses of other men. He had never seen sacks of wool rolled without seeing some hands or other forces which rolled them. He concluded they were unreal. This is the kind of unreality which belongs to all error, falsehood, evil and sin. It is contrary to the fundamental and eternal order of things. It has no vital root pene- trating into eternal principles. It is a baseless fabrica- cation. It is therefore destined to pass away ; and its power will perish as fast as its false and baseless nature is discerned. We kill error therefore by the exercise of ?8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. intelligence and the progress of knowledge and under- standing. But we have something to kill, a false mental state and action, which as such is a reality for the time being. Disease is not to be confounded with intellectual error or with sensible illusion. It is like them in part, but with a difference of great importance. Disease is not, like intellectual error, always dispelled by the understanding of it as abnormal and so far unreal. It may have had such an origin and have gained such a hold, both in rela- tion to its subject and others, and it may have such a spiritual mission to fulfil, that in these respects it passes alike our power and comprehension, and though we know that it is unreal in that it is not the expression of the supreme eternal law and end of God's economy, we also often find that this understanding does not destroy it as a painful and debilitating subjective state. Some are very strenuous and seriously concerned about our interfering with God's work. If disease or any form of evil, they argue, is any part of the divine plan, why should we attempt to interfere with it ? Such a thing would be useless and presumptuous. This has quite a pious look, urged by some who are probably atheists, and urged with an air which quite imposes on some good and honest minds which have become fascinated and psychol- ogized by a verbal puzzle. Suppose we ask these wordy dialecticians who or what they are interfering with in their healing work ? Is it the devil's plan ? No ! for there is no devil, they say. Is it man's plan and work ? No ! for man cannot create, they say, and they say the same of all finite beings. Then the only other alternative is that it must be God's plan CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 79 and work they are modifying. To say further that the disease they cure is nothing at all, as they do, is perhaps often true. Here we are willing to let them testify for themselves. As to the alleged impossibility of succeeding in the attempt to undo or modify the work of God, the object- ion is very unobservant of the most familiar and every- day facts of all life and action. It is a part of God's plan that his creation shall be indefinitely modified by man. Nothing could be more irrational than to say that the universe is in every detail to be left untouched, un- wrought upon, unmodified by the hand of man, that it is no field for the exercise of his genius, industry and powers. For that is its supreme office and end. Man exists only by thus interfering in the creation of God, directing its forces into new channels, molding its objects into new forms, and securing thereby ever fresh results. Whatever ministers to human life, to its comforts and luxuries and elegancies, and to intellectual elevation, whatever marks the mental status of man or the relative advances of science or philosophy, or social or industrial advantages, is the result of man's interference with the creation of God, modifying its agency for the better. We bottle the lightning, and then let it shoot into illumina- nation, or turn our mill wheels at need. We guide the rivers, if not the stars in their courses ; and we make separated oceans kiss each other by the opened lips of our ship canals. The scattered springs on a distant hill-side soddening its soil and spreading into a miasmatic marsh on the lowlands, we collect together in a grand reservoir and send through the long aqueduct down to the distant city, which otherwise could never have grown into its 80 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. mighty proportions. We have recently turned sun, moon and stars and even the forked lightning into unparalelled artists in the service of science, and made them do what human artists cannot do so faithfully, paint their own portraits. Starry worlds all show us how much like they are to our own earth, and acknowledge the bond of a near kinship. All these and myriads of other achieve- ments are both cause and effect of monifying the facts and phenomena of nature, of the world of God's creation. The only presumption here is that we are right in this interference. It is manifestly the order of God and the law of our existence. This covers both good and evil, health and disease. In interfering with God's creation we do not neces- sarily interfere with God's plans of creation. It is part of his plan that man and all creation shall interfere. Darwin has elaborately shown how the earth-worm has for countless ages been interfering with the surface of the earth, and by boring and disturbing and eating and excreting, enriching it and adding to its beauty and the comfort and wealth of man. The tiny coral builds islands and extends continents. All forms of life are ever changing the forms and actions of the inanimate world, and man follows in their wake, and operates with a higher form of power, and with self-conscious design and moral purpose, earring out in his own way, like all inferior creatures, the all-comprehending plan of God. It should be borne in mind that in modifying the phe- nomena of nature we do not go against her laws. We change the facts and forms of the processes of creation, but not the laws which govern them. In fact, it is only in accordance with these that we effect these changes. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 8 1 We use the recognized laws in our effort to effect the changes we desire, and it is in the laws and their normal use that we see what is the plan of God, and work with it in effecting changes in the created product. In effect- ing these changes "we are workers together with God," instead of being workers against God. All things are made on purpose that they may be changed. Nothing that is created is immutable. As created, everything had a beginning. Its existence is contingent on the creative will of God. The nature and form of its existence are therefore subject to the same contingency. They are therefore possibly subject or liable to mutation. Only the eternal and uncreated are immutable. All created things are not only intrinsically mutable, but it is the manifest design of the Creator that they shall be changed. He has stamped them all with certain laws of transmutation. The most permanent of known things are always changing. The everlasting hills are wearing away, and they may crumble till they are washed in the ocean, and other mountains may take their place there or elsewhere. All organic life, vege- table or animal is subject to ceaseless transformation in birth, progress, wear and decay. The noblest and most enduring of all, the human spirit, is subject to change in the forms and relative rank of the forms of its con- sciousness. God made man for action. That is the very essence of all reality. What is the good of power never used ? What is the evidence of its existence except by its exer- cise and the results it attains ? Indeed, power can- not be still. Jesus felt this when he said : " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Indolence and inaction 82 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. are weakness, degradation. God's world is God's vine- yard, and he enjoins all men to go and work in it. " Do with thy might whatsoever thine hands find to do." All action is itself a change and a cause of further change. It is a source of changes in ourselves and in all things on which and by which we work, and in all things to which they and we are related. It is the manifest design of God that all mutations should be in the line of progress, of improvement of previous conditions. His own works are designed uni- versally to be improved by man. At first sight this proposition seems wonderful and strange. From the perfection of God we might argue, a priori, the immut- able perfection of all his works. Some have done this, and have thence affirmed, with infinite dogmatic iteration the eternal immutable perfection of man and the uni- verse, and that all seeming ill is only seeming, a pure delusion. But how the delusion which is an evil, can obtain where everything is thus absolutely perfect they cannot explain ; yet they hold to their dogma all the more tightly, reckless alike of logical consistency and common sense. If we are determined to use the a priori argument, we ought to take into consideration all the elements from which the deduction is to be drawn. We should consider the essential and necessary elements of a creature and especially of an intelligent and responsible creature. Certainly the creature must be of some kind and degree of force and power, and so capable of action, of produc- ing definite effects, and so there must be a theatre of action, a field of labor, a world subject by regular law to the action of intelligent purpose. Intelligence will want CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 83 to do something worth doing, and where and so far as it cannot improve things it will let them alone. The only motive for action is some attainable good, some advantage which the change thus effected brings. From the very- nature of man and the universe, therefore, it follows that the creation must be improvable, and man have the power and the responsibility of improving it. The universe is perfect so far as it affords the best field of work. It can have no other. Its perfection is always relative to its end. Absolute and immutable perfection is impossible to the finite. It must be forever capable of being better, everlastingly susceptible of improve- ment, subjectively and objectively. However much a creature knows, there remains an unknown for him to conquer and explore. However great his power, it has limits which he may outgrow, and which by the law of his being it seems that he must outgrow as a necessary consequence of the exercise of his faculties. And as a being of moral responsibility, he is bound to use his powers in the best way, which again implies a sphere of action and of endless possible improvement, as an essen- tial element of a perfect creation. 84 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XII. CREATION OF EVIL. It has been argued that as creatures are not creators, they cannot create evil, and that as God would not, there is in reality no such thing as evil. Such apparent argu- ment is an emphatic unreality, a mere seeming, an illusive use of words in the place of thoughts. We are all famil- iar enough with evil, whether created by God or man or neither. We accept the facts of consciousness. Evil may be illusive, as no doubt it is, especially with some minds in the formulation of such false verbal logic as that we are refuting. But it can be illusive only so far as it has an existence in thought and belief, that is, as a state of mind, which generates other mental states in various forms of action and passion. This mental existence is the only existence there is according to the theory in question, since it denies the existence of matter and affirms that all is mind. Therefore to admit a " claim to existence" or a "belief of reality," is to admit the reality as a mental state, and as nothing has any other reality, it is to admit that it has reality in the full and proper sense, for the time being. Error, evil and sin are not direct creations, but the abnormal and perverse action of force already created. It is no creation to use bad logic, to ignore or falsify facts. It is only a perversion of power, which could be, CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 85 and ought to be, better employed. If I put my hand under a moving trip-hammer, I do not create anything. I only subject myself to the painful operation of forces which before were known to exist, and which were known to be of great service to mankind ; and a moral trip- hammer will, sooner or later fall on all wrong doers, not because of any new creation, but in virtue of the law by which the mills of God are always working, and finally grind very fine their grist. The conscious conflict which one feels in his breast is in some degree painful, and in that sense evil, but in a moral being under probation it is necessary to perfection of moral character and its peculiar glory and felicity. God is eternally immutable. Nothing can have any power to determine his action, because he is eternally self-determined, as the only eternal Being. Now it is necessarily otherwise with all his creatures, which are finite and temporal. Whatever their powers and proclivities, they receive them from him. If these powers act in all cases from the necessity of their nature, so that no other action in the same condition and con- nections is possible, then all their actions as well as all their powers proceed from God. In that case they have no character of their own, of their own making. It is of God's making. God is only responsible and must receive exclusively the honor or the apparent dishonor. This is allowed to be the state of the case with all the inanimate world, and with the brute irrational creation of animals. They are supposed to have no self-made moral character. The rational and moral world are not thus necessitated. They possess peculiar powers and freedom of choice and 86 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. responsibility; and they generate a character of their own choosing, which may be good or bad. This is attested by consciousness, and it is implied in our moral judg- ments concerning ourselves and others ; and all literature is full of its implications. This implies conflicting attractions, so that there may be a possibility of choosing between them. If only one course is possible, there is no sphere for choice. If an apple and an orange are presented to me, and I am told to take my choice between them, the proposition is intel- ligible. But if only one thing is presented, whether apple or orange or aught else, and I am told to make my choice, I listen only to empty words. I may then indeed choose to accept or reject the one thing offered. Then there is a sphere and act of choice, one volition where the opposite is possible. This was the case with Eve. She had the power to eat or not eat of the fruit forbidden. She had also an attraction for the fruit, else the prohibition would have been superfluous. If no one wanted to drink, we should need no prohibitory liquor laws. Eve therefore had a natural proclivity for the fruit, and this before she sinned ; and this was a condition of moral choice, because she was thus required to choose between this and God's command. However we interpret this ancient story otherwise, it expresses the soul of moral action, its conditions and issues — a free choice between two opposing claims or attractions on the score of right and wrong. Eve, too, is here conceived as having a confliction between desire and conscience before she has formed by choice her moral character. It is so with all. The sense of sub- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Sy jective confliction between desire and duty is therefore not the effect of a moral fall, either of the race or indi- vidual, but the pre-condition of any moral action, good or evil. This confliction is a sort of evil, a painful feeling for a season, yet absolutely necessary to moral choice and all the noblest issues of the moral and spiritual life. What is true of this subjective conflict and evil, is equally true of the conflict and consequent trouble with which objec- tive experiences are fraught. Indeed, these also are sub- jective states just as much as the other. All phenomena are subjective states, and all their conflictions are a theatre for the exercise of our highest powers, especially the moral. In this sense God is the author of evil — an evil which is sub-moral and pre-moral, and a condition of moral good or moral evil. Used wrongly, it becomes real and unalloyed evil. Used aright, it becomes shaped and moulded into the good, and blends as a strengthen- ing element in one harmonious character which is the object or final cause of its creation. In estimating the nature and extent of evil, we need to make quite sure that we look at things from the right mental position. We should never forget that there are two contrasted standpoints — that of sensibility, and that of moral intelligence. What is good to one of these is often evil to the other. Sense cries out in pain as suffer- ing serious evil, when moral intelligence perceives it as good, because of being the necessary means of a nobler, richer and more enduring felicity. If this is the purpose and destined issue of all painful sensibility, as every true Theist must believe, then all pain is in the best and high- est sense, truly good, and worthy of God. If the finite 88 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. mind can be most greatly blessed only by passing through such experiences, then the Infinite Good must ordain them for this end. A little reflection will further disclose to us that all things are fountains of both good and evil according to their connections in action. The most beautiful and beneficent of all sensible things are fearfully evil in some connections. This is true even of the sunlight, the very glory and life of the universe. It often kills men and dries up the earth. The rain from heaven, from the good Father, and so necessary to all, may spread exten- sive desolation, devouring and overwhelming, till itself remains alone a mere wide waste of waters, where teem- ing populations and all their products of industry, taste and genius, unfolded their busy life and animating interest. All forces operate uniformly, as they must, because they are what they are ; and, therefore, as they operate the same always in the same or similar relations, they must operate differently in different relations. There is nothing, and can be nothing, which operates pleasantly in one class of relations and degrees, but it may operate painfully and injuriously in other degrees and relations. No thing, therefore, is absolutely good or evil in itself, but only in relation to other things and the ulterior moral ends which moral intelligence must always have in view. It is in this light that everything which God has made is good, the heavens and earth and all that is therein. All the so-called evil is incidental and a means of ulterior good, and even the good as a mere unthink- ing and non-moral sensibility is an incidental good, a means to a higher good. Thus even in so-called evil God doeth all things well. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 89 CHAPTER XIII. NO ROOM FOR EVIL AND GOD. We have a fresh reason in our present train of reflec- tion and argumentation for rejecting the doctrine that evil is an absolute unreality. Evil in me is a wrong state of my mind. It has no other existence. But this exist- ence it has. This, however, is just the kind of existence which belongs to good, whether finite or infinite. Good exists simply and solely as a state of the mind of God or of his creature. This is an oft-repeated argument against the existence of evil (what a power of happy illusion to doubt it) to the effect that since God is good and omnipresent, this precludes the possibility of evil, because there is no room for it. If God occupied space literally, and if the same were true of all evil, this argument would be con- clusive. But in the first place, God does not occupy space, since he is not a sensible object. Nothing but sensible objects occupy space. This book as a sensible phenom- enon occupies spaces, which are of measurable dimens- ions, and to that extent exactly, it excludes every other sensible thing, from the space it occupies. This is the only way, the way of sense, that we know of space being exclusively occupied, and not in this way is space filled 90 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. by God, else there would be no room for this book or other sensible objects, or for anything else which occu- pies space, and if our souls occupy space there would be no room for them. But there is room for souls and for thoughts and feelings ; and so there is room for evil thoughts and feelings which occupy no more space than good ones. The fact is, that, so far as we know, spirit is not extended at all in the sense of being a space- filling substance, and in no such gross materialistic sense as this does God fill the immensity of space. It is also certain that space is not full. It is comparatively empty, because its contents could be brought indefinitely closer together, so that infinitely more might be pushed in. Plenty of room for a few small souls and their errors, miseries and sins. Further, if God fills all space so that there is no room for evil, that must be because there is no room for any- thing, which of course, must be the case if God fills all space. Then whatever we do actually find in space is God, however base or bad it seem. All the monstrous shapes, motions, processes, doing, and forms, which are found in space are God. Thus we have a most repulsive and horrid pantheism as logically involved in such an argument. That such a thing should be put forth and widely accepted in the name of Christianity and science only proves of very many people that they know neither. In order to heal it is not necessary to deny the facts of experience, as some have taught. The unpalatable fact has to be recognized and then changed. We deny not the existence of evil, but the right of the fact, and so we bring truth and right and all their power to bear upon the abnormal fact for its extension and destruction. It is an CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 91 unlawful obtruder. It is not an intrinsic good. At the most it can be allowed only a temporary existence. It is out of harmony with the supreme and eternal law of being. It is but the disturbing ghost of the abiding and substantial reality, and it is to be put down by our con- formity with the eternal law. 92 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XIV. FEAR AS A SOURCE OF EVIL. Fear is the source of much and serious evil. It con- jures up a world of chimeras. It paralyzes the powers of men. It turns friends into foes, and good into evil. It spreads a pall of darkness and horrors on the sunniest of landscapes. It turns promises into threatnings and co-operation into opposition. There is no possible advan- tage or favoring circumstance and opportunity which it will not transmute into some dire misfortune. Fear is the night-mare of our waking thoughts. By imagining evils and wrongs of every description, it prompts to cor- responding wrong under the plea of necessity and self- defense. The fear of poverty and dependence, the fear of being cut and despised by old associates, the fear of sinking in the social scale, the fear of being outdone by others, lead to extortion, falsehood, fraud, cruelty and diabolical crimes. Fear has made brave men as well as cowards "turn back in the day of battle," and slain more armies than the sword. It fills the hospitals of the armies with crest-fallen characters and thence diseased and debilitated bodies, which are soon turned to corpses. Fear generates universally an unhealthy mental atmos- phere, and unrest and strife and discontent, and various forms of derangement of body and mind, and death is often the consequence. Fear is oppressing all the CHRISTIAN t>NEUMATOPATH¥ k 93 great nations of Europe with standing armies, and with taxes, which eat up all their substance, and divert their genius and energies to unproductive labor, lest one nation will be found at the unguarded throat of another. Fear is the Cerberus who, under the pretext of guarding the gates of hell, opens them wide and pushes men within, and worries them incessantly, and scarce knows the evil it performs. It was wisely said by Montaigne : "The thing in the world I am most afraid of is Fear, and with good reason, that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents." We may say truthfully, with one of Shakespeare's characters: "I find the people strangely fantasied ; possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams, not knowing what they fear, but full of Fear." No one of the known evils of our conscious life is equal prob- ably in baleful potency to the passion of Fear. It often kills at a stroke and oftener generates a long and linger- ing death. Savage men lived in constant fear of savage beasts, and civilized man lives in sleepless fear of his fellows, and by fear creates in every atom and in every point of space some hostile power. Moral courage is a prime and pre-eminent virtue, and in the older portions of the world it tends to dwindle and decay. Falsehood and treachery we have seen spread and strike like a pestilence, through fear of financial disadvantage. We have seen this fear band together small knots of people, who otherwise would have been respectable, in support of a tissue of known lies, and do it under the shelter of the most sacred names. In their destitution of moral courage and consequent depression of moral principle, they have well-nigh exemplified the dogma that fear is 94 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. the source of every evil, and with great rapidity they propagate their fear. But fear is not the only and exclusive power for evil. The sources of evil are at least as numerous as the fac- ulties of man, for these faculties are all liable to error and perversion, and that is the nature and source of evil. The very opposite of fear — courage and fearlessness — may be a source of evil. This is constantly exemplified in children. They are ever reckless of danger, and from this they have to be constantly watched, lest they do or incur some serious or fatal harm. They will grasp at flames or razor edges. They will readily drink any deadly thing, or play with the most dangerous reptiles, or dance fearless on the precipice or within the reach of the in- coming tide. As a rule, healthy children know no fear, or very little. They learn fear only from experience, and so their fear is the effect, instead of being the cause, of their painful experiences. After experience has taught them a salutory circumspection, they are apt to carry it too far, to fear and suspect everything and everybody, and thence at second hand an excessive and ill-directed fear becomes unhealthy, unhappy and injurious. What should have been a prudent caution becomes a putative slanderer of all good, and a creeping and cruel coward, a snake in the grass, an assassin in the dark. The cause of disease and human misery goes far deeper than fear, conscious or unconscious. We may ask, What causes fear ? Whence comes it and why ? It is very noticeable how so obvious a question has been kept out of sight. We have just mentioned one cause — involuntary and inevitable experience. I believe science knows no other. There are inherited tendences CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 95 to fear. These are explicible and quite well verefiable as the transmitted effects of ancestral experience. Here, then, is universally and entirely the effect, and not the cause of known evil. We must, therefore, find some other explanation of the origin of evil. Hence the great value of courage and the importance of its cultivation. It is the brave who are the heroes and leaders of the world. Men must dare to be, to assert and develope into fullest expression and power their better selves. Without this Jesus and Paul would have been unknown. This made " Peter the prince of the Apostles." Christianity inculcates meekness and long-suffering ; but this is to be made manifest in earn- est and fearless expression, and the maintainance and propagation of the true and the right and good. This is why the martyrs suffered ; and all the suffering con- fessors and reformers have followed in the same track. Such men are still needed. Evil has but one explanation — unity, as given before, and that explanation is ultimate and final. The finite, the limited, is liable to error and perversion. This event- ustes in discord and connection of forces, in storms and tempests, convulsions and earthquakes and opposing passions, interests, thoughts and purposes. Hence, the only and the ultimate and supreme remedy is the cor- rection of error, and the rational and scientific connec- tion and co-ordination of the finite and infinite. To promote and teach the method and effect of attaining this is the object of Christian Pneumatopathy. g6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XV. A PRIORI THEOLOGY. After the a priori method of the Medieval schoolmen some have formulated a very artificial theory of the universe. Affirming that all God's work must be like himself, immutably perfect, it must say this of man; and so man's work must all be perfect. Therefore error, evil, sin, have no existence whatever, because neither God nor his creature could produce such a thing. Noth- ing could be more logical from its assumed premise than this conclusion, and nothing could be more contrary to known fact, and to every notion of healing. It is not best to be very positive and dogmatic in de- tailed deductions from the assumed infinite perfection of God. It is very easy here to go astray. Errors in this line in the history of theological thought are very numer- ous, and some of them are thoroughly monstrous. In fact, they constitute the main staple of the worst features of the old orthodoxies. Assuming that God's creation must be perfect at the start, they give us a land of Eden and a first pair of very verdant innocence. Then to ex- plain the course of human sin and misery, they make this pair to sin and transmit their degenerate character to the whole human race. To remedy this great fiasco, the deductive theologians invent the doctrine of atone- ment. God is too good to be indifferent to human CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHV. 97 misery and sin, but he is too just to disregard the claims of his law. Therefore, to satisfy both love and law he becomes incarnate, and by special suffering for them he is enabled to be a just God and a Saviour. All do not hear or accept the offer of mercy thus made. But God cannot be disappointed, and therefore he must have designed and ordained this, and indeed he has from all eternity ordained the original Fall and whatsoever comes to pass. This is orthodoxy and Calvinism, and it is a rigid deduction from certain assumptions as to the nature and attributes of God as a Being of infinite per- fection. In the same way they oppose not only the evolution of man from lower forms of life, but they oppose all progress. God's ideas, it is said, must be immutable; and as man is an effect and expression of the divine idea, he must be immutable. But that would surely prove too much. It would prove that there cannot be either pro- gress or decay in all the universe, and so everything is at an absolute and eternal stand-still. Evolution is but a form of creature progress, and if it is allowed in any forms and degrees whatever, it may be allowed in this. It must be allowed in some degree, and that as a very prime law of finite life, and we know not that it is im- possible in the form of evolution. 98 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XVI. god's knowledge of evil. It has been argued that if God knows the forms and extent of evil, it exists by his permission, and so has a plain right of existence, and we should not attempt its removal or destruction. But as evil does exist, that is only a backhanded way of confessing that evil exists only because of God's ignorance, so that God's ignorance is indirectly the cause of evil. But for that ignorance evil would not be allowed to exist. As we know too well the existence of evil, had we not better inform God of it, so that he may destroy it ? Instead of explaining the existence of evil by God's ignorance, it would surely be far better to explain it by God's wisdom and knowledge permitting and limiting and regulating it until it can be removed and destroyed in accordance with laws whose operation will ultimately turn the evil to good. This is the way we prefer to explain it. While God knows it in detail, he also knows that to destroy it at once without any reference to man's psychological laws, or to have absolutely prevented its origin, would be a greater evil than to let it come and then by necessary law arising from its very nature allow it to destroy itself by its interaction and counteraction CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 99 relative to the good, which always and everywhere seeks its destruction — in accordance with law. This leaves us a God, an infinite Omniscience, and a procedure for him and us which is perfectly rational. If God knows men he knows the evil as well as the good. If he knows my good and happy thoughts and feelings and actions, he knows those of the opposite character. There is no reason or law of intelligence according to which he can know the one without know- ing the other. They are equally states of my own mind. I am his creature, and he does not even know his own creation and child, if he does not know me in the shade as well as the sunshine, in adversity as well as in prosperity, in sorrow as well as in joy, in error and sickness as well as in health and favoring light and knowledge. At the same time, if any think they must take the other side in order to realize and exemplify the healing agency, they are welcome to their notion, and they will, it is hoped, grant the same liberty to those who differ from them. We know good healers who are diametri- cally opposed to each other in their metaphysics on this particular point. I do not claim that the view I advocate is at all necessary to any theory of healing, but only that it is necessary to my conception of Infinite Perfection, without which all theories are worthless, and all effort for good is discouraged. We may indeed plead that it is a relief to think that God does not know " the evil that is done under the sun," else he could not sit still and tolerate it. This to depressed or biased minds may seem an excuse for what they call God in allowing such things. They save 100 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. his goodness at the expense of his intelligence. Poor God ! if he only knew, how good he would be ! We will love him for his goodness, and excuse his impotence and its fearful consequences arising from his ignorance. Still we are depressed with the reflection that we have no Infinite God ; for a blind Deity is as surely finite as a cruel Deity. In all this argument the author moves in opposition to cherished friends. This would have stayed his pen did he not love principles more than persons, and truth more than friends. But he is entitled to assume that here they are one with him, and that they will rejoice in his honest effort to enlighten them, quite as much as in any other course. Indeed, it is often the spirit in which we prosecute our labors, more than in the particular thought developed, that the value of our labors consists. A cor- rect idea with a bad heart is on the whole far worse than some error of judgment with a good heart. Veracity in love is better than loveless contention for truth. The passages in Scripture which teach the divine omniscience are numerous, various, and often very strik- ing, and they are very emphatic, especially in affirma- tions that God takes cognizance of men's sorrows and sins, and that in special detail. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising. Thou un- derstandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquinted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men, and they are vanity. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. IOI T know the things that come in your mind, every one of them. God's knowledge of the wicked and their Sins. God saw that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and the very imagination of the thoughts of his Jieart was only evil continually. He knoweth vain men, he seeth wickedness also. Will he not then consider it ? TJicre is no darkness nor show of death, where the workers of iniquity can hide themselves. My sins are not hid from tJiee. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee. Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. The ways of men are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and tJie good. Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him, saith the Lord ? Thou only knowest the hearts of all the children of men. The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. Mine eyes are upon all their ways, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes. I know your manifold transgression, and your iniquity and sins. I have sinned against heaven in thy sight. These extracts need little comment. They expressly affirm the divine knowledge of evil in every form. Those who have a theory to support may possibly by much effort and violence interpret them otherwise. But had 102 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. God's foreknowledge purposed to contradict such a theory, he could not have used stronger or more explicit language to that effect than these extracts present. It has been argued that as to light there is no dark- ness, to mind no matter, to joy no sorrow, so to good there is no evil, and to purity no impurity, and to truth no error, and to wisdom no folly; and so to God, the all-good, there can be only good. This will appear to many as merely a play upon words, and as a " darkening of counsel by words without knowledge." Let us an- alyze it till we discern its significance. "To light there is no darkness." This is clear as an assertion that there is no darkness where there is light and so far as there is light, else light were not light. From this the inference is drawn that the same holds true of spiritual light and darkness. This inference is good only on the assumption that there is a likeness between sensible light and spiritual light of God. This assumption is opposed by the principle that the finite and infinite are always to be contrasted, and that we must reason from either to the other by the law of oppo- sites. This principle is often uttered and used by the advocates of the theory in question. On this principle we are obliged to reverse our conclusion from the prem- ises and say, that as finite and sensible, light cannot go beyond itself into darkness ; therefore, that which is in- finitely contrasted with light can travel into darkness without destroying it and so can cognize that darkness in contrast with itself. This accords with common sense and all experience. Truth and goodness are found in the midst of error and sin, and know them without being known by them. This is also the affirmation of John's CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 103 Gospel, which says that the light was in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. The light knew, but was not known by, the darkness, and so the darkness was not destroyed by the presence of the light — not in all cases. Now all the other verbal antitheses above quoted may be answered in the same way, and with a like issue. But I care not for any such argument. It is unworthy of prosecution or of elaborate answer, because it is only a pure verbalism all through. Of course it is true that noth- ing is its own opposite, which is all that these balanced oppositions of words means. But that has nothing to do with the other assertion, that he who has joy has no sorrow, that he who has intelligence cannot err nor have intelligence to know any error of another. There is no error to truth in the sense that truth contains error, but not in the sense that a perfectly true intelligence cannot discern error in others. What then is to become of the doctrine of healing ? If evil is good, why not let it remain, and if it is of God is it not sacrilege to attempt its removal? This is the way some have reasoned theoretically and practically. On this principle people thrown by tempests on some strange coasts, were once deemed doomed by the gods, and left to perish, or were murdered and robbed ; and in various ways this principle has in all ages and countries branded with opprobrium the weak, the sick, and the unfortunate. There is a better way, in accordance with the truths already expounded, and with the doctrine of a deeper and broader Christian Pneumatopathy. As already said, the normal condition and process and end of all creation 104 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. is wholeness, health and elevation and progress. These, therefore, are the will of God, and are always to be sought with perfect confidence. Suffering is never an end. It is not an intrinsic good, and where it does no good it is an intrinsic evil, and should be abolished. It is, therefore, our duty always to attempt its removal ; and we shall always succeed if our efforts conform to the laws which govern the case, and otherwise we shall not* for healing against law would not be good, would not be healing in the comprehensive sense, because all evil is only a violation of some law. These laws are of three classes : physical, intellectual and moral or religious. We can know them only in part, and their particular bearing on each individual case. That is only and always fully known to God, and it is our duty to use our utmost effort to heal, and then leave the issue with God, and we may also be assured, that if suffering is not then removed, it can be improved for some higher end, and will be if the patient will co-operate in spiritual submission and hope. This consideration will sweeten every sorrow, and shed a lambent light on every dark experience. But in order to do this we must recognize the evil as an abnormal and obtrusive phenomenon, which has to be swept away. Else why should any one come to us and tell us they need our agency, our mental action in their behalf. If ignorance or inattention is best, why did they not try to conceal their need from us, in order that our healing power might operate with the most efficacy ; and why did we not heal them before we knew of them, and as there is plenty of evil we do not know, why do we not heal it all? For the same reason and on the same CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 105 principle, we ask, why Jesus healed only those who came to him or for whom intercession was made ? If this doctrine is true, and if God knows no evil and thence heals, why does he not unconsciously destroy it all, and keep it so ? 106 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. PAET FIFTH. PNEUMATOPATHY IN RELATION TO MIND AND MATTER. CHAPTER XVII. MATERIALISTIC PNEUMATOPATHY. All theories of mental healing abut directly on psy- chology and metaphysics, and may therefore be classified as these are classified. Of these there can be but two main theories, monism and dualism (or pluralism), and monism is either material or spiritual, making all things matter or all things spirit. These will have to be ex- amined in relation to our subject. We will take materialism first. It comes first in the order of time. It is first from the law of experience. Our first life as related to the organism is of the senses, and thought developes through the action of the senses. In this initial condition and form the sense-life seems to be about all there is. Hence, the first attempts at philosophy will naturally be some species of sensism or materialism. It will en- deavor to explain all things on the sole basis of sense as the ultimate form and source of all knowledge and power or force. It is thus that philosophy began among the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 107 Greeks. Near the same time it began in a similar way among the Hindoos. In this spirit philosophy was begun in England by Hobbes. The modern doctrine of mental healing could not originate with the adherents of this doctrine, because t-hey have no eye for anything which does not at once register itself under the regime of sense. But after the doctrine has taken root and gained pop- ularity, and given indisputable proof of its basis in facts, then materialism is put on the defensive by it, and is bound to explain the admitted facts according to its theory. This, therefore, has been elaborately attempted; and it has even put forth a claim to be the true and gen- uine Pneumatopathy. It has done it on this wise : Mind is known only as a finer form of sense, and there- fore, in its most subtle action it has a lexical connection with sensible phenomena, and all known phenomena are the various models of the one great force. Hence, the normal interaction of mind and body. It is a funda- mental law that the body effects the mind and the mind the body ; and the sole mission of science on this sub- ject is to trace their relations. In prosecuting this task we find that fear and mental assumption of harm and sickness often generate them, and that the opposite feel- ing and convention avoids them and conquers them. Hence, if by any means we can persuade an invalid that there is nothing the matter with him, it will often so operate on his body as to cure his malady, and some- times very speedily. This mental action in healing is the scientific explana- tion of the faith-cure of the New Testament, it is alleged ; and all the Bible is thence in accordance with this, inter- 108 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. preted on a materialistic basis, and this explanation of the New Testament healing is advocated as the true Pneu- matopathy. The simplicity of this doctrine is charming, as all must confess, and it is not without force as an argument — provided its simplicity is not just that step from the sublime, which is its most effectual condemnation. This is the light in which it appears to me. It is infinitely too small, besides being in conflict with our deeper con- sciousness and the most advanced psychological analysis which human thought has attained. But on the exposi- tion of this we cannot enter. Good people may hold to the material theory of all conscious agency, which is exemplified in David Hartley, Joseph Priestly, and many thousands of the "Adven- tists " in the Christian churches. Consequently the mental healing such people do in the name of the Lord, may be reasonably claimed as Christian healing, whether or not it be a just expression of Pneumatopathy, and it may claim the name of science so far as it expounds a law of such healing. So far as any body of people only advocate a divine healing, in consonance with human faith to that effect, without any reference to a psychogical and spiritual law which governs the transaction they are only religionists, not scientists. Theirs is purely a faith cure. But if these say it is a moral and spiritual law, fundamental to the nature of God in relation to man, that is, to re- ligion, and that they act upon it and advocate it, then they enter into the ranks of science, incipient science, to say the least. For this is all that these materialists do. We shall also find as we proceed, that nobody does CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. IO9 any more than this. They discover a law of healing, though some discover this a posteriori, and others a priori. The latter are those who set up the exclusive claim to be the only genuine Christian Scientists. They say that such is the nature of God and man that heal- ing follows as a logical consequence of attaining the true conception, so that perfection in every particular consists in correct understanding. Disease and pain are only error, which is destroyed by Truth, and Truth is taught by Christian Science and by that only. This a priori Truth is verefied and demonstrated, they claim, by the manifest effects which follow the solemn mental use of their formula in the exercise of understanding. IIO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XVIII. DUALISTIC PNEUMATOPATHY. Advancing intelligence could not be content with only materialistic conclusions. While unprepared to deny matter, men began to affirm the existence of some- thing contrasted with the known grosser qualities called material, and this they gradually agreed to designate as spirit (Pneuma) or ghost (geist) ; taking the most subtle agent known as a symbol and index of one still more subtle, and thence the term once used to denote wind and gas and vapor came to denote exclusively the more subtle and supersensible power. By what mental process, or by what experiences this conclusion was reached, there is much dispute. But there is no question that such was attained quite early in the course of human progress. I have no doubt that all the modes and methods were followed by different minds, just as now we are constantly seeing men reach the same positions by different routes, and also different conclus- ions from the same premises. It is to our purpose of no consequence whether this conviction was generated by the supposed sight of ghost, as some allege, or through a natural desire and ambition of prolonged existence and power, as claimed by others, or whether it comes through a growing sense of being something superior to matter. This second form of speculative thought is Dualism — the doctrine that there are two distinct antipodal sub- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Ill stances, matter and spirit, and that these two are in this life united in one individual consciousness, and that death is the dissolution of this connection. The early writers of the Bible are quite materialistic, but they grow more refined with the lapse of ages. Dualism becomes at last quite pronounced, and this is the dominant notion in the New Testament. Jesus distinguishes between body and soul when he tells us not to fear those who can only destroy the body, but rather to fear him who has power over the soul as well as over the body. This doctrine is involved in the entire New Testament conception of the res- urrection of Jesus, and the general resurrection of human bodies. Certainly this has been the universal interpretation of the Churches. Dualism shapes the utterance of Peter when he speaks of putting off this tabernacle, and Paul speakes in a similar way of being bodily unclothed and then clothed again. The Book of Revelations is full of like characteristic implications. In all this, these Bible characters and writers shared, if they did not inherit, the views of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, and the Greeks and Romans had glimpses of the same. In contradistinction from man, God is de- scribed by Jesus as a Spirit only. Hence, Christ and his apostles constituted factors in a great faith-cure movement. They had no philosophy on the subject. They believed in the goodness and power of God, who bestowed great favors in answer to a loving, trusting prayer. This was the whole of their " Christian Science." This has been the Christian Science of very many devout souls in the Church from that time, as it is now, and it has never been wholly ineffective. 112 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. There is no evidence that they, least of all Jesus, had any esoteric doctrine, which was concealed from the public. Such a view is foreign to the whole style of Jesus. They taught a religion, not a science. They addressed the moral and spiritual intuition, not the met- aphysical faculty. They made no pretension to the wis- dom of philosophy and science, but rather decried it as a thing which had done very little for the spiritual uplift- ing of the world. This was to be done, they taught, not by a subtle intellectual action, but by a pure and simple uplifting of the heart to God as the heavenly Father, the infinite Love ; that it was not necessary to understand the metaphysics of it as a condition of realizing its power. Why, then, are we not content with what they had ? For the same reason that they were not content with Moses. They had outgrown him and advanced to a better conception of morals and religion. This they must utter. They could do no more. This was not only better than previous religions, but it was better than any of the existing philosophies, which were of no use to the average mind, and in this light they might well be decried. As the age of Jesus had outgrown the religion of Moses, so our age is outgrowing the philosophy of the apostolic age, and it demands a religion which is scientific, and to understand the philosophy of its own procedure. There are dualists who advocate a law of mental heal- ing, and who therefore claim that mental healing is re- ducible to a science. These are of two classes, those who affirm, and those who deny, that matter is a force and operates on the mind, besides being operated on by mind. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 113 If it is not a force it may as well be counted out, since it can neither do nor suffer anything. It is not a factor anywhere. Those, therefore, who affirm a material sub- stance and yet deny to it all force, only admit a word without any meaning. It cannot even receive anything from mind, if it have no force, for the verb " to receive " is an active verb in active form, and " reception " is an active process, the exercise of some degree of force. Besides, that which it receives from mind is acknowl- edged to be force or power, and so far as it receives this, it is empowered and made forceful. To say that it is still mental force only, and that in all the action of mat- ter, mental force is the real and only agent, and moves and shapes matter as a thing absolutely passive, only changes the form of the logical difficulty. For if matter does nothing and suffers nothing, it undergoes no changes and is not, and cannot be, used, and is of no use what- ever. Mind can do just as well without as with it. If there is no strength in an iron pillar, so that the super' incumbent weight is supported only by mind, and not by the pillar, then remove the pillar and let the way be clear «and do the work without it. If the building would then fall, we must attribute it to the removal of the pillar, and so attribute the supporting force to the pillar. It may be alleged that for some cause the mind operates better through the use of the pillar than without it, but that is only to confess that the pillar has a force of a very ex- alted rank since it aids the action of mind ; and it aids this action according to a law of quantity and quality, for a bamboo stick or a slender iron rod will not accomplish here the desired object. In no possible way can we admit of the existence and serviceable action of matter except 114 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. so far as we conceive it as a force. We cannot make it an instrument of mental force except so far as it has some quality which mind uses for its own ends, and quality is but another name for force or power, just as thought and feeling and will are mental qualities or forces or powers. Therefore, if we admit the existence and serviceableness and possible usefulness of matter we must also admit that it is so far a quality or force. Still, there are those who do not recognize this logical necessity, and while admitting the existence of matter, they persist in the affirmation that " matter is dead and inert," a notion which modern science has generally abandoned. Of course we shall have to let these be in- consistent till they see more clearly. They are useful in their place and way. These half-way people are just as necessary as those who are more advanced, because they are hooked to those in the rear as well as to those in front, whence the whole mass as a grand unit feels the impulsive force of the eternal mind. It is, however, the duty of the advanced column to show their light, so that in the wake of it all may follow as fast as they are able. For this reason we have stated and refuted the foregoing metaphysical theory of a force- less matter, and for the same reason we must show how it stands in the way of a science of healing, or of a con- sistent theory of the metaphysical laws of healing. This theory of matter is a cumbrous addendum for which the science of healing has no use, and which it cannot explain. It cannot have any use for that which has absolutely no power, for then it has no power to be of any service. We cannot explain anything except by its qualities and their relations, and if matter has no CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 115 qualities it has no relations, and there is nothing to ex- plain or by which to explain. Besides, if matter is declared to be error or evil or the cause thereof, it is thereby declared to be a force, unless a cause is forceless, which contradicts itself. If error and evil and their cause are all absolutely nothing, then matter is absolutely nothing, has no existence ; and this again contradicts the theory that matter exists, but is forceless, " dead and inert " in itself, but animated and moved by mind. All this can be overlooked, and we can go on asserting that matter being dead and inert, mind in some way gives to it all its evil and ah its good, and that this mind is the source of disease and health, and that a correct and divinely noble habit of mental action, iucluding thought, feeling and volition, universally attained, would be the attainment of universal perfection in a perfect universe. This is beautiful and grand, and the thorough convic- tion of it is already producing great results for the good of mankind. The logical objections we have mentioned against the material metaphysics of this theory, seem to be no obstacle in the way of the practical effectiveness of those who hold it. There are no better healers, I believe, than some of these. They are ardent, earnest, honest, and their strong conviction rouses others to a loftier mental action, which diffuses health and vigor through the body. We can only wish them continued and augmented success in their labors. Not only are they good as healers, but they promote progress in met- aphysics, by fostering a conviction of the transcendent and even exclusive power and agency of mind, which is Il6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. a great step beyond material sensism, which makes the sensible world the source of all force and life. If anybody feels obliged to affirm the existence of matter, it is well that they make as little of it as possible. We would rather have a powerless, than a powerful and an almighty matter. This is the merit of the party in question, and this is the secret of their success. But for that very reason, it would seem that they would be still more effective, as well as logically consistent and strong, if they discarded matter altogether. If, instead of affirm- ing aught but mind, they said that all sensible phenom- ena are concreted mental states, or a " synthesis of sen- sations" they would simplify their position, and all would then see clearly how the general state of the mind affects and produces and constitutes health and disease and error and truth in their human relations. If, on the other hand, matter is conceived as involving a complexity of forces peculiar to itself, new problems are forced upon us. These forces, as the opposite of spirit-forces must have their laws of operation in opposi- tion to the normal agency of spirit. Thus we have a constant and universal disharmony and conflict between two great forces, and though we know which of the two is the nobler, we do not, as yet, know from experience which is the stronger, nor whether they are not both eternal, and forever able to defy and oppose each other. In this world it doubtless appears very clearly to most people that matter has generally and vastly the advantage ; that it secures by far the most homage and devotion, and be- stows the most substantial advantages and satisfactions on its worshipers. This is inconsistent with a profound understanding of CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 117 Christian Theism, which affirms that God is over all, in all, and the end of all. The universe of God, therefore, must be a z/zzz-verse, a unity of finite forces under his control, and subservient to his will as the perfect and infinite moral Governor of all. The existence of two such opposite and even antagonizing forces, it would seem, are incompatible with the existence of such a Being — much less can we conceive the inferior, the enemy of spirit, to be his creature. Such a power as this matter, irrespective of spirit, and in opposition to spirit, tempts to evil, and independently produces evil, and opposes all spiritual remedies of evil, and naturally, according to a law of homeopathy, claims to be itself the only cure of its own evils. Hence, the doctrine of mental healing is rejected beforehand, and a divine miraculous mental healing by over-riding the laws of matter, becomes incredible. If matter with its forces and laws are of God's creation, why should he interfere with them and so turn against himself ? That cannot be received by scientific minds. They must either hold that there is no such matter or there is no such a God who embroils himself with his own creature, which he has so made that it inevitably opposes his own goodness. Thus the essential doctrine of mental healing, divine or human, has no sphere, and physical science must throw it out as utterly discredited. We have already seen that if matter is allowed at all, it must be allowed as a force as well as a phenomenon, that otherwise we are involved in logical inconsistencies, and indulge in unmeaning terms and phrases. Hence, the real logical alternative is between a forceful matter or no matter at all. Accordingly, the majority of the teach- Il8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. ers and advocates of exclusive mental agency in healing deny the existence of matter as anything more than a mental illusion or synthesis of sensations or as a mortal thought (whetever that means) or as a subjective state, a mental condition, a mode of mind. The exposition and defense of this supermaterialistic and idealistic theory of healing it will next devolve upon us to consider. To those who admit the existence of matter and material force, a thoroughly scientific and philosophical Pneumatopathy is impossible. They may have a theory, but it will be incomplete, inconsistant and superficial, and they may heal by faith, by the strength of their con- victions, and the stimulus they thus impart to other minds. But " Science " is with them rather a wish and a faith than an intellectual attainment. They have to admit that the intellectual conjunction and unity of mind and matter is entirely inexplicable, and the rational expos- ition of their union in one conscious personality is uni- versally surrendered. It is a confessed absolute mystery. It seems a pure inconsistency and contradiction. This utterly destroys the science of Pneumatopathy. It shows us two worlds with a gulf of absolute and vacuous dark- ness between. It theoretically affirms that the two worlds of body and mind are one person. At the same time, it affirms that this appears impossible, because there are two substances, and these two utterly different from each other, while the person is one, a pure and perfect unit. It affirms that matter is unconscious and so cannot think or feel, and that this is the sole and characteristic prerogative of mind, and that yet the thinking, feeling person is composed of both body and mind. Such contradictions as these are not science or CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I 19 philosophy. Either we must abandon this or abandon all claim to a thoroughly scientific Pneumatopathy. Con- sistency is the first requisite of a scientific theory. Whatever involves contradictions is erroneous. To cling to anything of such a character marks the dogmatist, not the scientist or the philosopher. We are bound to be everywhere and all along consistent with ourselves and with all facts. This is the aim and claim of our Christian Pneumatopathy. On the theory that all is mind, that all the forms of sense are unconscious mind or mind in its inferior modes and potencies, immense obstructions are removed from the path of Pneumatopathy. It is vastly simplified. It is reduced to a metaphysical and a logical unity. All the action of spirit is on or within itself. It has no opposi- tions to conquer from a foreign substance. It has no laws to reverse inherent in such substance as not only foreign but opposed to itself. If the things of sense are such a substance, then the spirit in order to operate on matter has to cross the whole diameter of being. It has to act in opposition to the laws of the inherent agency of another substance, thus contradicting a law of creation. Why should it be made with its intrinsic laws, if it is to be thus opposed, obstructed and reversed ? The suppos- ition is unphilosophical. All this difficulty is removed by the theory of spiritual universalism. This makes the action of the mind on the body and of the body on the mind, to be all spiritual action and effect. It affirms a unity of force, and therefore an ultimate unity of the action of sensible and supersensible laws, so that there is no repression or suspension of law in mental healing. The higher power of the mind simply operates on the 120 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. lower for its good and for total good. Mental healing is thus seen to be a natural and normal process, a thing to be expected, to be studied and scientifically developed. The agency of the divine, as well as the human mind in healing may thence be rationally justified and proximately expounded. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 121 CHAPTER XIX. MAN AS THE IMAGE OF GOD. Here we will call attention to a reasonable argument which has been drawn from scripture in favor of the doctrine that all is mind, so far at least as man is con- cerned, so that what is called his body, and therefore all matter, are spiritual, modes of spirit, a system of sensa- tions which spirit feels and generates in itself. God is spirit, and all his action and all the ends he seeks are spiritual. Hence his creation should be wholly spiritual. Accordingly the bible tells us that God made man in his own image and likeness. This must refer to God's spiritual nature since he has no other, and hence man's real nature is also spiritual, of the same essential kind of being with that of God, though infinitely less in degree. According to this, man's body is not man, nor a part of man, unless this body is spiritual, a form and mode of man's spirit. Then if our body is spiritual we must say the same of the external world whence the organism comes, and into which it is dissolved after death. Hence, too, as the body is one with the spirit of man and with the external world, they are all one, on the axiom that any two things agreeing with each other, agree with a third. This is an exposition which in earlier times was im- possible because of the prevailing grossness of concep- tion. 122 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XX. SENSE-CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTIFIES BODY WITH MIND. The theory of dualism goes against all sense-con- sciousness. There is no dualism there. In every sen- sation, whatever its form and location, consciousness has ever the same subject and pronoun. I feel now in the head, now in the feet, the hand, the side. What- ever the feeling is, it is the same one personality that feels. The body so called belongs to the mind, is the mind, and is appropriated by the mind as a mode of it- self. The mind says, I have a pain in my head, or my headaches, meaning that the aching of the head is the aching of the mind. Thus the sense-consciousness is constantly saying, that only mind feels, and it feels only mind, and never knows aught else than mind and its thoughts and feelings. The body, so called, is, therefore, nothing but a pecu- liar class of feelings, or modes of mind, a complex of mental states. These states, like all other mental states, are generated and pass away and recur, according to a primary law of our creation or organization. And there is also, for the same reason, a law of regulation and possible control of them, so that we can in some large and indefinable degree secure some and avoid others. As we have this power we have hence a moral obligation to secure the noblest and most useful for our- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 23 selves and others. The action of these laws brings on what men call death, which is but a change in the men- tal state of this department, and we ought to learn to shape it so that this event shall come as a cycle of assured progress. A perfectly matured transition would not perhaps leave any body behind, but the body would wholly dis- appear, like that of Elijah and Jesus. These bodies were so changed by the mental process of spiritual eleva- tion that they ceased to belong to the lower order of mental forms where they had formerly ranked, and so passed beyond the recognition of our grosser sense. Those who leave bodies to be buried probably undergo an inferior change. They pass from our form to one closely allied with it. In strictness of speech, they do not leave any body behind, but survivors have certain sensations which they thus designate, and which are symbolic of the undeveloped spirituality of the departed. 124 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XXI. DREAMS AS PROOF THAT ALL IS MIND. Dreams cannot be psychologically interpreted without making them tell the same story. They are conscious mental activities independent of the grosser bodily organ- ism,, recognized by other people. Yet in dreams we always have an organism. We create the organism for the occasion. We run, walk, talk, work and play in the use of this temporarily manufactured organism. In these varied dream exercises we experience all the successes and failures, all the pleasures and pains of what is called the real life or real organism, and sometimes they are far more intense and vigorous in misery, and at other times more exquisite and exalted in pleasure than the waking hours so-called ever knew. We not only mentally evolve a mental, yet sensible organism in sleep, but we also evolve in the same way other sensible organisms in a sensible world. We meet and embrace our friends, and every sense is in full activ- ity. Strangers, too, various, numerous, and in various situations and relations come on the scene, "large as life" and as natural as life. To the dreamer all this is a real conscious world, just as much a matter of fact to his ex- perience and consciousness as the world we agree to call real. No one doubts that all this of the dream is wholly mental, a series of self-generated thoughts, feelings, CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 25 pictures, activities, with all their various results. Now if this achievement is almost as common as sleep, why should we imagine any other origin for the sensible world of our waking hours ? If we can create a universe of sensible phenomena involuntarily in our sleep much more must we be able to do the same when our powers are in fuller exercise ? The same truth is taught by the abnormal dreams of narcotization from the use of various drugs. They say that the use of opium translates its delighted victim into a new world. The abnormal state of the mind gen- erates an abnormal sensible world peculiar to the subject, a world of various sensible activities and indescribable experiences, which are all just as real to their conscious- ness as any world they ever knew. If drugs can do this, why cannot the normal mental power generate the normal sensible world ? It is objected that these sensible phenomena of dreams and of narcotic visions are the effect only of peculiar conditions. It is often astonishing to note how prejudg- ment and prepossession destroy all power of appreciating the significance of our own worlds. The above objec- tion is an example. They are almost the very words we have used in stating the doctrine they are adduced to oppose. Of course, sleep and drunkenness are peculiar conditions in contrast with soberness and wakefulness, and it is precisely in that light I have mentioned them. The objection confesses that the mind in these " condi- tions " is the source of these phenomena. That is all I have affirmed, and I have simply thence inferred, that if the mind has such wondrous power as to create a sen- sible universe in these lower conditions, how much nobler 126 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. a universe should it be able to evolve in nobler conditions, and how much more staple a one in its waking activity ? What is the difference between the dreaming and waking world, which makes us call one real and the other unreal ? The answer to this question will give us the final analysis of this subject. Both worlds are equally real or unreal. They are both unreal if reality is consid- ered as anything else than mental states, and they are both equally real as mental states. It has been claimed that the difference between them is, that when we are awake, we know it, and that when we are asleep, we only think we are awake. This has been said with an air and a vehemence of dogmatic final- ity which justly shuts off, it is supposed, all further question. But this is as superficial as it is dogmatic. In dreams we do not usually think we are awake, because we do not think anything at all about that question- We do not give it the slightest thought or attention. So in our waking hours we seldom raise any question of that kind. We simply live, eat and think, suffer and enjoy. It is precisely the same in sleep. We are in both states simply occupied with and absorbed in the world as it appears to our consciousness. In each case we know just this and no more, a world of phenomena in co-existence and succession. When the question of reality is raised it is the same in both states. It is not an uncommon thing for persons in a very unusual set of experiences or circumstances to raise the question whether they are awake or dreaming, and to determine the question, they change their posi- tion, pinch and pull themselves, look out of the window and speak to somebody. In sleep also, at rare intervals, CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 127 and in rare circumstances, people raise the question, whether they are not really dreaming. They have been known to dream the same thing twice, and at the second time to recognize it as only a former dream. They have been known to dream of dreaming assuming that they are awake in their dream, they dream that they fall asleep and dream various things. They thus in sleep think both that they are awake and asleep, and in sleep they thus make a difference between sleep and waking just as we do when it is agreed that we are awake. Thus far we have been able to draw no line of demar- cation between sleeping and awaking. Of both, we have only been able to find a varied con- sious activity and passivity of sensible experience as well as supersensible action with the act and object equally real to consciousness. It is related of a celebrated metaphysician that he frequently dreamed of being on the parapet of a bridge and fell over into the abyss below, awaking in a fright. He was advised when he was in the dream again, to say to himself : " This is only a dream and I can throw my- self over the bridge without harm." This he did, and carried it through, and so changed the experience accord- ing to his waking purpose. Here waking and sleeping with their life of action run and blend into each other. Another curious phenomenon of dreams is that, it is only by experience that children learn to distinguish be- tween them and the events of the wakinsr hours. I have often seen a child tell a dream or portions of a dream as real as positive facts, and they have had to be corrected till they learned to see the difference. In full, clear manhood, I have myself, on first awaking, taken a dream 128 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. for the waking life. Here we see that the difference is not between conscious reality and unreality, but only between different classes of events or experience, all of which is conscious reality, and there is no other reality that can be known. It is not an uncommon thing for dreams to animate the body into vigorous and violent action. A person dreaming of danger leaps, runs and cries out sometimes very much the same as when awake. In dreams, belig- erants fight, racers run, orators speak, and whatever be the dream, if it is very vigorous and intense, it is not unlikely to be carried out into bodily action. Thus men have done manual work, they have written pages of care- ful and elaborate composition in the dark with unwonted precision, and sometimes they have performed wonderful feats of dexterity, and rarely they have been guilty of wrong doing or even of crime. Somnambulism is but a dream by which the body is stimulated and guided in action. Dreamers have often discovered facts and prin- ciples, which the waking thoughts and senses have been thence led and enable to verify, thus again connecting the two states into one conscious life. It is perhaps in the relation of dreams and waking conditions to the organism, that we can most extensively draw a psychological line between them. While dreams do often exercise the organism to regular and systematic action, that is the exception, not the rule. It is the law of the waking condition, that our organism is in practi- cal and sensible connection with that of other persons and with the sensible world common to all of them, so that my sensible experience can be discerned and regu- larly shared by others. In dreams this is usually re- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 29 versed. The world of dreams is utterly isolated from that which belongs to the connections between his organism and other organisms. We sit or stand by the side of the recumbent dreamer, and have no share in the world in which he is living. We are entirely unknown to him, just as all his conscious activities are unknown to us. The dreamer has evolved a sensible world in which the body on the bed visible to us has no part. That visible body belongs to our world, but not to the world of the dreamer. Now when the dream is ended, and the dreamer awakes, he connects with this organism his con- scious states and activities. Then this organism of his becomes consciously related to our organism and to the world in which it lives and moves and has its being. Here it may seem we have a line of demarcation be- tween sleeping and waking. But on closer inspection it is found to be very imperfect, because there are many and striking exceptions to it. But even if it were perfect, it would not show a line of demarcation between matter and spirit, but only exemplify different classes of mental actions or subjective states. Let us further observe that there is not always an unconscious gulf between the sleeper and waking per- sons present. People often talk in their sleep, and some of these will hear what is said to them, and believe it, and respond and act accordingly. With a few persons in sleep this can be carried on to a large extent. They can be led to disclose all their secrets, or to adopt the pretended notions of the waking speaker ; and like a mesmerized subject, they can be led to enact various characters and conditions, according to the intent of the speaker. These phenomena reveal simply the various I30 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. actions of mind and its power to generate and vary its own world. I dreamed recently that in a large place I developed a power to float easily in the air at will, and that by a movement of the hand I could quicken or retard and direct my movements, and from my airy elevation I could look down with serene delight on the upturned faces of my friends and other common mortals below. In this spirit I practiced my special power before them like a pigeon or a swallow. How real was all this to my consciousness, and how happy it was. Presently I began to reflect how strange it was that I alone should be thus endowed, and then I said to my- self, it must be wholly a dream, and then I recollected that I had several times before dreamed of flying or of floating in the air and walking on the water. With the conclusion that it was all a dream I ended that scene. I then immediately found myself elsewhere, among another set of friends. To one of them in particular I addressed myself, telling of the singular dream I had just had and all my reflections on it. Then suddenly I observed that it could not after all be a dream, for I had the same power now. Instantly to prove my words I floated away up and on and around about in the air at will. My world was all my own, but it was just as real to me as the world of waking sense. Both are of my own creation, only subjective states. We must therefore conclude that we have no evidence that the dream world is any more subjective and egoistic than the waking world, or that they are not equally the involun- tary projection of the individual mind. On this hypoth- esis all the known facts of consciousness can be most CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I3I easily and scientifically explained ; and as this is infi- nitely the most simple as well as scientific, it is the only one we are justified in holding. Here stands true Christian Science when it understands itself as Pneuma- topathy. I have just touched on this significance of dreams elsewhere, but deemed that this more extended treat- ment would be useful. But it is not even here treated with anything like adequate fulness relative to the theme, though full enough probably for the time and patience of most readers ; and for that reason only I here close the exposition of dreams as proving that all is mind, and that the human mind evolves its own sen- sible universe as a complex mode of itself or a vast con- geries of sensations or mental states, the mind itself existing and acting in those states. The foregoing reflections give a newer aspect and em- phasis to the old and familiar moral proverb, that " life is all a dream." We dream of being in a world of objects which are all non-egoistic. We wake, and lo it is all gone. We discover that all was the action of our own mental force. Waking, we go through the same dream again ; and then we go to sleep, as we call it, and lo, that waking dream of a non-egoistic world is all gone ; and we discover it was only the result of our mental state, and vanishes and returns with that state. By and by we shall wake up in a state which shall be more permanent than our present waking state, gener- ating anew a peculiar body and world according to our mental change. 132 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XXII. INSANITY AND MESMERISM AS PROOF THAT ALL IS MIND. All the phenomena of insanity in its various forms and degrees tell the same story. Its universally ac- knowledged and common characteristic is, that it creates a world (more or less incomplete) peculiar to itself. Some insane people imagine they are kings or queens, and all their friends or the officers of the asylum are their ministers and attendants ; and their royal estate as one of their own making, is just as real to them as that of other monarchs is to them. Some imagine they have glass legs, and live in constant fear of having them broken ; some that their head is loose on their shoulders and that they have to take it carefully off every night and lay it on the pillow, and then adjust it to their neck every morning; some that they are wolves, and they transform their surroundings into a forest, and other people into fellow wolves or other objects belonging to such a world. These imaginings are for the most part only transformations. But many others are creations. They have no sense-objects as their ground and source. They are wholly and purely subjective in their nature and origin. In an empty room the insane orator addresses a mighty assembly of people ; an insane Nebuchadnezzar or King Lear has commanded his min- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 133 ions ; the daft poet, philosopher, and the man of com- mon mind, has held long conversations with persons who were invisible to all but the insane. Cases of this kind and others of like nature, showing subjective states pro- jected as objective percepts, are numerous, and from their striking character and from their comico-pathetic interest they are almost universally familiar. It ought to be obvious that if insanity can create a world of its own, sanity can do it better, more fully, and more systemati- cally. There are dreams of insanity as well as of sanity ; and these exemplify the same law. They show that all forms and changes of the phenomena of a sensible world are purely of a mental nature and egoistic origin. We are all agreed that the objects of the insane man are just as real to him as the objects of the senses of the sane man are to him, and yet we are all agreed that in one case these are wholly and only subjective states. Thus it is allowed that the insane can generate a world of their own, and if they can do it, surely the same power of a more orderly operation should be allowed a sane man. The one difference between the two is that one is irreg- ular and the other regular. The phenomena of mesmerism voice the same great truth in a still more striking manner. Mesmerism shows not only the power of the human mind to create a phenomenal world, but also that one mind has the power to induce another mind to generate such a world after the pattern of the operator's mind. This part is now so generally admitted, that we may leave the skeptics out of account, and be content here to argue with those who are convinced of it. One man projects his thought into the 134 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. mind of another, making the other think and feel and act just as he wants him, stimulating or paralyzing his power of action. This has been verified to the senses of most of us, or clearly testified by competent witnesses in vast numbers. Now it will be allowed by all that the phenomenal world which these mesmerized persons see is wholly a congeries of the modes of their own mind, a series of mental images and operations ; and that these are induced by the will of the mesmerizer and by his manipulations. Thus he leads them to generate a sensi- ble world of varying phenomena, according in some degree to his wish. Now if man can do this in any degree or for any period of time, how much more may God do it for all time ? How simple it is ! Where is the need of matter? Only in the minds of ignorance and prejudice. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 135 CHAPTER XXIII. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PSYCHOLOGY. In the study of psychology we should begin without any assumptions except such as are necessary in ail investigations. We must be consistent with ourselves in our procedure and conclusions ; and we must honestly endeavor to ascertain and rightly construe all -relevant facts. We should have no partialities and preferences in their use and the issues to which they point. Hence it will be agreed that we ought not to proceed on the assumptions of the old doctrine of dualism. Whether that be true or not is to be proved, not assumed. Neither are we to assume the converse theory of monism, whether material or spiritual. Obvious as this is to all, it is constantly violated by all parties with an inno- cence which is more confusing than refreshing. It will be allowed that our analysis of phenomena ought to be carried as far as experience and definite thought admit. A little reflection will show that this analysis makes all sense-consciousness abut on super-sensible con- sciousness, so that this is our ultimate authority and resort. This super-sensible consciousness is an essen- tial element in the testimony of sense. But for this sense would not be sense, which asserts itself only be- cause it is also something more than sense, something which transcends both times and spaces, saying : I feel I36 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. so and so, here, there, now, and I also felt then. The sensations come and go, spring suddenly into existence and then perish, while the self-same sensitive power exists through all the forms, times and phases of sensi- tive experiences and changes. No articulate sensation and comparison of sensations is possible, without the action of this super-sensible agency and the implied conception and consciousness thereof. Here therefore in the supersensible conscious power is the disclosed tap-root and vital fiber of all sensation or sense-conscious- ness. If we look at the process of reasoning from sensible data we shall be driven to the same conclusion, for the reasoning is a super-sensible process and the reasoning power is the essential agency in drawing psychological conclusions. Further, the analysis of sensible phenomena shows, not only that sense as well as reasoning from sense imply a super-sensible power, but also that sensible objects are only a class of modes of that same super-sensible power. The sensible world is nothing whatever but a congeries of various sensations bound to each other by a mental law imposed upon us by some power not ourselves. Every quality of matter has been resolved into subjec- tive states by nearly all the great psychologists of modern times. Consciousness, therefore, and its logi- cal implications constitute our ultimate abutment in psychological as well as metaphysical investigation. We may begin with sense and proceed along the line of sense if we choose, but we never reach any ultimate philosophical or even psychological conclusion till we have legitimately abutted on the super-sensible subject. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 37 Our "new school of psychology," which affects super- ior circumspection and precision of thought and utter- ance, is here equally superficial and oblivious of funda- mental facts, which ought to be obvious to all psycholo- gists. They often affirm that psychology has for its object; "the study of nerve phenomena accompanied by consciousness ; " and that " Here is the groundwork of the whole new school contained in the fact that con- sciousness manifests itself only in connection with nerve phenomena." This thought is variously reiterated throughout this class of writers. Without entering into the question whether there is ever any consciousness without nerves, I raise the con- verse question, whether there are any nerves without con- sciousness. Most of my readers will doubtless be ready with an inconsiderate answer in the affirmative, that they exist in sleeping and dead animals. " But, we have seen them." Ah yes, but what did you see in seeing them ? A mode of yourself. You had a specific sensa- tion of vision, and if you touched them, you had a sen- sation of touch. Those very nerves, therefore, as well as everything else of sense, are themselves simply a mode of consciousness, subjective states. Nerves therefore are always connected with consciousness be- cause they are consciousness. This is the modern A B C of psychology. Nerves are a mode of consciousness, and so they are always one with consciousness and not merely " connected," as two different things. Psychology ought to generalize consciousness into two great classes — as the sensible and supersensible, and then it should never forget itself, but observe this as its essential method. I38 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Then the relations of these two great classes of sub- jective states becomes an intelligible and important question. It is really the great problem of modern psy chology. Our first step in solving the problem will be the dis- covery that ultimately the world is the product of the supersensible ego, because the former presupposes the latter as its subject, of which it is a conscious mode. Whatever our specialty in each, we must all admit that we never deal with anything but the phenomena of consciousness, and therefore we should never write or speak on any other assumption. We must be true to our deeper selves, to our admitted and most deliberate and careful analysis. Let it be added that a further very obvious duty next, will be to divide sensible phenomena into two great classes of the organic and extra organic, which has been done, and to note that with the organic we have a double consciousness, and only a single one with the inorganic. If I strike my body, I can both see and feel the blow ; but I only see, and don't feel (in the same way), any stroke beyond my organism, or beyond the reach of the nerves. This shows a law of double sensation con- nected with the nervous system, whence the body is called ego, thongh it is no more ego than any other sen- sation or sensible object. There is a different law of sensations connected with the organic complexus of sen- sations from that connected with the complexus of inor- ganic sensations. That is the great psychological line of discrimination between them. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 39 CHAPTER XXIV. ECONOMY OF SENSE. Whether there is any matter or not, apart from or other than spirit, it is very certain that there is a phe- nomenal world of sense, which is common to all known organic forms, from which all spring, and into which all are again dissolved. We do know that we are the sub- ject of experiences which we classify as organic and inorganic, and both classes contain an almost infinite number of sub varieties. The organic are tem- porary evolutions of the inorganic, and they are roughly classified as men, brute animals and vegetables. These are all facts of sense — experience. Considered simply as subjective states, they are not and cannot be illusory or deceptive ; for subjective states they certainly are. They are illusory only when they are misconceived to be what they are not, or to mean or indicate what they do not mean or indicate, and that illusion is only an unnec- essary opinion or inference of our own. But whence did this power come ? From the Infinite and Eternal, not by evolution, we think, but by creation. This is how it appears to one very fallible person. Be- cause he is known to be so fallible he knows he is not God, and he would be God if he were an evolution of God, for it is of the essential nature and conception of evolution that all change is of the form only, so that 140 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. the substance remains one and the same. Creation, on the other hand, is the causing of a new and additional substantive (finite) reality and force, a finite addition to the sum of being. Thus has God created man and his powers of thought, feeling and action. This power of generating a sensible world and modi- fying its forms is therefore ultimately of God, the effect of his creative purpose. But man's generation and modi- fication of the sensible world is not a creation. It is only an evolution, a manifestation and variation of the forms of his God-given powers. As it is of God, it cannot be essentially evil but good. Its object and end must be good, and therefore, it must be good in its intrinsic nature. But as finite it is liable to perversion and wrong direction for a period and to some extent, but not so as to be unworthy of Infinite Good, which must secure that it shall not on the whole be injurious or useless. It is as subjective states purely that we are obliged to consider them. This is the sensible world, the world which men generally call matter, and if we call it mat- ter or reality we shall mean by it a mental reality, or mode of mind, and of our own individual mind. To the question, whence does this world of sense im- mediately come, there is but one immediate answer — our own mind. It cannot directly have any other source. Soap bubbles cannot have any other origin than soap and water. And thoughts and feelings cannot have any other direct source than their subject, the power which thinks and feels. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I4I CHAPTER XXV. THE FUNCTION OF SENSE. This leads us to inquire into the function of the world of sense. This world must have some mission, and that mission must be good, good in the highest meaning of the word, as intelligence and goodness must conceive it. This must be the promotion of intelligence and good- ness in the finite mind. It cannot be anything else or less, judging a priori from the presupposition of its ulti- mate origin in God. Let us, therefore, study it in this light, and see how it promotes this end, by what meth- ods and laws. We shall discern the practical obligations which grow out of this, and thus the duties of our mortal life will be unfolded, and the laws of well-being forever will become manifest. Material or sensible forms are valuable and important as direct symbols of finite spiritual realities. This we all recognize. There is something in the form and build and style, in the looks, which are called expressions, which tell us of a spiritual nature and disposition back of them. On this is built Physiognomy, Palmistry and other alleged methods of reading the invisible. When we descend into details, however, we are easily and fre- quently mistaken. But of the main principle there is never any question. The general difference in the sen- sible form of men and women, for instance, is clearly symbolic of their general difference of spiritual structure. 142 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Still more striking is the difference between man and monkey as symbolized in their different physical struct- ure. Now as our organism is known to be the sensible symbol and manifestation of our supersensible being, nature and powers, so every other sensitive and self- conscious organism is a symbol of some supersensible being of a rank and character corresponding to the rank and form of the organic symbol. Thus, there must be living, sensitive, spiritual creatures, ranging and differ- ing from man down to the jelly-fish or still lower forms. And doubtless, beyond the world known to us there are innumerable different ranks of conscious beings, some of which are next to infinitely nobler than ourselves. It is unreasonable to suppose these ranks are eternally stationary. We discern that we ourselves are under the law of progress, both as individuals and as a race. We see it in our earthly life from infancy to old age, in which intelligence and spiritual life and beauty may be always on the increase. We see also very clearly in the light of the modern sciences of history, paleontology and an- thropology that while there have been local ebbs, the human race has been steadily improving, and the higher men rise the more they begin to see that this is the law of their existence, and at once their supreme duty and privilege. This gives the freshness of the dawn and the dew and inspiration of youth to their whole existence. Is the beneficent law of progress confined to us as men ? There is no principle which will justify us in answering in the affirmative. The same law must govern all the creatures of God. For all there is the prospect of an endless progress and elevation. The lowest will yet reach our level and transcend it. Hence, the probability CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 143 that we have reached our present estate by successive evolutions from far lower conditions. There has been no death, except of forms. The sensible symbols have changed, some coming, changing and then giving place to others as indicative of unseen changes in the progres- sive spiritual reality, until the molusk finally emerges into the man. We see then the first great function of organic sensi- ble forms — to symbolize the grades, conditions and activities of finite supersensible individualities. By their help we can indirectly discern and know each other, and hold intercourse with each other. Without this we can- not imagine how we could have any mutually discrimi- nated individuality. The finite, it seems, must be imaged as having bounds and limitations, and this is effected by the self-projection of the sense-form, and for the same reason the Infinite can have no sense-form, but be eternal- ly and absolutely supersensible. Form is not to be confounded with matter, and all philosophers attest this. Form is apparently the neces- sary symbol of finite force. While every several form is mutable and temporary, there is an endless succession. Real forms are spiritual, and are but the modes in which finite powers exist and operate, and become mutually discriminated and manifest ; and they must therefore exist so long as there are ideas, or spiritual beings, in exist- ence, or force in operation. No war waged for their utter extinction can succeed. All finite things immedi- ately known to us are of some form or shape, or are associated with it. Our very thoughts are, for the most part, subject to the regulative laws of space and time, as conditions of their expression. 144 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. What are the beauty and glory of the universe ? They are the immortal and spiritual force, or power, made man- ifest in visible and tangible shapes, by which that spirit- ual power attains expression, effectiveness and develop- ment. The forms of God's universe are not " dead mat- ter." They are alive, and instinct with energy, and are ever working in obedience to Spirit, because they are spiritual. They are the true genii of the old-time legend. By the use of the wise Merlin's mighty "spell of woven passes and waving hands" we can command their attend- ance, and endlessly vary their action; and we thus show the varied power, in diversified operation, which God has conferred upon us, and revealed in us. Form and Force are creation's universal counterparts, undivided and inseparable. Form is the foliage of beauty, the shield of protection, with which power is at once adorned and defended ; the channel of communica- tion, the lever and the fulcrum of action, by which it be- comes effective. Force gives their form and glory to sun and stars, and all their brilliant satellites, and it molds, as well as guides, the fleecy cloud and the fleeting shadow ; it rears the mountains in their forms of grand- eur, and shapes the hills into their gentler beauty. Valley and stream and woodland, sunny bank and shaded dell, are symbols expressive of unseen powers. Every grassy spike and lordly tree and delicately pencilled flower, every pebble and every gem, tell us of a force which determines their forms, and makes them the signs of an unseen beauty. In nature's fair and holy temple, form and finite power ever embrace each other, and, as one spiritual unit, they ever move in the service of their great Creator. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I45 The operation of the same law is still more striking, when there is conscious animation. The form and plu- mage, the eye and voice of the bird, tell of the spirit which animates them, for and by which they exist, and without which they dissolve. So all human excellence, all the known power and virtue of our spiritual nature seeks to embody itself in form, and to some extent succeeds. Abolish pedagogical forms, and restraints and education would be impossible, and all literary institutions a myth. The peculiar spiritual energy of man, the most royal prin- ciple and agency, the ethereal flame which burns in human action, must have its symbol, its outward expres- sion and impersonation; without which, as known to us, its power is destroyed, its glory vanished. Except One, perhaps no being is entirely disembodied ; and even of that One it is clear that we know nothing except from His works ; that is, from the ideas and forms through which he has displayed his being and attributes. And, of man himself, it is also clear from Scripture that his highest perfection is to be attained only when he has developed a spiritual body. Religion, too, must have its forms, and these will also differ according as the religious thought and feeling differ. These different thoughts and feelings will necessarily seek a different form of expression. Some of them demand that the whole outward style and tenor be serene and elevated, blending harmony and beauty, like the glory and melody of a summer evening. They can utilize the well-trained choir, and the swelling tones of a vast organ, filling with mighty music choir, and nave, and isle, and niche, up to the fretted arch and groined ceiling of the great cathedral. Thus, while all nature seemed to inspire I46 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. the words he uttered, Milton's Adam in the garden might well be supposed to address his Maker in the majestic language the epic poet ascribes to him : " These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good, Almighty! thine this universe frame, Thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous then. His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft and loud ; and wave your tops ye pines, With every plant, in sign of worship move; Hail universal Lord ; be bounteous still To give us only good ; and if the night Has gathered aught of evil, or concealed, Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark." Another office of the world of sense is the promotion of discipline and development, intellectual and moral. This is effected by observing and utilizing the laws of the sense-world. These laws have a good intent and may have a good result. They are the involuntary action of the inferior portion of our own minds ; and of course they ought to be studied and wisely followed. This cannot but bring good, because the result will be subjective harmony. The contrary course will by necessary con- sequence result in evil. The sense-world is neither to be ignored nor slighted, nor exalted to the supreme place, but used as a means to an end. The sense world serves as a grand system of symbo- lism to instruct and stimulate us in developing the spir- itual or supersensible life. All the care, the circumspec- tion, the endurance, the energy, and often the courage, requisite to physical good, are types of the same need for the attainment of spiritual good. All is mind, only different classes, higher and lower ranks ; and the lower rank is made, as it should be, subservent to the higher ; CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I47 and this is the law of our duty representing them. We are perfectly clear in the great law ; but we still have a vail on the face of nature. There are great and appaling events in nature's his- tory, like storms, cyclones and earthquakes. There are corresponding outbreaks in human passion. It is hard to understand. Nature is a subjective state which men share in common or according to law ; and we may feel that we are very far removed from the fantastic or the truthless poetic, if there is any such thing, when we suggest that nature as a whole is but the aggregate ex- pression of the beauty and glory of goodness as well as the dark and awful and injurious self-hood which are re- vealed in the consciousness of man. I48 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XXVI. NO MORTAL MIND. Here we must pay our respects to " Mortal Mind," a personage of great and pompous pretentions. This is a modern creation, and whether its creator was a man or a woman is a vexed question in certain circles. From respect to my sisters I advise them to father it on the man, especially as they may find a good historic reason for so doing, if they will scan the evidence. According to the inspired authorities on the subject, this mortal mind has " neither beginning of life nor end of days ; " and yet he is not eternal, but mortal ; and he is so mor- tal that he has the shortest life ever was or can be, so short that it never existed a moment, never was and never will be. But this same inexistent mortal mind is the subject, source and cause of "all the evil that is done under the sun," whether among men, animals or the un- conscious world of sense — an infinite and horrible Frankenstein, which was, and is, and is not, and never was. In this system, mortal mind is absolutely diverse from, and utterly disconnected with, the real man, which is made in the image of God. This latter is unmistakably impeccable and infallible. It has no sin or error to conquer, and its life bears absolutely no practical relation to all the battling and chaos of mortal mind, which is un- real and counterfeit. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I49 This stultifies all thought, and contradicts all exper- ience. It is the sheerest nonsense to say that the same one mind cannot sometimes be right and at other times wrong, wise here, and foolish there, cannot sin and repent and reform. We are all conscious of all these things ; though as to the reformation, some of us are sufficiently slow. Allow the facts of consciousness, and then we have an individual continuous unity amid multitudi- nous modal variations, good and evil ; and a rational contest is going on within us for the supremacy of the good and true. Now we are intellectually adjusted alike to sense and reason and moral effect and fear and hope. We are thus brought also into harmony with scripture, which always speaks of man as capable of both good and evil, as often sinking from good into evil, and rising from evil into good ; and it is the same race and the same indi- vidualities thereof, which it describes as now wallowing in the mire of sin and various forms of degrading errors, and finally triumphing in victory over them all in heaven, by the grace of God. It is on this account that they give grateful acknowledgments, and most fervent and lofty praise to the Almighty for the goodness and grace which he showed to them, to their own very selves in their sad and low estate. Except on this principle there is no reality and signi- cance in the psalms, with their utterances of joy and sorrow, of struggles and victory, of fear and hope, and of gratitude towards God ; or in any of the scripture declarations of expectation, that they, the very persons who were now suffering, and painfully conscious of many imperfections, will, by divine help, at length overcome the world, the flesh and the devil, and enjoy the sol- I50 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. dier's rest after many hard-fought battles. Thus all the heroic saints have lived, and in the inspiration of this celestial light they have passed away ; and the same spirit animates all the good of our own day. Mortal mind is naught. There is indeed no mortal mind. Mind is all immortal. It is the creature of God, who makes nothing to perish, but all for immortality. All transient forms are modes of an immortal spirit which is ever working out a higher condition through these changes. All is mind, and all mind is immortal ; and all transient forms, whether of sense or supersense, are all the same immortal spirit-substance, working out the fulfilment of its divinely appointed end. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 151 CHAPTER XXVII. REALITY OF SENSIBLE PHENOMENA AND MORTAL THOUGHT. The exposition which we have given of matter as be- ing a mode of mind, one of the lower forms or states of mind, relieves us from some undesirable consequences resulting logically from the novel theory that it is pure nothing, or that it is pure illusion. If matter is pure nothing, so that it is not even a state of consciousness, it is wholly unknown and there is no meaning or rational or sensible content to our words ; so that the less we say of it and of healing or conquering or destroying it, the better. This has been noticed before. Logically, it is absolutely fatal to the theory, because it is self-destructive by being self contradictory. There are some practical objections, which are also logical objections, and which are already embodied in some very bad practical results. One of these is that the theory that matter is nothing, or only an illusion, is unfriendly to human life, and to all its holiest relations and obligations. If what men call matter is nothing, or only an illusion, then surely it has no sacredness or dignity, nor any rights which any one is bound to respect. Any human body, or form, or work, may be treated just as it may suit our passion, taste or inclination. Certainly we cannot wrong a noth- 152 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. ing ; and to mar or destroy an illusion cannot be any sin. What if you do divide friends, as mere human beings, or as embodied or symbolized in organic forms ; what if you do destroy the peace of families by lust or by scandal and heart burning insinuations ; what if you do interfere with all their honest and useful schemes of domestic comfort or social happiness ; what if you do sap the common faith in human virtue, or its intrinsic dig- nity and immortal influence : what if you are absoletely indifferent to the happiness and well-being of every sen- sible creature and treat all of them to the utmost ex- tent of your power with every species of injustice and cruelty ; it is all nothing in process and result, or it is a mere illusion, which you can never harm. A con- science based on such a theory can never know any wrong. It will be in perfect keeping with this theory to affirm that there is no sin and never was or can be, and of course, that therefore God himself can never know it ; for how can he know the non-existent. All moral principles, swasives and motives are withered at the root, and the universal moral economy, as well as reason and common sense, are involved in total ruin. No one, perhaps, carries out the theory to its logical issue in practice. But I fear that there are some few who carry it out as far as they can or dare, whose good is only seeming, "a pure illusion," the means of an entirely selfish gratification, a spider's invitation to the fly to enter its parlor web, or the crocodile's open mouth inviting small creatures to rest and feed upon its ex- posed tongue, that they may be suddenly enclosed and devoured. We have heard not whispers only, but positive affirmation to the effect that secret and com- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 153 bined efforts against the health and life of persons has been defended on the ground that said persons are not a reality. This discloses to us the essential spirit of a metaphysical Mandeville ; and it makes a religion of its metaphysics, as metaphysics without the spirit of philos- ophy always has done ; and its religion has always been its crowning evil, the final evolution of its baleful quality. The comfort is that such things are only mortal thought. This doctrine also logically generates a temptation and excuse for inveracity, signs of which we have seen in certain quarters. It allows us to practice the use of double en tendre without limit. The organic form is nothing; and when we assail it, or belie any of its action, we do not assail or belie the man. We can say we will not seek another person's barm, though we are opposing with all our power or cunning his organic action, com- fort or honor. We may betray them, seduce them, de- fraud them conscientiously, and solemnly swear we love them and are " treating " them for their good. Possibil- ities of this kind very readily become facts, as the his- tory of error has abundantly shown. Now, adopt a true Philosophical Realism, that all sen- sible phenomena are subjective states, modes of mind, then all the normal forms of human life are indefinitely elevated in dignity and worth. The body of man is then a great and marvelous concretion of spiritual force ; and the entire visible universe and all sensible things are also spiritual. Consequently all human relations, duties, and capabilities are correspondingly exalted and sanctified. Spiritual in their nature, they are normal and spiritual in their proper means and end. They have, therefore, their laws of liability, of capability and action and obligation, 154 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. and the capability and obligation are of a very noble and elevated rank. They lay hold of immortality, of arch- angelhood and of God. Faithfully followed, they are the harbingers of all conceivable, and even inconceivable benefaction, felicity and glory. They are the lower rounds of a ladder which is forever rising into brighter and sweeter atmospheres. They are links in a divine and holy chain which binds God and all his creation into a unity of saphire glory, all conscious, and as happy as it is bright ; and all lower forms and activities take on an augmented dignity from their perceived rela- tion to the ulterior issues which thay promote and in which they will be ultimately lost. We are hence saved from the unparalelled folly of making a vacuum between mortal and immortal mind. It is strictly true, as has been said, that in reality there is no mortal mind. All mind is immortal. Why should God create a thing to be destroyed ? His work standeth forever. It would be unworthy of him to create ought which contains the elements of its own annihilation, or that does not contain an essential power of self-perpet- uation and progressive appreciation and reflection of the glory of its author. We are therefore very strong in the assurance and very positive in the affirmation that there is no mortal mind. This conviction and assertion is an affair of reason. It seems utterly unreasonable to think otherwise, if we hold to the existence of God as an in- finitely perfect being, and that man is his creature and in his likeness. His creatures, it would seem, must be all spiritual like himself, though infinitely inferior. From the standpoint of a pure and lofty spiritual Theism we can, a priori, never infer the dualism of matter and spirit. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I 55 We must surely infer that every creature of such a being is a spirit, a pure and simple entity analogous to his own. But while we have good ground for the conclusion that there is no " mortal mind," we know that there is such a thing as " mortal thought." Of this as a fact we are hourly and momentarily conscious. We are perfectly aware that thoughts come and go, and some of them stay a very short time and return no more. We are all the subjects of beliefs and feelings and notions which are only mental flashes or like puffs of dull and offensive smoke. These mental states are mortal enough : but their source and subject, the conscious mind, is immor- tal. It exists the same individual through all these changes of successive phenomena, and will exist forever the source and subject of innumerable other mental phenomena which shall come and fulfill their mission, and then give place to others, for which they have pre- pared the way. So there is not only such a thing as mortal thought now, but there always will be. To all eternity the mind must think ; and as finite, it cannot always think the same thought. It must have new ex- periences, and learn new ideas from experience, and a higher power of thinking thence develope. Its thoughts must be forever changing, and should be always changing for the better ; since, as we have seen, progress is the supreme law of finite existence and action. Conceiving mortal thought as temporary modes of an immortal mind or thinker, we not only have a psychology which answers to the facts of consciousness, but we also preserve a rational and moral continuity of all individu- ality. Action and duty become significant, and all the I56 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. acknowleged relations of the anterior to the subsequent become clear and luminous. He who prays that God will not "remember the sins of his youth," which he has long since abondoned, is the same mind that then sinned, else the prayer would be nonsense : and in the everlast- ing hereafter just in proportion as the same mind is able to look back and remember and understand how God has been merciful and gracious and made all things become to him a source of moral discipline and spiritual elevation, can he then more fully discern and adore the unfolding perfection of God. This is how the Epistles of the Apostles and the Apocalypse represent the re- deemed in heaven as having been once in sin and error and much suffering and rejoicing with adoring gratitude to God that they have by divine assistance gained the victory over all these things, and in their own selves, who once were so different, are enjoying a sweet and perfect felicity. It is only in this union of the permanent and transient, of mortal thought and immortal mind in the same indi- vidual, that there can be any such things as history or biography. The history of the man is the history of the same man ; and it is a history of him only because he has passed through various conditions, experiences and forms of life and action which are now no more, else they would not belong to history. It is only on this principle that there can be any moral or intellectual pro- gress, any possible improvement from past experience. This principle is the essence and soul and primary foun- dation of all educational ideas, movements and institu- tions. Without it the nursery has no relation to the school, and neither of them has any relation to subse- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I 57 quent life ; and for the same reason this life can have no practical bearing upon any other. We are, therefore, not made up of two minds or souls, one mortal and the other immortal. But the one mind or soul has a succes- sion of thoughts, and it doubtless has an endless suc- cession of bodies, symbolic of its changes, whether for the better or worse. In the light of our exposition, we see the egregious mistake of pronouncing sensible phenomena to be beliefs. Belief is not a sensible phenomenon at all, but a super- sensible process ; and nothing but the utter absence of all literary sense could allow the one to be put for the other. To be conscious of a physical pain or pleasure is not a belief, but a sensation, an experience, a knowledge, and I may then believe, if I choose, that they are both caused by eating mince pie, or that they are caused by "malicious mesmerism." If one class of sensible phenomena are beliefs, the same must be affirmed for all. A diseased heart or lung is no more a belief than a sound heart and lung. A broken leg is no more a belief than an unbroken leg. A church, a steamboat, or a horse-car and a hospital are a belief as much as all the pains and infirmities and diseases which the hospital contains. Call them all be- liefs or call none of them beliefs. They are all equally real to sense and as sensible experience ; and that is all there is of them. Their reality consists in this. A sound and an unsound limb are equally subjective states. The one is more real than the other only in that it con- forms to the law of harmony more than the other. The real in distinction from the unreal is that which coincides with a possible universal harmony, while the unreal does I58 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. not. The unreal does not conform to the laws of some of our senses or the senses of other people. We have a visual phenomenon, and on examination we find it does not answer to the sense of touch, and at once we pro- nounce it an optical illusion. The real is that which answers to all the senses. But a diseased organ will do this just as much as a healthy one. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 59 CHAPTER XXVIII. INTERPRET, NOT CONTRADICT, THE SENSES. Here we are led to consider the proper method of treating the senses. We have already done something toward rescuing them from contempt and disrespect. We need further to rescue them from perversion. We have seen that they are sources of knowledge, and sym- bols of supersensible realities. We propose now to show that they are not to be treated as false witnesses, but to be cross-examined in all honesty to see what their testi- mony is worth. We do not recommend, with some, that we should "contradict the senses," and " pronounce the senses false and a lie." That can never practically be done. The senses will assert theselves in spite of all the theories of men. Whatever their theories, men will find their bodies subject to the laws of gratification. Contradict the ver- dict of your sense as you may, this fact will remain ; and to contradict it is to belie a fact of experience, which is the very base of all knowedge. Such a course does not characterize sane men, much less scientific men. The fundamental fact is that the senses never err, be- cause they never affirm anything beyond their own exist- ence and action. What we call a pain in the head is simply a complex consciousness of a certain fact of ex- perience. While it lasts it is what it is, and only false- l6o CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. hood can contradict it. This exposition stands good for all the senses and all their action or experience. It is only when we pass from the senses to inferences from them that error becomes possible. A person walking through a cemetery, sees a white-sheeted form stalk across his path, apparently headless, and it carries a ball in front of the size of a moderate pumpkin or human head. This may be a veritable experience of the senses, as was Ichabod Crane's sight of the horseman in " Sleepy Hollow." If now it is inferred, as it was by Ichabod, that the object seen was a ghost, the disembodied spirit of some dead man carying its head in its hand, then we may be in error, and probably are. In the latter case our reasoning is at fault. We must therefore, in scientific rigor say that our senses are always right, while our reasoning is ofte?i wrong, that, therefore, we should never contradict the human senses, and that we are often obliged to contradict human reasoning, — else this argu- ment were needless. It is our duty to examine the experiences of sense and their relation to each other, and then their relation to supersensible powers. This in a nutshell constitutes the whole philosophy of mental healing ; and what is far more, it is the soul and essence and method of Christian Pneu- matopathy. This would give us the cause or uniform connections between sensible phenomena, and the influ- ence of body on the mind, and the influence of mind on the body. This would cover all theories of mental heal. ing and an infinity of other things besides, when carried out in detail, which will require all eternity. The dogma that we should " Learn to contradict the senses " is only the unripe fruit of that quality of the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. l6l human mind, undisciplined by scientific training, by which it is prone to fly from one extreme to another, and so merely make an exchange of errors. It is erroneous and debasing to make the senses our chief authority and final end. On the other hand, to give them no place at all in the economy of existence, and to pronounce them universal liars, is surely going to an absurd and injurious extreme on the other side. We ought to do neither. There is "a golden mean." What we need to do is to study the function and end of the sensible economy, and then to act accordingly. It must have some office and final cause, and these must be ascertained. There seems to be an effort at this, and this is sup- posed to be attained and expressed, in the theosophic dogma, that "from the senses to the supersensible we are always to reason by the law of contraries and opposites." This is quite striking, and it has a taking air for those who are metaphysically inclined and who have little or no scientific and philosophic training and discipline. The rule is clear and comprehensive, and apparently easily carried out, judging from one or two selected examples. Hence this and other such theosophical notions have obtained dominion over many minds who might have be- come philosophers or scientists had they been properly trained before they became enthralled by these " glitter- ing generalities," which are only light by excessive dark, just the opposite of Milton's description of the skirts of Deity. There are relations in which this maxim may be made to produce a fine oratorical effect. All sensible things are unstable and transient. The spiritual universe is fixed and everlasting. As the author of the Epistle to 1 62 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. the Hebrews finely says : " The things which are seen are temporal — the things which are unseen are eternal." The material universe is the sphere of irrational and non- moral forces : — The spiritual universe is the sphere of the rational and moral forces. Sense is necessarily finite. Spirit is Infinite. But we shall soon reach the end of such possible con- trasts ; and when we begin the search, we shall rapidly find a vast number of direct comparisons and analogies between the sensible and the supersensible, and that it is in this line where our chief stimulus and instruction lies. Sensible light is the analogue of spiritual knowledge and insight, and the pleasure and power they give. Sensible darkness is the symbol of spiritual darkness. There are sensible pleasures which are good, and sensible pleasures which are evil ; just as there are good and evil pleasures which are supersensible. The sense world has its laws and the supersensible world has its law, so that in all things we may reason by analogy from one to the other to some extent. These analogies are so close, so con- stant and perfect that the same set of phrases which de- scribe the sensible are also used familiarly to describe the supersensible. "Let us see" says the blind man, and with no sense of humor, much less of incongruity, so completely analogous are sense-sight and mental sight universally considered to be. The affirmation of blind- ness is more frequent relative to the mind than the sense, and for the most part it is only by the connection that it can be known to which of the two classes of faculties the phrase refers. In all such cases, which are innumerable, it would be ridiculous to apply the law of opposites and contraries. We should then have to infer that because CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 163 there is sense light, there is no spiritual light ; that as there is sense darkness there is no spiritual darkness ; that because there is sensible health and pleasure, there is no spiritual health and pleasure ; also that there is sen- sible disease, (at least "in belief") that is proof of spirit- ual health and pleasure ; that as sense is in perpetual flux, the supersensible world is at an eternal stand still, with never the slightest change, variation, succession of thought or feeling, or the acquisition of any new knowl- edge or experience. This is not only a contradiction of the senses, but of all reason and all experience of the super-sensible order. It is also a great fallacy to charge all fallacies on the senses. Preach against the subjection of the entire life to sense, but allow sense to have a legitimate place and a veracious affirmation in subordination to spirit. We are not to "forget the body" in order, as some enjoin, to become spirit. Spirit should forget nothing, should learn and remember all it can, and then make use of all things for its own instruction and enlargement. Only a mad man can forget his body, or fail to feel its limitations ; and a wise man will note its leading qualities and characteristics, and study its laws, which show the proper method of using the body. It appears to me extraordinary that so able a man as my honered co-laborer, Dr. Evans, should deliberately utter, and for years maintain such things as the follow- ing : "As our senses never tell the truth, but affirm that which is the direct opposite of the reality, we are always to declare in opposition to the sensuous appear- ance, and steadfastly adhere to it, in regard to our malady, that it is not disease, but health, not pain, but an 164 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. excess of pleasure." Now if "the senses never tell the truth but affirm the direct opposite of the reality," it follows that " we are always to declare in opposition to the sensuous appearance, and steadfastly adhere to it, in regard to our " health as well as " in regard to our mal- ady," that it is not health, but disease," not pleasure, but an excess of pain ; not good but evil. If sense is a "uniform " liar, always asserting just the opposite of the truth and fact, then we are always to reverse its testi- mony in order to have the truth, and affirm disease and pain whenever sense affirms health and happiness. Thus we gain nothing for healing, since we lose as much as we gain. We only present a short-sighted and absurd dog- ma, as a new discovery of great value to mankind. It is not any relief to pain, or the destruction of dis- ease, to locate them in "the astral soul " or the psychical body. They are not thereby carried beyond the sphere of consciousness ; and consciousness in all its forms is the known ego. This ego is ego, is the same one indi- vidual being, in whatever conscious form it is self-mani- fest, whether the rational soul " or nous " or spirit, or the astral soul, or the corporeal organism. The ego covers all. In all we equally say I. It is I who feel whatever name you give to the alleged location or source of the feeling. This ego is neither tripple nor dual, except in its modes. It is the same individual substance in all these modes. If any of it is God, it is all God. The simple truth is, that we are endowed with different classes of powers, a power of thinking, and feeling and acting in different ways — in sensible ways and super- sensible ways. The one ego is the subject of these va- rious experiences and activities. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 165 CHAPTER XXIX. PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM, THE LOGICAL BASIS OF PNEU- MATOPATHY. In order to mental healing the body, as being itself spiritual, must scientifically be brought under the law of mind or spirit. Here, as we have seen, materialism and the dualism of matter and spirit stand in the way ; and of these two, dualism is the worst. Materialism has a sort of scientific unity. It can study the laws of matter and say they run up into such fine and subtle forms that they are then called mind, and that these finer and sub- tler forms are the higher and the more potent, working downward on the grosser corporeality. This is simple, consistent, and so far, straightforward, and has some ground in science. Hence, this theory of healing is nat- urally very popular. But its ultimate atheistic conclusion, and its implicit denial of constant personal identity, and all moral principle, are its capital condemnation. If gross matter contains all the quality and potency of life, and evolves from its grosser forms all the finer and nobler qualities known as mind, then we have no need of the hypothesis of God, as La Place said. The material uni- verse is the all in all. If we are nothing more than a peculiar congeries of material atoms, then as these atomic connections are always changing, we have no con- stant or abiding individuality. We are like the stream, l66 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. in perpetual flux. The ego of any one moment is not the ego of any other moment. The theory as well as the sensible fact in that case contradicts the testimony of super-sensible consciousness. Dualism divides the forces of God and the universe. It renders perfect harmony impossible, for the law of matter is not naturally subject to the law of mind, neither, indeed, can be. Two opposite substances and forces with their respective opposite sets of laws, necessarily eventuate in discord and strife ; and only by some arti- ficial arrangement can they be brought into co-operation, and then it will be only partial and uncertain. The sim- plicity of a universal and all comprehending conception with its sublime impressiveness and convincing force are entirely destroyed. While we discard materialism and dualism as unrelig- ious and unphilosophical, we have already admitted that those who hold to those theories may be good healers, in spite of their false theory ; because while their theory as a whole, is inconsistent and false, it contains some ele- ments of truth in virtue of which they heal, and of their healing they have a very lame explanation, so that men- tal healing on their theory can never attain universal dominion, nor widely extended acceptance and influence. It is too lame and deformed to travel and win regard. Still we are obliged in scientific and logical rigor to add that this healing is effected, not so much in accord- ance with their theory, as in spite of it. They have an element which helps them, but this element is practically and logically opposed by the element of an alleged matter different from and opposite to spirit. Only the doctrine which affirms solely one kind of substance, CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 167 spirit, gives a logical unity and consistency, and so enables the whole mind to act with unimpeached vigor and thence command the conviction of the thinking world. This makes mental healing seem infinitely more natu- ral. The mind in this case simply operates on itself. It does not have to travel beyond itself in order to operate on the body, since it is but a lower mode of mind, which should be ruled by the higher mode or form of power. In such healing we do not have to reverse the action of a different and opposing substance relative to ourselves. We have only to apply our own powers to ourselves, to bring them all into harmonious action, and thence healthy and happy action. 1 68 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. PAET SIXTH. PNEUMOPATHY IN RELATION TO OTHER SCIENCES, ES- PECIALLY PSYCHOLOGY, PHYSIOLOGY AND THERAPUTICS AND RELIGION. CHAPTER XXX. SPIRIT AND SPIRITS. There is a class of people who have laid down some laws and conditions of mental healing which have no foundation in reason or fact. They thus obstruct alike the rational study and intelligent practice of the great healing power, besides making the theory unnecessarily complex. We ought, therefore, to remove them as quickly as possible. One of these is the allegation that there is only one Spirit, God, and that there are no finite spirits or souls. I have in the past been indisposed to assail this and some other dogmas allied with it for fear of engendering a contention in which there is " only a differnce of words." If they all admit the existence of what is equivalent to CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 69 spirits or souls, then they only introduce a novelty in the use of English terminology. If they allow that there are finite individualities, spiritual and self-conscious, then they allow all that is ever meant by human or finite spirits or souls. They have introduced no new thought. They have only arbitrarily and violently endeavored to wrench from common use two very useful and necessary words in our mother tongue. This is a serious evil. The English speaking people will not allow their vernac- ular to be thus robbed. The spiritual reality which con- stitutes our individual human and finite peculiarity, they will persist in denominating a spirit or a soul, because they have no other words so good and easy and popular, and so vitally rooted in the world's thought. If these people mean to deny the existence of any spiritual and finite individualities, then we take issue with them as guilty of fatal and fundamental error. They contradict all conscious and all moral conviction, which at every step pronounce these to be realities, and that there are certain relations and duties growing out of them ; and it is equally clear that they contradict all the teachings of the New Testament, and the essential por- tions of the Old Testament, which affirm that God has created men, which is not true if there are no men or if the men so-called are eternal, or God himself. A base- less pantheism and empty phenomenalism like this must be excluded from any theory of mental healing which is destined to conquer the world's best thought and com- mand its intelligent conviction. Christians of every name will generally consider such a notion as a burlesque on Christianity, rather than the science of Christianity, and they will be right. I^O CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Besides, if there is no human spirit or soul, where is the seat of disease and evil ? It is declared by these people that there is no sensation in matter, and that there is no matter, that mind only is conscious. Now if there is only one Mind, the Infinite, that must be the seat of disease, the supposition of which is atheistic and self-contradictory. Evil, error, illusion and beliefs are thoughts and modes of mind, not of the Infinite Mind, but, therefore, of finite minds. There must be finite minds which are peccable and fallible, the source and seat of error and evil; and of all this, we are thoroughly conscious. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I/I CHAPTER XXXI. ON KNOWING THE FORMS OF DISEASE. Another of these erroneously supposed elements of the philosophy of Christian Healing is that we must not examine the forms and symptoms of evil. It is to be allowed and to be affirmed with much emphasis, that we must not dwell in sense or thought on any form of evil till we are fascinated and conquered by it as a thing of seated and enthroned power. We must look away from it to its all conquering opposite, which must thus be brought to replace the evil, as the real and rightful potent there. But we always need to know the enemy we have to deal with, the form in which he comes, the method and means which he follows and uses. I am painfully aware how deeply this is opposed to the earlier and cruder ex- positions of mental healing. It is, however, clear that I am in accord with common sense and all the processes of modern science. We must not be incognizant of a malady so as not to know whether it is a broken bone, a sprained muscle, a pistol shot, or a congested brain, or lung, or a form of catarrh, or any other of the numerous ailments which assail the human body. That is merely to put a premium on ignorance and make a fatal discount on science and all intelligence. This, too, we are sorry to say, is the manifest drift of a certain class who have claimed to be the extra pure mental healers. They have 172 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. vituperated science, and done their utmost to stop all reading, aud to shut out all observations of facts, and all knowledge of everything but their own dogmas ; and they have denounced those who have differed from them with passionate vehemence, and with much of the ran- cor of mediaeval times. Progress never abandons or ignores essential mental processes or the results of their past operation ; and while it brings into greater prominence simple and comprehen- sive principles, it generally differentiates the processes in- to greater multiplicity. It is in this line that the advanced movement of Pneumatopathy should be expected to pro- ceed. It must be an addition to, rather than a suppres- sion of, the past. It must organize the past under a higher principle, and so modify the past in conformity with this higher principle. We need, therefore, to know the form and physical and mental connections of the malady, and then relate them all scientifically with the pneumatic healing agency. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 73 CHAPTER XXXII. HEALTH OF SENSE RELATIVE TO THE SUPER-SENSIBLE LIFE. Health is the harmonious operation of all interact- ing laws. In these days no one can make light of law, which is the regular mode in which phenomena occur and recur. That there is such an order, both in the sensible and super-sensible worlds, no one now ever doubts. Miracles and even ghosts are now universally made subject to law, in accordance with law, various forms of force may cross each other like two passing steam- ships or locomotives ; or they may move in harmony like the globes of an orrery. In the harmonious action con- sists health, wholeness of body and mind. This total wholeness, however, does not always nec- essarily go together. There may be a health of some of the parts when all the parts ars not harmoniously related. Some members of the body may not be healthy when other parts are all right, except as they are affected by sympathy or by the false action of the other members. So the body may be diseased when the mind is quite sound, and a mind insane may be associated with a body quite sound. We are indeed reminded of the familiar adage, " A sound mind in a sound body." But this is like many other round maxims, only a partial truth ; or an ideal behind which the real distantly lags, faltering. The union of a sound mind and body of which 1/4 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. this speaks is one of the very rarest of phenomena. Men are nearly always diseased in one or the other or both. But it is very certain that a sound body is not abso- lutely necessary to a sound mind. It is well known that some of the sweetest and most delicate and exquisitely balanced of minds, as well as some of the strongest of minds,have been chronic sufferers from some bodily malady ; and their very sufferings, nobly borne, have purified, refined and exalted their entire character. Of this, examples are too numerous to require citation. Lord Macauley never did do better work than when he was the conscious victim of a wasting and fatal disease. Robert Hall suffered all his life as few men have ever suffered ; and yet no more exquisitely balanced prose of a lofty and sustained order of sentiment, it is gener- ally agreed, is found in any language, insomuch that Dugald Stewart affirmed that " he combined the beauties of Johnson, Addison and Burke." The sufferings of Heine were intense and long continued, and while he was not a sweet character or a judicial mind, he saw clearly and uttered incisively whatever he wanted to see and to utter, and he uttered it with exquisite literary polish and perfection, even though it were filled with moral and spiritual venom ; and the evil of his writings did not begin with his bodily sufferings and trace to that their source. To cut the matter short by coming to the most famous philosophical writer of our times, Herbert Spencer, we all know that his bodily weakness and ner- vous depression have diminished only the quantity, not the quality and the rounded wholeness of his produc- tions. Therefore, in spite of all our modern talk and proofs of the unity of body and mind, it is not true that a sound body is always necessary to a sound mind. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 75 CHAPTER XXXIII. HEALING POWER OF THE HUMAN MIND. We determine the power and agency of anything by observing what follows its action. It is thus we meas- ure the force of the tempest, of steam, or exploding powder or dynamite. It is thus physicians have meas- ured the healing potency of their drugs. They have seen certain good effects follow their use in one or more cases, and they gladly attribute the change to the thing they have administered. It is possible that the change would have occurred without it, but the doubt is thrown on this side instead of the other. But there is another point of far more vital importance affecting this question. It is the possible influence of mind. It may be that in most or all these cases it was the mind which gave po- tency to the drug. We do know that in innumerable cases the mind has healed the body by taking bread pills and other such harmless things. Here, therefore, there clearly required a vast deduction to be made from the supposed potency of drugs, as the best physicians acknowledge. The following are clipped from The Medical Liber- ator : All medicines are poisonous. — Prof. St. John, M. D. Medicine is a great humbug. — M. Magendie, France. The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon. — John Mason Good.M. D., F. R. S. I76 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. Nine times out often our miscalled remedies are injurious to our patients. — Pro. Jamieson, Scotland. What we call medical science is a jumble of inconsistent opinions. — Dublin Medical Journal. The science of medicine is founded on conjecture and improved by murder. — Sir Astley Cooper. Physicians have hurried thousands to their graves who would have recovered if left to Nature. — Prof. Clark, N. Y. I fearlessly assert that in most cases our patients would be safer without a physician than with one. — Dr. Talmage, F. R. S. The "vital effects" of medicine are very little understood. It is a term employed to cover an ignorance. — Prof. Davis. Quackery. The chief cause of quackery outside of the medical profession is the real quackery in the profession. — Dr. Adam Smith. The popular medical system has neither philosophy or common sense to commend it to confidence. — Dr. Evans, F. R. C, London. Benjamin Waterhouse, M. D., after twenty years lecturing before the medical department of Howard University, said, " I am sick of learned quackery.' All our cogitations respecting the modus operandi of medicines are purely empirical. — Prof. Charles D. Meigs, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. All our curative agents are poisons, and, as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patients vitality. — Prof. Clark. Four grains of calomel will sometimes kill an adult. — Prof. C. A. Gilman, N. Y. Medical College. From 30 to 60 grains of calomel have been given very young chil- dren for croup. — ProfAlonzo Clark, M. D., N. Y. Medical Col- lege. The poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, declared mankind had been drugged to death, and that the world would be better off if the con- tents of every apothecary shop were emptied into the sea, though the consequences to the fishes would be lamentable. Jacob Bigelow, M. D., president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, says : " The premature death of medical men brings with it the humiliating conclusion * * that medicine is still an ineffec- tual speculation." The older physicians grow the more skeptical they become of the virtues of medicine, and the more they are disposed to trust to the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 77 powers of nature. — Prof. A. H. Stevens, M. D., New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. " I declare as my conscientious convictions founded on long ex- perience and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, surgeon, man midwife, chemist, apothecary, drugist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevails." — Dr. James Johnson. Of the lamented President Garfield, the London "Lancet," per- haps the most popular and most orthodox medical journal in the world, says : " The original injury was not fatal. * * His death was the result of the failure of surgery. This will place Bliss where he belongs, in the ranks of confidence men, charlatans and quacks. The administration of powerful medicine is the most fruitful cause of derangement of the digestion. — Prof. E. R. Peaslee, M. D., of the New York Medical College. Remedial agents act on the system in the same way as do the re- mote causes of disease. — Prof. Paine of the N. Y. University Medi- cal School, author of " Institutes of Medicine." The effects of medicine on the human system are, in the highest degree, uncertain, except, indeed, that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence and famine combined. — John Mason Good, M. D.,F. R. S. All medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that produce disease. — Prof. Joseph M. Smith, M. D., New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. After long study and observation I have reached the conclusion that the utterances of the best and most cele- brated physicians are true, as indicated in these quota- tions. Physical medicine has no ruling principle which commends itself to reason or justifies itself in practice. Therapeutics is at the utmost remove from science, with which it has no alliance or affinity. It is a helter- skelter, higlety-piglety, hap-hazzard agglomeration of conceits, guesses and inventions. There is only one thing certain about the whole phar- macopoeia, whether it be called homiopathy or the other pathy, and that is, that it is composed wholly of poisons. 178 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. It is the most marvelous legend of all the miracles that what would kill the strongest healthy body, will not hurt it, but do it good when it is weakened and prostrated by disease. In its weakest condition it can do more than in its strongest. It is in vain to reason against an " ortho- doxy " and a " standing order," but one cannot help observing that according to common-sense and every apparent rule of reason, the sick must be less able to re- sist poisons than the healthy ; that they should be treated with more delicacy rather than less ; that they cannot assimilate the indigestible with a weak stomach, any better than with a strong one. In short, the whole system is false and wrong and injurious, and physicians ought to acknowledge and abandon it. Poisons are poisons only, whether for the healthy or diseased, and should never be put into the human stomach or other- wise forced into the veinous circulation. There is also one clear effect of all these poisons — the depression of vitality. On their entrance nature exerts all its power for their expulsion, and the result is exhaustion. The vital force of the system which should have been working unimpeded to throw off the disease, has all been forced to employ itself to the utmost in ex- pelling this most deadly element of disease introduced by the doctor, and the result is inevitably damaging, and may be fatally so, as it often is. It must be a rare and accidental thing that any such medicine, so-called, can be administered without injury. Nay, it must be impos- sible for anything to radically change its own nature and action, and a poison must operate only as a poison. If its effect is good in one way, that is possible only be- cause it finds a way of doing some greater evil in another CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 179 quarter. It must forever follow a law of evil compensa- tion. This law we can never escape by the use of pois- ons. There is but one way — to abandon their use entirely. Till this is done, medicine and physicians will be only breeders of disease, and as now, health will be the exception and not the rule, in civilized life. We should not, in opposing this hoary combination of medical superstition and charlatanry go to absurd ex- treme of denying any agency to these poisons, for in that case they would not be poisons. These inconsider- ate agitators say it is the living system only which acts, as proved by the fact that the dead stomach is not thus affected. The effect ought to be different on dead tissue from what it is on live tissue ; but prussic acid will cor- rode, though in different degrees, both dead and living stomachs. If these so-called medicines did not act at all, did not wield any force, nor produce any effect in the stomach, the stomach itself would act just the same in their presence as in their absence. Every agent varies its action according to its environments, and their action is always mutual and reactive. What we want is health- ful and not inactive or poisonous substances to be put in the stomach. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to draw an absolutely straight line of demarkation between these two methods. While nature knows no variations, she is infinitely va- rious and subtle ; and hence, what seem like exceptions are sometimes beneficial. In this undeveloped state many people are amphibious, and like the tadpole, neither air nor water will suit them as their exclusive element. If poison has been generated in the system, and needs to be expelled, and if the effort at expulsion l80 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. is inadequate, then a safe foreign substance which would generate an effective expulsive effort and which would carry with it all the rest that ought to go, might reason- ably be employed. So it would seem. But the necessity will be rare, and perhaps never. Never is the rule. As Pneumatopathy is healing by spirit, nothing else is pneumatopathy pure. Other things may be associated with it and may be utilized by it, such as nursing and hygiene, massage, sponging and bathing, brushing and rubbing, or wrapping in wet sheets, all of which we may co-operate with as pneumatopathists ; but they are not pneumatopathy. But pneumatopathy may preside over their use, if the operator sees fit. Here is the sphere for an admissable eclecticism under the supervision of pneumatopathy, with the sensible subordinated to the super-sensible, and everything as an handmaid to pure pneumatopathy, not as mistress or equal partner. The facts and attestations quoted above do not entitle us to say that the materia medica is all and always abso- lutely useless. In the present stage of human develop- ment, something in the shape of medicine is often nec- essary as an excitant to a healing action of the mind. Besides that, and further, it is scientifically verifiable and universally manifest also, that in the present stage, something must be taken into the stomach as a con- dition of organic life and health and vigor. This being allowed, there is no a priori argument against the sup- position that something so used or applied externally by an invalid may promote his recovery ; and whether this is a fact has to be ascertained by experiments carefully conducted. For myself, I have no doubt about this. But I have, on the other hand, little doubt that, as the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. l8l above testimonies confirm, the practice of physical medi- cine has done much harm, and vastly more harm than good. Deadly poisons have been constantly and freely used. Deadly we know them to be, whatever be the source of their power, and anything that can for the most part supercede their use harmlessly and with con- spicuously good effects will be an unspeakable boon to mankind. This great benefaction comes to us in the doctrine and power of Pneumatopathy or mental healing. We know that mind heals, and that a growing power of this kind is dawning on the world. We know the good effects which follow its action, and it is manifest that they can be attributed to nothing else than mind as their cause. The world's progress is in the line of the increasing ascendency of mind. Its relative power must become manifest in multifarious ways. The development of a mental healing power as scientifically explicable is one of the forms in exemplification of this law of progress. All through the ages a few men of exceptional endow- ments have exhibited this power, and they have thought it a special gift of God or the gods to them. Others have doubted all the "wonderful works," and have been perplexed to know how to explain well authenticated accounts. The scientific explanation is now dawning. On some of us it shines quite clearly, but not yet with meridian splendor. On some it has only come as the first and doubtful morning twilight, while others are still in total darkness. There are various classes of facts which conspire to show the controlling relation of the super-organic powers 1 82 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. to the organic. It is well known that there are people who have all the vital organs of their body under the control of the will. We have known one lady who could blush at will ; another lady who could at any time appear deadly sick and faint away, and who often used the trick to frighten her husband into compliance. This was not merely the semblance of sickness, but it was as real as any other sickness, because it was the tempo- rary stoppage and derangement of the vital functions, which were caused and cured by the mind. We have known of a man who could render his flesh through the whole body rigid and hard, so that on being struck it would ring like metal, and make it apparently free from susceptibility to pain from any ordinary injury. It is also a well attested and authenticated fact that some men have the power of appearing to die. They have been known to assume that condition as a means of de- frauding insurance companies ; and in one such case the death remained a permanent fact. The man never re- covered. He proved to have the power to lay down his life but not to take it up again. In the other cases the double power was exemplified. They were not in a sem- blance of death only, but a death as real as any other, for all the vital functions were stopped, and that is death. But the power which caused it had the power to undo it. That power was never unconscious. Its conscious con- nection with the organism was voluntarily suspended, that is all. This affirmation of mental suicide and mental resur- rection will startle some of our readers. Our sufficient reply is to hold our hand steadily pointing to the facts which others have furnished in abundance. We have CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 83 only by our form of recital and exposition presented them in a new light, the light of an advanced psychological science ; and from this no thorough Pneumatophist can recede. Nor is this so very strange as our inconsideration may suggest. Many men in certain vocations can lie down and go to sleep and by self-admonition wake at a given hour. We have all of us, perhaps, exemplified in some degree this power ; and this is nothing less than stop- ping and then restoring the operation of certain organic functions. If this can be done in any small degree, which no one doubts, there is then no logic against the apparent or evident fact that it is done to the utmost extent already mentioned. And that makes the resur- rection of Jesus nothing at all incredible. Of course, these facts are not common, but extraor- dinary. But they show a mental power which is unde- veloped and which is not duly recognized ; a power which may be, and ought to be, cultivated. And it is the object of Pneumatopathy to expound and urge this possibility and duty, and prosecute the duty to the utmost. We ought also to observe that there is a mental power which is not consciously of the will, but is of that deeper form of power which comprises the whole individual mentality. This may be in part far below the organic consciousness, or far above it. We have good evidence and strong concurrent opinion that we have an indefin- ably vast extent of extra-organic mental power ; and what is that extent and its limitations we know not. We are therefore forbidden to dogmatize on the subject, and are enjoined to attend to known facts and interpret them in no constrained and artificial way. I84 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. There are three distinct ranges of intellectual or con- scious action which are super-sensible, or which are not subject to the recognized laws of sense, and which, there- fore, by the law of analogy should have an influence as illustrations of Pneumatopathy. One of these is the power of abstract thought. We think thoughts which have in them no element of sense or space, as when we say that the moral quality of an action consists in the feeling and intention which inspired it; that benevolence should be guided by intelligence. It is true that even this action of pure thought affects the organism, wearing the nervous tissue. There is a law of connection between this nervous action and the pure intellection, but the two are not one and the same. Why there is such a law of connection we cannot tell. There is no known logical reason or necessity for it. We know it as a fact, and there we have to rest it. But it is this fact which gives us our analogical argument for Pneuma- topathy, or the direct action of mind on the organism. We see it does have this power and effect, even in its most super-sensible action, and when no such effect is sought or thought of. How much more then should it have this power when the effect is sought by all the energy of our mind and our faith in God and the essen- tial laws of his universe. Next, it is quite obvious when reflected on, however much we may forget it, that all voluntary sensible action has a super-sensible origin and source. These sensible forms which I am now drawing are the direct effect, as they are the expression, of pure thought. Volition is also a pure mental action. How the thought and the volition are followed by the sensible effects, no one can CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 85 tell. There is not only no logical necessity for it, but there is no essential psychological necessity, as proved by the fact that they do not always follow. Sometimes men have found suddenly and unexpectedly that their will does not operate, and this condition they call paraly- sis. The thought and the will are the same, but the sen- sible effects are not the same. Hereuthen, we see a law of temporary and uncertain connection between super- sensible and sensible action, the " how " of which no one can explain. This, therefore, like the involuntary and abstract thought and organic connection above men- tioned, illustrates the special form of Pneumatopathy which seeks to heal directly by mind and to expound as far as may be the law of such healing. If pure super- sensible thought and will are the direct source of all our voluntary sensible action and their effects, "why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should raise the dead," or at least heal the sick through the direct agency of the human mind ? Surely the doubt is a dis- credit to the intellectual and spiritual action of the doubter. The great obstruction in the way of the reception of the doctrine of the direct agency of mind on mind and body is the prevalence of the habit of thinking through sense, and in subjection to the laws of sense. They " cannot see how" this super-sensible action is possible, they say. They mean they cannot see "how" it is pos- sible in accordance with the laws of sense, and it is not so possible, for that were self-contradictory. But to those whose thinking is not immersed in sense, there is no difficulty in thinking that super-sensible thought and mentality generally can operate independently of sensi- 1 86 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. ble laws, and according to super-sensible laws, for to be able to do this belongs to the nature and conception of a super-sensible power. They must, therefore, admit it or affirm that we are nothing but organized matter, and that there is no super-sensible substance or quality. With such as these we cannot argue. There is not common ground enough between us to fight on. We cannot breathe their atmosphere and make it a substitute for that finer one in which we live. Then there is the power of clairvoyance, now almost universally admitted as a gift of some persons. Clairvoyance is a poor word to denote the perception of things at a distance in time and place, before and after the event, and without the aid of the senses. There are those who make pretensions to this for a penny ; but there are those who are not counterfiets, but the counter- fieted, and some, doubtless at times counterfiet them- selves. We could give numerous and indubitable exam- ples of the action of such power within our own exper- ience, some of them exemplified by our own students, and in these days, such things have been so often and thoroughly verified, that instances are not necessary. As this is a direct mental action, without the aid of sen- sible media, it is an independent support to the doctrine of Pneumatopathy. It illustrates and exemplifies the same general law, the direct action of super-sensible power relative to sensible things. Surely, if we may allow, as we must, a power like this for mere knowledge, it is still more in keeping with infinite Goodness to be- stow a power of beneficient action for the healing of infirmities and the preservation of health. Allied with clairvoyance is telepathy, which is the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 87 modern term to express the power to produce some kind of feeling at a distance. This has been very well veri- fied as sometimes occurring between friends. This is usually not pleasurable, but rather the opposite. It is thus the counterpart of our work in treating people at a distance, we seeking to generate health and happiness. This distant treatment is thus justified by its despisers, besides having the support of numerous facts which are our own justification. We know well its blessed poten- cy, and give God thanks for the knowledge. Some of those who are only looking on, and not yet looking into, much less understanding, Pneumatopathy, may think that it is only letting nature have time and opportunity to recuperate. Pneumatopathy does, indeed, do this in many cases. But this is not all. It adds a new potency to nature, a potency of the highest rank. It re-enforces organic nature with super-organic mind, stimulating it with the energy of the most inspiring con- viction and hope. It represses abnormal excitement while it teaches how to quicken and develope a healthy normal action, the form and source of true power, a power which is human in its subject but divine in its origin, and should be divine in its daily re-enforcement by a living trust in God. Few men have given more attention than the late William B. Carpenter to the relative power of the mind over the body. In his thick volume on "Mental Physiol- ogy," he has collected a large fund of facts in illustration of this subject ; and at the same time he has done his ut- most to screw and dry-cork them all into the small bottle of his pet notion, " Expectant Attention, or the Domi- nation of any single Idea." In his view this explains 1 88 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. everything. Nothing more need be said on the philos- ophy or science of the subject. This is an ultimatum, however, at which none but himself and a few like- minded have ever been able to stop. It is not the pole of existence and causes, but only a flying spray of the magnetic current. It, however, concedes to mind a power of vast and indefinite extent over the body. It makes mind king of sense and opens the gate for Pneu- matopathy, as the king of glory, to come in and take rightful possession of the whole, as being fully able, and in a far nobler way, to assimulate all his facts as well as his little theory. We present the following quotations from his ninteenth chapter, which shows him at his best and exhibits his entire doctrine on this question. " In none of these cases has the will any influence whatever ; the mental state which determines the result being an emotional one, which may be linked on either to a per- ception or to an idea, according as the object that calls it forth is actually or only subjectively present, and the direct influence of the emotions upon the quantity of these secretions is shown by numerous other facts. Thus, the secretion of tears, which is continually be- ing formed to an extent sufficient to lubricate the sur- face of the eyes, is poured out in great abundance under the moderate excitement of the emotions, either of joys, tenderness, or grief. It is checked, however, by violent grief ; and it is a well-known indication of moderated sorrow, when tears "come to the relief" of the sufferer. So, the salivary secretion may be suspended by strong emotion ; a fact of which advantage is taken in India for the discovery of a thief among the servants of a family — each of them being required to hold a certain quan- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 1 89 tity of rice in his mouth during a few minutes, and the offender being generally distinguished by the dryness of his mouthful. "That the gastric secretion may be entirely suspended by powerful emotion clearly appears as well from the re- sults of the experiments on animals, as from the well- known influence created by a sudden mental shock (whether painful or pleasurable), in dissipating the appe- tite for food, and in suspending the digestive process when in active operation. Several other secretions are affected in a similar manner by emotional excitement ; thus the special odoriferious secretions of many animals are poured forth under alarm with such potency as to constitute their special means of defence, and in some human beings the cutaneous secretion becomes strongly amoniacal when either fear or bashfulness is strongly excited. "There is no secretion, however, on the quality, as well as the quantity of which emotional states have so obvi- ous an influence, as they have upon that of milk ; and this point, being one of great practical importance, as well as of scientific interest, will be here dwelt on in some detail — conclusive evidence of such alterations be- ing afforded by the disorder produced by the altered secretion in the digestive system of the infant, which is a more delicate apparatus for testing its quality, than any that the chemist could devise. The following general statements on this subject were made by Sir Astley Cooper, as the result of extended and careful enquiries : The secretion of milk proceeds best in a tranquil state of mind, and with a cheerful temper; then the milk is regularly abundant, and agrees well with the child. On I90 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. the contrary, a fretful temper lessens the quantity of milk, makes it thin and serous, and causes it to disturb the child's bowels, producing intestinal fever and much griping. "Fits of anger produce a very irritating milk, followed by griping in the infant, with green stools. Grief has a great influence on lactation, and consequently upon the child. The loss of a near and dear relation or a change of fortune, will often so much diminish the secretion of milk as to render adventitious aid necessary for the sup- port of the child. Anxiety of mind diminishes the quantity, and alters the quality of the milk. The re- ception of a letter which leaves the mind in anxious sus- pense, lessens the draught, and the breast becomes empty. If the child be ill, and the mother is anxious respecting it, she complains to her medical attendant that she has little milk, and that her infant is griped and has frequent green and frothy motions. Fear has a powerful influ- ence on the secretion of milk. I am informed by a med- ical man who practices much among the poor, that the apprehension of the brutal conduct of a drunken hus- band will put a stop for a time to the secretion of milk. When this happens, the breast feels knotted and hard, flaccid from the absence of milk, and that which is secre- ted is highly irritating ; and some time elapses before a healthy secretion returns. Terror, which is sudden, and great fear instantly stops this secretion. Of this, two striking instances, in which the secretion, although previously abundant, was completely arrested by this emotion, are detailed by Sir A. Cooper. "There is even evidence that the Mammary Secretion may acquire an actually poisonous character, under the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I9I influence of violent mental excitement ; for certain phe- nomena which might otherwise be regarded in no other light than as simple coincidences, appear to justify this inference, when interpreted by the less striking, but equally decisive facts already mentioned. " A carpenter fell into a quarrel with a soldier billeted in his house, and was set upon by the latter with his drawn sword. The wife of the carpenter at first trem- bled from fear and terror, and then suddenly threw her- self furiously between the combatants, wrested the sword from the soldier's hand, broke it in pieces, and threw it away. During the tumult, some neighbors came in and separated the men. While in this state of strong excitement, the mother took up her child from the cradle, where it lay playing and in the most perfect health, never having had a moment's illness ; she gave it the breast, and in so doing sealed its fate. In a few minutes the infant left off sucking, became restless, panted, and sank dead upon its mother's bosom. The physician who was instantly called in, found the child lying in the cradle, as if asleep, and with its features un- disturbed ; but all his resources were fruitless. It was irrecoverably gone." " In this interesting case, the milk seemed to have un- dergone a change which gave it a powerful sedative ac- tion upon the susceptible nervous system of the infant. " Similar facts are recorded by other writers. Mr. Wardrop mentions (" Lancet," No. 566), that having removed a small tumor from behind the ear of a mother all went well until she fell into a violent passion ; and the child, being suckled soon afterwards, died in convul- sions. He was sent for hastily to see another child in 192 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. convulsions after taking the breast of a nurse who had just been severely reprimanded ; and he was informed by- Sir Richard Croft, that he had seen many similar instances. Three others are recorded by Burdoch (" Physiologie "). In one of them, the infant was seized with convulsions on the right side, and hemiplegia on the left, on sucking immediately after its mother had met with some distress- ing occurance. Another case was that of a puppy, which was seized with epileptic convulsions, on sucking its mother after a fit of rage. "The following, which occurred within the writer's own knowledge, is perhaps equally valuable to the physiologist, as an example of the similarly fatal influence of undue emotion of a different character ; and should serve, with the preceding, as a sulutary warning to mothers, to pre- vent themselves from brooding over depressing ideas, as they would from indulging in passionate excitement. A lady having several children, of which none had manifested any particular tendency to cerebral disease, and of which the youngest was a healthy infant a few months old, heard of the death (from acute hydro- cephalus), of the infant child of a friend residing at a distance, with whom she had been on terms of close intimacy, and whose family had increased almost simul- taneous with her own. The circumstance naturally made a strong impression on her mind, and she seems to have dwelt on it the more, as she happened at that period to be separated from the rest of her family, and to be much alone with her babe. One morning, shortly after having nursed it, she laid the infant in its cradle, asleep and apparently in perfect health ; her attention was shortly attracted to it by a noise ; and on going to the cradle, CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I93 she found her infant in a convulsion which lasted a few- moments and then left it dead. Now although the in- fluence of the emotion is less unequivocally displayed in this case than in the preceding, it can scarcely be a mat- ter of doubt ; since it is natural that no feeling should be stronger in the mother's mind under such circumstances, than the fear that her own beloved child should be taken from her, as that of her friend had been ; and it is pro- bable that she had been particularly dwelling on it, at the time of nursing the infant on that morning. There is abundant evidence that a sudden and violent excitement of some depressing emotion, especially terror, may produce a severe and even a fatal disturbance of the organic functions ; with general symptoms so strongly resembling those of sedative poisoning, as to make it highly probable that the blood is directly affected by the emotional state, through nervous agency ; and in fact, the emotional alteration of the secretions seems much more probably attributable to some such affec- tions of the blood, than to a primary disturbance of the secreting process itself. Although there can be no doubt that the habitual state of the emotional sensibility has an important influence upon the gen- eral activity and perfection of the nutritive processes, — as is shown by the well nourished appearance usually exhibited by those who are free from mental anxiety, as well as from bodily ailment, contrasted with the " lean and hungry look " of those who are a prey to continual disquietude, yet it is not often that we have the oppor- tunity of observing the production of disorder in the nutrition of any specific part, by such influence. The two following cases, however, in which local disorder of 194 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. nutrition followed upon powerful emotion, determined as to their seat by the intense direction of the attention to a particular part of the body, rest upon excellent author- ity. "A lady, who was watching her child at play, saw a heavy window sash fall on its hand, cutting off three of the fingers, and she was so much overcome by fright and distress as to be unable to render it any assistance. A surgeon was speedily obtained, who, having dressed the wounds, turned himself to the mother, whom he found seated, moaning and complaining of pain in her hand. On examination, three fingers, corresponding to those injured in the child, were discovered to be swollen and inflamed, although they had ailed nothing prior to the accident. In four and twenty hours, incisions were made into them, and pus was evacuated ; sloughs were after- wards discharged, and the wounds ultimately healed." — (Carter on the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria p. 24.) "A highly intelligent lady known to Dr. Tuke, re- lated to him that one day she was walking past a pub- lic institution, and observed a child, in whom she was particularly interested, coming out through an iron gate. She saw that he let go the gate, after opening it, and that it seemed likely to close upon him and concluded that it would do so with such force as to crush his ankle ; however, this did not happen. ' It was impossible,' she says, 'by word or act to be quick enough to meet the supposed emergency ; and, in fact, I found I could not move, for such intense pain came on in the ankle, corresponding to the one which I thought the boy would have injured, that I could only put my hand CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 195 on it to lessen its extreme painfulness. I am sure I did not move so as to strain or sprain it. The walk home — a distance about a quarter of a mile — was very labor- ious, and in taking off my stocking I found a circle around the ankle, as if it had been painted with red currant juice, with a large spot of the same on the outer part. By morning the whole foot was inflamed, and I was a prisoner to my bed many days.' " — (Influence of the Mind upon the Body, p. 260.) "The influence of the state of expectant attention, in modifying the processes of nutrition and secretion, is not less remarkable than we have seen it to be in the production of muscular movements. The volitional di- rection of the consciousness to a part, independently of emotional excitement, suffices to call forth sensations in it, which seem to depend upon a change in its circula- tion, and if this state be kept up automatically by the attraction of the attention, the change may become a source of modification, not only in the functional action, but in the nutrition of the part. Thus, there can be no doubt that real disease often supervenes upon fancied ailment, especially through the indulgence of what is known as the hypochondriacal tendency to dwell upon uneasy sensations ; these sensations being themselves, in many instances, purely " subjective" in many individ- uals (especially females) whose sympathies are strong ; a pain in any part of the body may be produced by witnessing in another, or even by hearing described, the sufferings occasioned by disease or injury of that part, and if this pain be attended to and believed in, as an indication of serious mischief, injurious consequences are very likely to follow. So, again, the self-tormenting I96 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. hypochondriac will imagine himself the victim of any malady that he may "fancy," and if this fancy should be sufficiently persistent and engrossing, it is not unlikely to lead to real disease of the organ to which it relates. This persistent direction of the attention has a much greater potency when combined with the expectation of a particular result, and thus it happens that the spells of pretenders to occult powers, in all ages and nations, often produce the predicted maladies in the subjects who are credulous enough to believe in their efficacy. Such was formerly the case among the Negroes of the British West Indies, to such a degree, that it was found neces- sary to repress what were known as " Obeah practices," by penal legislation, a slow piningaway, ending in death, being the not uncommon result of the fixed belief on the part of the victim, that " Obi " had been put upon him by some old man or woman reputed to possess the injur- ious power. So great, indeed, was the dread of these spells, that the mere threat of one party to a quarrel to "put Obi" upon the other, was often sufficient to terrify the latter into submission. And there is adequate ground for the assertion, that even among the better in- structed classes of our own country, a fixed belief that a mortal disease had seized upon the frame, or that a particular operation or system of treatment would prove unsuccessful, has been in numerous instances the real occasion of a fatal result. But, on the other hand, the sane mental state may operate beneficially, in checking a morbid action and restoring the healthy state. That the confident expectation of a cure is the most potent means of bringing it about, doing that which no medical treatment can accomplish, may be affirmed as the gener- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. I97 alized result of experiences of the most varied kind, extending through a long series of ages. For it is this which is common to methods of the most diverse charc- ter ; some of them — as the Metalic Tractors, Mesmer- ism, and Homoeopathy — pretending to some physical power, whilst to others, as the invocations of Prince Theopenlohe, and the commands of Dr. Vernon, or the Zouave Jacob, some miraculous influence was attributed. It has been customary, on the part of those who do not accept either the "physical" or the "miraculous" hy- pothesis as the interpretation of these facts to refer the effects either to " imagination " or to "faith," two men- tal states apparently incongruous, and neither of them rightly expressing the condition on which they depend. For although there can be no doubt that in a great num- ber of cases the patients have believed themselves to be cured when no real amelioration of their condition had taken place, yet there is a large body of trustworthy evidence that permanent amendment of a kind perfectly obvious to others, has shown itself in a great variety of local maladies, when the patients have been sufficiently possesed by the expectation of benefit, and by faith in the efficacy of the means employed. "Any system of treatment," it has been recently remarked, " however absurd, that can be ' puffed' into public notoriety for efficacy — any individual who, by accident or design ob- tains a reputation for the possession of a special gift of healing — is certain to attract a multitude of sufferers, among whom will be several who are capable of being really benefited by a strong assurance of relief, whilst others, for a time, believe themselves to have experienced it. And there is, for the same reason, no religious I98 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. system that has attained a powerful hold on the minds of its votaries which cannot boast its ' miracles ' of this order." In these days we hear much of magnetism and of its peculiar power, as the great agent which either poisons or heals the human organism. On this subject much is affirmed which cannot be verified ; and nearly all who write or speak on the subject occupy a materialistic plane of thought. They make magnetism a subtle in- visible fluid proceeding from the body, and surrounding the body like an atmosphere ; and of good and evil agency according as is the character of individuals and varying with their temperament, and even in some de- gree with their moods. On this is based a doctrine of elective affinities and aversions, which is pregnant with important and dangerous implications. Of this the only proof presented is the known effect of the presence of different persons, some being agree- able and inspiring, while others are disagreeable and depressing. These are incontestible facts ; but that the assertion of a material magnetic fluid is an explanation of them or an assignment of their cause is a very differ- ent thing. As this alleged cause is not an object of sense, it is only an inference, and the inference is illegit- imate if a simpler one is conceivable, and that simpler one is a direct reference of it to mind as the conscious subject. The existence of this mind we know because we are conscious of it ; and we need not invent another and material and unknown thing as the cause. We are not of those who cannot conceive a cause which is not material. We prefer to reverse the order by making all to be mind, whether sensible or super-sensible, and CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 199 therefore, with greater simplicity and philosophical pre- cision we call that mind which they without warrant in science affirm to be a material magnetic fluid exuding from the body. Magnetic healing is, therefore, only one of the myriad tributes to the reality and extent of mental healing. This mental healing, whether called magnetic or desig- nated by some other term, is of various degrees of virtue on the score of the character and intelligence of the operators whose work in the long run will inevitably be marked by his individual worth, and bear his image and superscription. Magnetic influence is closely allied with mesmerism, and is only a materialistic name for a mental influence of an order bordering on sense and closely associated in time and action with the action of sense in some form. Therefore, we do not denounce magnetic healing ; but appropriate it as a form of mental healing best adapted to the partially developed condition of some patients and practitioners. All the mental healing of all the olden times, whether recorded in the Bible or other books, were universally regarded as special and peculiarly super-natural endow- ments, and no index whatever of the natural capability of the human race. God or the gods sent these super- naturally gifted men and women at intervals into the world, and the world could only sit still and wait for their arrival. There was therefore, no incentive to study them, no hope of knowing or understanding anything of the law of their power and action, because it was sup- posed there was no such law. Scientific investigation had hence no vocation. The conception of Pneumato- pathy was then impossible. All the Bible healers ascribe 200 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. their power to God as a peculiar and super-natural gift. There was, therefore, no advantage to be had from study. This would give theology, but do nothing to promote or elucidate this power. It must fall upon men like the double portion of Elijah's spirit on Elisha, or like the Pentecostal visitation. It remained for modern times to generate a science of Pneumatopathy. The principle that all is mind, and so mind is the only power, is the great truth which is to revolutionize the world and elevate its life many degrees. Mind is always the healer, because there is no matter, what is so called being but a lower form or mode of mind. The higher rightly rules the lower in virtue of its relative quality and power. The mind as intelligence and wise purpose, as thought-power and will-power, must be in well devel- oped men mightier than sense, and must dominate and control its action, and add to it a peculiar potency with a corresponding result. Here is a prime element in the philosophy of mental healing. . It is a necessity from its nature as the supremest quality of being, the extent and variety of the power of which we know but little. We are not blind to the fact that mind is in our ex- perience so far limited that it is often overcome and baffled by the operations of matter, so-called, the sense- forms of mind. Along here is the line of battle between the superior and inferior forms of force ; and surely as wild beasts have given way to man and his domesticated animals, all brute force will ultimately yield to the power of purpose animated by pure intelligence. The direct power of mind over the organism and even over the minds of others is seen in the well-known phe- nomena which are designated as mesmerism. Much of CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 201 these are doubtless false, but not all, far from it. Here is a vast extent and multiplicity of phenomena, which reveal an undefmable extent of the power of mind, and these have become the objects of knowledge and of scientific research wholly within a hundred years, and "no one can tell whereunto this thing will grow." There are some things which characterize mesmeric agency which ought to be noted. (i.) Mesmerism throws people into an abnormal con- dition, or out of practical sense-relation to the rest of mankind. This is not of the nature of a healing agency. Such agency is just the contrary in its operation and effect. Mesmerism may therefore, illustrate, but it does not exemplify the power of mental healing. (2.) For this reason mesmerism is always temporary in its action and effect. The healing agency when perfect is final and permanent. From the same or sim- ilar causes the malady may return, not because the heal- ing virtue is exhausted, for in the latter case the healing would not be healing. Healing is a restoration to the normal condition of wholeness and harmony of function ; and derangement is not a mere and absolute negation, but a false and discordant action of some of the mem- bers, and healing restores their proper action. (3.) Mesmerism also puts the mind itself into an abnormal condition, and out of all practical relation to all minds but the operator. Mental healing operates on the mind as on the body, so that its action is thoroughly natural, conformable to all mental laws and in normal connection with other minds. (4.) Mesmerism is wholly human in its action and reference. No mesmerist looks to God to do his work, 202 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. or accounts it anything more than the natural action and effect of his own will, with perhaps the concurrence of the will of those on whom he operates. The mental healer may be as humanistic as the mesmerizer, and in many cases they may be only mesmerizers. The most distinguished healers have been prayerful and devout, and have attributed their works to the power they have derived from this spiritual condition and attitude. (5.) Mesmerists cannot operate only on a fraction of the human race, on perhaps one-sixth, as I heard one operator say ; and another, one in twenty-five ; and I should say it is probably a very much smaller per- centage. It is possible only on a peculiarly consti- tuted class. Mental healing recognizes no such limita- tion. Its virtue is for all. It is true all are not cured with equal ease, from different causes more or less clear or obscure. But though we cannot readily explain it all, we are sure it is not analogous to the limitations of mes- merism. It follows a different law, and does not exclude any such large proportion from its beneficient action. (6.) Mesmerism operates on the healthy as well as on the sick. Mental healing has no office where there is no evil or malady to remove. (7.) Mesmerism produces evil as well as good. The mental healers, as such, does only good. (8.) The mesmerized know not afterward the changes they have undergone, nor their agent. The patient healed is conscious of all, knows all about the healer who visits him, and all the changes for good which ensue, because there is a continuity of the normal action of the mental powers. Still a question may be raised, whether the humanist CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 203 mental healer is not a species of mesmerist. Like the mesmerist he destroys pain, so that teeth can be extracted and limbs amputated without suffering. There is just here a coincidence between them, but the disparities are many and great, so that only by a largeness amounting to loseness can they be classed together, and the healer be called a mesmerist — that is, if he truly heals. But on the side of evil the healing power seems to come within the range of some forms of mesmerism. In some of its action mesmerism paralyzes the powers of mind and body. It arrests every movement, or makes them ridiculous, absurd or injurious and painful. What is that power and whence? Now look at this human power to heal, what is that ? Is it a cast-iron force which can work only in one way ? One thing is clear, that it is voluntary. It is directed to particular persons at particular times and from the action of motives. It is a force which we may use or not use, or which we may use in one direction in preference to another. The essential quality of mesmeric agency consists in the imposition by the mesmerizer of his own purposed or simulated thought, action and feeling upon another. He can thus temporarily change and reverse all the wonted course of ideas, feelings and sensible experience. He can make the land seem like water and the waters seem like solid earth. He can make ice seem like a burning coal, and he can make a high heat to seem like cold. He can render persons insensible to pain from pricks, pinches and contusions. He can make the old feel young, the lame to imagine they are all right, and the blind to seem to see. It is, therefore, nothing strange if he can make the 204 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. sick feel well. This, however, is all imaginary. It is abnormal. It does not belong to the real world of other men and women. It is only the world of the operator's thought and purpose, and for that reason it is limited in its duration, and would be only insanity if permanent, because it is a mental action which is out of harmony with all other people. No doubt there are many healers of this kind, some of them consciously and some of them unconsciously so. Their work is instantly strik- ing, but illusive and temporary, but it gets them noto- riety and patients and money, though the real and per- manent good they do is very small. The faculty of mental healing is a sacred and holy power. As such, it is to be cultivated and used with all fidelity and diligence, and with all sincerity. Like every other endowment, it is susceptible to culture or neglect, and it will grow greater or less, according to the way it is treated and used. Sincerity of action and utterance is one of the conditions of its fullest exercise and devel- opment, and an honest intent to do good must be cher- ished in opposition to merely personal ends. It is a fundamental dogma with one school of mental healers, that sensible things have no power except what they receive from human " beliefs," and these " beliefs " are pronounced to be erroneous and illusory. This is inconsistent with itself and contrary to all human expe- rience. The " belief " here is generally the effect instead of the cause of the action of sensible results. Having experienced certain results from certain sensible forms and connections, we believe we shall have the same ex- perience in the same connections. Before experience we neither know nor believe anything on the subject. It is CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 205 true that to some extent we have inherited tendencies or beliefs, which act prior to experience. But these are the effect of experience in our progenitors. In the lines of grosser sense, beliefs do not control experiences. Nothing is more common than conflictiun between experience and beliefs. Pain and pleasure often come contrary to expectation and belief. People taking deadly poisons in the belief that they are taking some- thing else are smitten with death. People are often burned or scalded with- what they believed to be cold, and utter sots are the product of drinking liquor under the firmest assurance that it would never hurt them, whatever it might do to others. I hold that mind gives to sensible things all their power, but not in the form of " belief." All mind is not a " belief," though all things are mind, and there are pro- cesses of mind which precede and generate both experi- ence and belief. The power of sense is of mind, because it is mind always, since "all is mind," but not all belief and this mental action which generates sensible phe- nomena and determines their relation to each other ante- dates all beliefs and all conscious states now known to us. Mind as known to us, that is, our own human mind, is subject to laws of control, guidance and limitations, and these laws we cannot transcend. We cannot transcend (usually at least) the law of gravitation. If the center of gravity is thrown over the cliff, the whole body will go down, and no thought possible to us can prevent it. In the tropics and at the poles we must inevitably have different sensations of heat and cold. No possible men- tal action can render harmless a dagger struck into the heart. Without lungs no man can breathe, and no 206 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. thought of man can instantly restore the destroyed lungs. It is not the office of Pneumatopathy to deny facts or to misinterpret them. Pneumatopaphy acknowledges that there are laws of mind, and these laws are of two classes and grades, sen- sible and super-sensible. The great merit of the theory known as " Christian Science," consists in its affirmation that " all is mind." Its demerit is that it does not half comprehend its own utterance, so that it buries up that true utterance with a heap of impossibilities. There is no matter as other than modes of mind, and so there is no force but mind. But to infer thence that there is no force in sensible things, is not admissible, because we know from experience, that it is not true ; and, besides, they ought to see that if all is mind, these are mind, and therefore, constitute a class of mental forces, which have their laws relative to each other, and relative to super- sensible forces and laws. They are imposed upon us by our constitution. We cannot resist or evade them by any mental action. We can use them and make them turn to our advantage and work as our servants. Thus the lungs have power to inhale and hold the air, and in co-operation with the heart to extract from it oxygen for the blood. That is one of the forces and functions of these organs, and they will perform this office in a nor- mal condition whether we think of or believe it or not, and in a very diseased condition they will not do it thoroughly, whatever we may think or believe. Here comes in Pneumatopathy. It operates on the mind of the patient so that his mind operates healthily on his vital organism so as to heal and restore the diseased and wasted parts. All this is done in accordance with the forces and laws of sense, as well as of spirit. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 207 Of course, if, as those people affirm, there were only one mind, and that one Infinite, there could be no such mental limitations. But then there could be no "be- liefs " or " illusions." The mind which is the subject of these errors is limited and erroneous. This is certainly our own mind, the human mind of which we are con- scious, by being conscious of its action. This action we will neither foist on God nor deny as a phenomenon of known actual experience. But, while sensible mind or sensible things, have some power, still super-sensible mind is the superior potency, and is ordained to rule. But, in order to rule, it must in some respects obey. It can operate in full domination only in harmony with the law of every kind of force. It must therefore, study and know these laws, their re- lation to each other, and thence the law by which the higher rules the lower, healing, restoring, reducing all to harmony and preserving harmony throughout the whole. The power of the human mind as a direct agent for good (or possibly evil), has received as yet but little scientific attention, and we are now beginning to dis- cover that this power is great, various and subtle ; and we need to find out by careful and prolonged investiga- tion the laws of this agency. Its power was always recognized, but it was attributed to magic and witch- craft and demon agency. It is now extensively by a cer- tain class attributed to spirits returning from another sphere. There may be some truth in this theory. It is not impossible nor specially improbable, and it is not neces sarily offensive to any legitimate feeling of the human heart. But it is very easy for its zealous advocates to 208 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. press its claims farther than evidence will warrant, and to attribute some things to this agency which can be ex- plained on the simpler theory of the agency of the human mind in its present state and relations. What- ever can possibly be so explained, ought to be, and how much may be so accounted for, we know not. We know not the extent of the power, conscious and unconscious, of the human mind. It is very little that we have yet discovered of ourselves. We know not when or where we began to be, whether we have had an existence in another or many other forms before this, nor what we may have thence learned, and which we may be able with a sort of indefinite and partially blind consciousness to develope in this form of life. The intelligence which is seen in certain rappings, motions, signals, impressions and apparent possessions and obsessions and inspirations may possibly be thus our own action. Our former conscious state may come over us now without extinguishing the present form of con- sciousness, and the former to the latter may communi- cate much which seems to us in our self-ignorance to come from sources beyond ourselves. Here is a large and difficult field to explore. The work will be very long, and beforehand we cannot reasonably be very confident of the result of the investigation. For myself, I am in- clined to think that a very large proportion of phenom- ena which have been considered of altruistic origin, will in the end be found to be subjective alike in their effect and cause. We should not dogmatize, and should keep judgment in suspense till we have collected sufficient data for a scientific conclusion. In the meanwhile, an inclination in favor of subjective, instead altruistic explan- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 209 ation, is more scientific than the opposite inclination, and in our extended ignorance of the limits of the human soul and its powers, it is perhaps possible, without any manifest violence to attribute to ourselves no small pro- portion of the phenomena which some impute to departed spirits. We also know that some of these phenomena are consciously simulated, and there is nothing to forbid the supposition that there is much more that is uncon- sciously simulated, as well as much that is only misinter- preted innocently through ignorance. On the other hand, we ought not to attribute to any special divine agency, whatever can be attributed to man. In science the immediate causes are the uniform imme- diate antecedents. This antecedent is the agency of man in all the acknowledged cases of mental healing. Some of these healers are by no means conspicuously godly either in conviction or character. They make no appeal to God in their action, and their dependence is on themselves or on some subtle law or force in nature which is evoked into action by their will or mental agency. Neither the moral nor religious character is the meas- ure of the healing power of man. Some of the best of people have very little of this power ; while it is pos- sessed in a larger degree by some of inferior moral spirituality. How to explain it fully is yet beyond our power, because we cannot fully explain' the law of the agency in general, or of the healing agency of some good people. But we can do something toward it now. One of the laws of mental healing is that there must be an active faith on the part of the patient. This is manifest all through the New Testament. Jesus, it is 2IO CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. said, " could do no mighty works at Nazereth, because of their unbelief." When one patient solicited his aid, Jesus said : " Believest thou that I am able to do this ? " " Yea Lord," was the response, and then the work was done. Concerning the cripple who sat daily at the gate of the temple, it is said that "Peter, seeing he had faith to be Jiealed, said, look on us," and then enjoined him to rise up and walk. In some cases physical paralysis is the effect of a mental impression. This can be cured by the removal of that impression, and by nothing else. In all such cases, what is needed is to change the mental current from acquiescence in a supposed necessity into a hopeful and assured energy against it. No mat- ter how this is done or by whom, it will be none the less effective. The patient may think it is directly of God, or indirectly through the pious faith or science of the human operator, whether he is realy good or not ; or he may be indifferent to all this, and discern or assume that it is all and wholly a natural human process and cause as well as result ; and a bad man may be just as effective as a good man in promoting this. There is also an erroneous mental action which is yet beneficial. If one is disposed to believe in supernatural agency, and believes in the pure intentions of a mental practitioner, he may thence be incited to a health-giving mental action and ascribe the effect to God and his holy messenger, though this same messenger may be far re- moved from a holy character or a divine influence. It is thus that worthless wandering preachers, "revivalists," may be the means of good to many who have faith in God as speaking and acting through those men. There is also a law, according to which one mind holds CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 211 an ascendancy over another by a non-moral force which operates irrespective of the moral character of its sub- ject. A known bad man may thus attain entire domin- ion over a good man, and lead him to a mental action which may speedily conquer some forms of disease. The same effect may be wrought by the same character on one who is not good, and cares for no good except what is selfish. In such mental healing character goes for little or nothing. It should be considered lso, that bad men may be the vehicle of divine power and a genuine healing truth and virtue. They are not near so likely to be thus favored as good men. They are not the regular and normal channels of such influence. But this influence is so large and liberal that it occasionally flows over, into and through unworthy characters for the good of others. A selfish intellect may lay hold of an idea and work it well for selfish ends, concealing and disguising its object that it may be the more successful. The thoroughness and permanence of the healing agency in all such cases depends considerably on the patient. In proportion as his mental action is radically in harmony with the moral and spiritual, as well as the material laws of the universe, it will be eternally healthy. It is good to the core and to the everlasting foundation of things. It may not effect every good thing at once. In proportion also, as it involves any radical discord, it will have to become manifest in some form of evil which it generates. It should be also considered that those who are bad people are not wholly bad. There is " a better nature " belonging to them ; and this all along has its influence, 212 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. and at brief intervals has the ascendency, when tempta- tion too strong for its associated evil is absent. Most bad people will do good when it coincides with their rec- ognized interest, and they will be glad that they can be good so easily and cheaply ; and the Spirit of Goodness which informs the universe utilizes this disposition and makes them so far the channels of its power and in- fluence. A little reflection will further remind us that a selfish will may intensify personal potency in working for ends which are objectively good. Selfish passion and greed are generally more intense than goodness and benevo- lence, and their power to stimulate action correspondingly strong. It is seldom we see self-forgetful goodness as wide awake as self-seeking zeal. If, however, the selfish disposition can wear the airs and aspect of goodness and righteousness in pursuing its own ends, its action becomes more free and happy, and it is quickened into a more ardent and effective dilligence by this simulated virtue. It will thence often impose upon itself, and still more frequently upon others. Thus the human Satan, posing as an angel of light, half believes that he is an angel of light, and entitled to consideration accordingly, and with the aid of those whom he has " deceived" he will "make war on the saints," as if they were the dragons teeth and he the Christ come to inflict vengence. It is not usually best for physicians to depend wholly on themselves. So is it here. A sick person, even though skilled in Christian Pneumatopathy, should usu- ally seek the help of another. But neither is he to de- pend wholly on another. In ordinary conditions each one should depend on himself. He should be the source CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 213 of perpetual health to himself. He should avoid becom- ing sick, and if he finds himself overtaken by some trouble he should set to work for its destruction. The leaves which are for the healing of the nations are within the reach of all. It has been supposed they grow only in some far off and other-world paradise. But they are "the word of faith which we preach." As Paul teaches, it is foolish to think of fetching Christ from heaven or from the deep. He is always nigh us, even in our heart, and we need only exercise the God-given power. Oh ye ailing ones, your ailments are not of God, except as they are a call for you to bring into proper action your high endowments as the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. In all their affliction he is afflicted, because he is grieved that they are afflicted instead of being whole and happy. Therefore, be ye " complete in Christ." 214 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XXXIV. ENDOWMENT AND SCIENCE OF HEALING. The gift of healing is from God, whether as a natural endowment or a gracious communication. Here all are not alike, and no power of mere human education or culture can make them alike. There are diversities of operations by the same spirit, and as a consequence, there are, diversities of gifts. Paul is very full and ex- plicit on this subject. He refers to it frequently, and with admirable pith and point, and force of illustration ; he fills with it the twelfth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians. It is worth quoting entire. Take the following verses: 4-21. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of Administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestations of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the words of Wisdom ; to another, the word of knowl- edge by the same Spirit ; to another faith by the same Spirit ; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit ; to another the working of miracles ; to another, proph- esy ; to another, discerning of spirits ; to another, divers kinds of tongues ; to another, interpretation of tongues. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 215 But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will, — for the body is not one member, but many — and the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. There is a dif- ference of members and functions with unity of interest and harmony of operations. We cannot turn the nose into an eye, nor the eye into the tongue. Each member must be what it is made, and it can fill an office which can be filled by no other mem- ber .as well. So we cannot make Pneumapathic healers of any to whom God has denied the gift. He has not absolutely denied it to any, but in some people it is less prominent than other gifts, while in some it is perhaps the most prominent gift they have. So some have very little faculty for teaching, while others have it in a large and eminent degree. The consideration of these facts is necessary for a wise determination of the question of study. While all ought to study Pneumatopathy enough to make some good use of it in their daily life for themselves and others ; some who show special gifts for the work should give to it deep and prolonged study with all the helps they can command, that they may be " thoroughly fur- nished unto every good work" in this line, and be ''work- men who need not be ashamed of their work, and then the cause need not be ashamed to have them as its rep- resentatives. This principle being held in view, the doctrine will not be responsible for the inefficiency of incompetent per- sons, who fail to fulfill or to realize expectations, and who thence generate skepticism in others, and perhaps yield 2l6 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. to it themselves. Such persons have simply mistaken their calling; and the sooner they seek some other vocation the better for them and the cause of Pneuma- topathy. Not every good man is competent to be a preacher or a theologian, nor every healthy man a phy- sician. Every member of the great spiritual body to its proper office. It has been argued that since Pneumatopathy is a science, it should be equally good for all. Principles and laws, it is argued, are unchanging, and cover all persons and all cases. This is all very true. But all persons do not, therefore, have an equal understanding of the prin- ciples and laws, and how to use them and apply them in all cases. Some have here an insight which is denied to others. Some have a power of conviction and such a grasp of Pneumapathic truth that they are irresistible where others are quite powerless. Discrimination and common-sense in the choice of vocation are as necessary here as anywhere else. It is not disparagement of the sciences of mathe- matics that everybody is not competent to be proficient in the knowledge and comprehension of them. The science of optics is not nullified, because there are blind men and persons of defective sight. The sciences of geography, of geology and of astronomy are not brought into reasonable doubt among educated people, because there still are people who cannot comprehend the Copernicon system, or "the story of the rocks." For the comprehension and due prosecution of the sciences, we need common gifts, and special gifts, and these systematically cultivated in given directions. Sci- ence is one thing. The gift for its effective prosecution CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 21/ is another thing. Both are necessary. To this the greatest and latest born of all sciences, Pneumatopathy, is no exception. However immutable its principles, how- ever uniform and inflexibly constant their operations, they will, for that very reason, be different in their effect relative to different agents. This is the law of all truths and forces. Change the connection and the result is changed. The sun shining through blue glass is not the same in effect as when shining through red glass or through colorless glass. The same sun pouring his beams through a clear atmosphere or a dense fog produces very different effects. So the same eternal truth percolating through some minds is as dull and dubious as fog-banks ; and shining through other minds, it appears a full-orbed bright luminary. There are some who think that a certain verbal shibo- leth, however uttered or by whom, will have the same unfailing effect. Blow your horn and the walls fall down, no matter about priest or ark or inspiring God. Utter your sesame, and rocky masonry gives way and lets you into countless treasures. Rub your larnp, and lo ! all the spiritual world come to offer you their free ser- vice. It makes no difference whether you be fool or knave, you can rub your lamp or count your beads or say your Pneumapathic Paternoster and Ave Maria, and that is always decisive. This is caricature taken for simple truth. This cause demands adapted intelligence, moral honesty, earnestness and goodness, and devout religious feeling. Those of this character only, can well under- stand and apply with the best results, the immutable and sublime and holy principles of Pneumatopathy. 2l8 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XXXV. MODERN WITCHCRAFT. When the power of direct healing as a natural endow- ment of the human mind is allowed, as it must be to some extent, we are confronted with the counter thought, if not fact, — the direct power of the human mind for the production of various evils. Mental healers should be divided into two classes, those who make Deity the exclusive factor, and those who attribute the same power in a degree to the human mind. The first class even admit the second point, with the addition that the human mind may do evil as well as good, while God can do only good. We have here, then, in claim and theory the nucleus of a new and modern form of the ancient doctrine that we may affect others for good or ill by mental action. The evil action here affirms as possible is what was once termed witchcraft, though all witchraft was not of evil intent. It rather promises good to those who sought its aid. It was for this that Saul sought the witch of Endor, and it was for some advantage or other the witches in all the ages were resorted to. Though it was perhaps gen- erally supposed to be of diabolical origin or from spirits out of harmony with God, yet it was not always and wholly evil in its purpose and rction. It was here like the alleged modern power of mental healing and mental CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 219 injury, though it was more predominantly in the direc- tion of evil. Of course the intent of healing power is wholly good, and there can be no question that there is a degree of this power, which has been at intervals, and irregularly, manifested through the ages, and which, if scientifically cultivated, may become a more general and tractable agency. But there is no faculty of human nature, which may not be perverted, and there is no power for good, which by perversity, may not become a power for evil. If one mind can affect another, and through it the body for good to heal, to strenghten, to sooth and cheer, it would seem that it can exercise a corresponding power for results, which are of an opposite nature, and that it does do this, we have in some degree various and multi- plying evidence. Nothing is more familiar, than that man and animals often make themselves sick and sad, and even kill themselves with fear and anxiety and for- boding. To talk in a melancholy way to a person of susceptible temperament, will have a depressing influ- ence. Hence, whether true or not, it accords with the law of mental influence ; that, as the story goes, a num- ber of persons conspired to meet a person of susceptible temperament in succession, and at intervals, with great solemnity, and signs of sorrow and sympathy, to tell him how ill he seemed, how he was sinking in apparent health and vigor, and how if something should not be speedily done, he could not live long, and that as a result he became seriously ill and died. Occurrences which clearly exemplifies the principle in question are frequent. Any personal presence is always an influence. The dis- position which we are indulging, and the general cast of 220 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. our thought, though unexpressed, will influence a sym- pathetic person who is present with us. Still stronger will this effect be, if there is a design of the kind. Now then, if there is such a thing as telepathic influence, for good or for evil, and if this has any power of develop- ment by culture, what have we here, that could not easily with a little exaggeration, be construed into the witchcraft of bygone days ? This is not a mere theory, but it has been erected into what has been denominated a science, and reduced to practice by some people whom we have well and inti- mately known. We have known of them deliberately setting to work, mentally, to produce infirmities, disease, misfortunes and failures upon others. They have done this ostensibly in self-defense, alleging, though without proof, that others were practicing the same dark game on them, and that by meeting out to them, the measure they were meeting to others they would reform them. This may seem a page too dark for publication in our day, but it is a page of veritable history, and not so pri- vate but that it is known to many; and the principle of it is admitted by hundreds among a certain class who are called by a very sacred and noble name, who have their chief head-quarters at Boston, under the lead and control of one who claims to be the infallibly inspired revealer of a system of truth, of which this forms a part. Elsewhere I have given witnesses and sworn testimony to this. We thus see that modern thought itself, while it widens its scope, here and there reveals a cloudy and tempestuous region on its horizon, and science still needs to keep at work, in order to dispel and disperse the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 221 ghosts and fiends of a dark imagination and of base and superstituous fear, jealously and hate. Still there is small cause for general and serious alarm. These same would-be witches, who freely charge witch- craft, under the name of mesmerism, on others, are apparently quite powerless. There is no clear scientific evidence that they have ever reduced anybody to a cin- der, or "thought arsenic into their stomach" or burned them away slowly in a blue light, or whisked them off up the chimney and carried them to the moon on a broom- stick. But who knows what may come with the progress of science in this direction ? The law of mental healing is by spirit to spirit and thence to the sensible organism. It implies the concur- rence of minds. Mental healing is not a forced benefac- tion, but in the main it is solicited and co-operative. There are cases which seem an exception to this, but it is only seeming ; and did space allow, these could be well explained. If the human mind is able to pervert any of its powers, it can pervert its power over other minds, and thence over their organism. If it can wish them good, it can wish them evil. A mesmerist can generate painful as well as pleasant sensations. But the mesmerist can have little or no power over those who firmly oppose his purpose and influence. So it is with any effort at mental evil, as well as good. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Modern witchcraft is powerless where fear and supersti- tion have no power leading to the surrender of the soul to known or supposed evil wishes and intentions, and to that extent all such evil is self-generated. If we neither know nor believe in such intentions they cannot have the 222 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. slightest influence on us, so far as I have been able to ascertain. Here we have the law of Treatment at a distance. As a rule, I think it will be ineffective where there is no knowledge of it, and therefore, concurrence with it. To some extent, therefore, the cause as well as the effect is subjective. But it is not entirely so. There is a con- current and co-operative mental action. It is now con- ceded that there is such a thing as telepathy. One mind reaches the other, and as it would not do but for their having put themselves by agreement in spiritual connec- tion with each other, so that each acts with the force of both, plus the principles on which they both act. Telepathic action for good is thus possible and scien- tifically verifiable. But telepathic influence for evil is not thus possible, because no one will concur like that in deliberately co-operating for his own injury. Thus we see how this modern "Voodooing" is divested of its power and danger and terrors ; while the principle of telepathic influence is vindicated. Its power for good is great, while its power for evil is very small, and virtually nill. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 223 CHAPTER XXXVI. DIVINE AGENCY IN HEALING. All healing is a generation or restoration of the con- cordant and effective action of all the members in the discharge of their functions. It is, therefore, always a procedure which conforms the action of all the mem- bers with the law of their complex relations to each other. Now, as we have seen, there are different classes and grades of laws, and there may, therefore, be con- formity with the lower grades when there is discord with the higher. In this case, there will be health in the lower life when disease and error obtain in the higher form — bodily health with mental disease. Or the in- tellect may be clear and sound in reference to things of sense, while in reference to high and pure moral ques- tions, it may be dull and stupid and very perverse and awry. Now the true, the perfect and eternal health must in- clude the whole man. It must consist in a perfect bal- ance of all faculties and powers, upper and inferior, and the action and expression of one spirit and life. Then the superior will rule all below it and express itself in and through the lower. Hence, the true and perfect and permanent healing must be religious, divine in its ultimate reference and 224 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. dominant quality. The healer allies and unites himself in faith, character and purpose with God. He reverently and humbly, yet surely, seeks the divine interposition and help. He does not expect God to resort to any manifest independent action. But as he, the healer, con- forms to the spiritual law of divine requirement, he be- comes the fit living channel of divine agency, which otherwise would be impossible. He touches with the key of spiritual life the electric chord of the divine anergy and conducts that energy from God to his needy fellow man. If then the invalid is concurrent with him, he is benefited from the crown to the sole of his being ; and so far as it extends, the benefit is abiding, for it is the communication of eternal life. On the other hand, if the patient and the healer are concerned only for the flesh, for the advantages of this lower world of sense, then there is only the healing action of mortal thought, all on this plane alone. The healing effects may last while 'this form of life lasts, but it cannot last longer, because it does not reach higher to the spiritual and abiding super-sensible life, and it may have been made the occasion of injuring the higher life. Nay, it must have operated to this result, because ignor- ing the better life is injurious to it, and is condemnatory and degrading. Therefore, a healing which is not under the control of a truly devout and pure and spiritual disposition and intent, is only of a temporary and superficial advantage at the best, and may turn out ultimately to be none at all, but an injury. Here is the philosophy and law of a true Pneumato- pathy. The highest and best of powers should suffuse CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 225 and animate all the rest. The patient and physician should understand this, and should theoretically and practically concur in it. This is the soul and proper sig- nificance and end of our great movement of Pneumato- pathy. To impress this, to promote this, and to teach this, with all the thought and knowledge subservient to it, is the work of Pneumatopathy. It is equally holy and philosophical. With reverence and hope let us enter here, and with diligence and prayer pursue our task. God's agency is wholly and only good, now and for- ever. As related to his action and purpose, all apparent evil is only an unpleasant and temporary form of good. He doeth all things well. So must it be with us so far as we are one with him. We seek the removal of all evil, as pain and disability, and will do it as far as we can. God seeks the same end, but he seeks spiritual good more than the sensible, and he, therefore, may per- mit the creature's self-made evil until it can be removed according to law, and according to highest law, which includes all lower laws as their regulator and end. The doctrine here set forth every one will see is in accord with the teachings of the Bible. The only differ- ence is that the Bible enjoins conformity with the law of faith as a condition of success, while we here expound the law of faith as spiritual intuition or intelligence. i. Sickness is not natural. God made all things " very good." 2. He made the universe, not as a laboratory of medicine, but as the home of an innocent and healthy race. 3. Sickness is declared in Deut. xxviii. to be the " curse " of the law. In Galatians Christ is declared to have redeemed us from the curse of the law. This must include sickness. 4. In Ex. xv. 26, : God tells his people that if they will walk obedi- 226 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. ently in his ways, he will keep them from the diseases of Egypt, and announces himself as their constant Healer. 5. In Num. xx., 8: He heals them when bitten by fiery serpents through a look upon the type of Jesus a brazen serpent. 6. In the thirty-third chapter of Job and in the history of Job himself, we find sickness coming through the power of Satan, as God's second voice, to recal men from his error, and taken away when he learns his lessons. 7. In Psalm ciii. 2 : David praises God for healing just as he does for forgiveness and salvation. 8. In Psalm xci : God promises protection for our bodies as well as our souls, if we abide in him. 9. In 1 Chron. xvi : Asa dies in his sickness, because he seeks not unto the Lord, but to the physicians. 10. In Isa. xxxviii : Hezekiah lives, because he seeks not unto the physicians, but the Lord, forgetful of God. 11. In Isa. liii., 4: The removal of our diseases is included in Christ's atonement along with our sins. 12. In Matthew viii., 17, Christ fulfils these words, " healing all that were sick." 13. In Luke xiii., 16: He declared that the infirm woman was bound by Satan and ought to be loosed. 14. In Luke x. the ministry of healing is given to the seventy, who represent the future workers of the church. 15. In Mark xvii, 18, it is given to " all them that believe these things." 16. In James v, 14, it is committed to the Elders of the church. 17. In 1 Cor. xii, it is bestowed upon the whole church as one of its ministries and gifts, until Jesus comes. 18. In Rom. viii., 11, it is declared to be the Spirit's work to quicken our mortal bodies now in this life. 19. In 2 Cor. iv., 8, we are promised the life of Jesus in our mortal flesh. 20. In 1 Cor. 6 : Our bodies are called members of Christ, and the body is said to be for the Lord and the Lord for the body. We have seen how the human mind can operate on others in the production of health or disease only through the concurrence of other minds ; and as they will not con- cur to their own known disadvantage, there is here little CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 227 danger, except to a few of weak and superstitious nature. On the other hand, those who are true and godly Pneu- matopathists, can never attempt or wish ought but good, and only good can come from their mental action. This, of course, all will see at once, because the Good cannot seek and perpetuate evil. Here another principle comes in to modify and enlarge our view and action concerning the healing of those who are at a distance and unaware of our treatment of them. Our action being a co-operation with God, it is not limi- ted in its effect and influence, like the unaided action of the mere human mind. In God and through God we may affect the unknowing and unknown, the involuntary as well as the voluntary. We may change their minds from error to truth, lead them to receive the truth and iavor the action of Pneumatopathy. We can thus move them to good. This is the way religion has always spoken, and it has ascribed this power to believing prayer in accordance with the mind of God. This Godly Pneu- mathic treatment is of the essence of prayer. It is prayer comprehending itself, breathing at once the atmosphere of faith and science, supported by the two pillars of intelligence and trust ; and these blend into one as an intelligent trust or a trustful intelligence. Its only element is goodness, its only witchery is divine and holy love, its only arrows and spells are truth, faith and prayer. There has been an effort made to separate Pneumato- pathy from religion. That were to separate a thing from its very soul and life. It is the unreligious healing which we would repress to the utmost. That healing is not all that it ought to be, either for the healer or the 228 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. healed. "They heal the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saith the Lord." If it is meant only to say, that Pneumatopathists need not set up a separate Church, there is no harm in that opinion and it is not unreasonable. People of all churches may be Pneuma- topathists if the churches will leave them in peace, as they sometimes will. There is nothing very peculiar in the religion of Pneu- matopathy, or in its theology. It claims simply to be the New Testament theology and religion scientifically ex- pounded. It attempts to give a philosophy of the mira- cles of the Bible, and lift them out of the fog-sphere of marvel and mystery, and plant them on solid earth. We accept the wonders, and show them not so wonderful as to be incredible or inconsistent with science and philos- ophy ; and in all this there is nothing to separate Chris- tians from each other, but much to unite them, and no obvious reason for setting up a special and new denomi- nation. But we are painfully aware that Pneumatopathists of much activity and influence are not always untrammeled in their old Church connections. They are sometimes shunned, occasionally affronted, almost insulted, so that the pleasures of fraternity and of home-feeling are seriously marred. Besides, their views are covertly or openly assailed or misrepresented, perhaps unconsciously from the pulpit, and they have no adequate advocate and defence. They, therefore, need a pulpit or platform where their doctrine shall find a just expression and a worthy vindication against its enemies. This will grad- ually enlighten the regular Church and pulpit, and render a spiritual and intellectual affiliation possible. In the CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 229 meanwhile, we should not advise any Pneumatopathists to leave their own connection. The new Church should not exclude the old. It should be such that they can belong to it while still members of the old Chureh — unless the latter exclude them on that account, which would be a rare occurrence. 23O CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XXXVII. SUPER-SENSIBLE MALADIES. The treatment of mental maladies is peculiar and manifestly appropriate to Pneumatopathy. The mala- dies which are so designated are indeed no more mental than other maladies ; but they are supersensible, and this characteristic has secured them the exclusive name of mental on the old theory of dualism. Some of these maladies have a sensible origin. They may result from some injury to the brain, which is quite frequent. Surgical skill may at first be here of service ; but its service soon comes to an end. The exercise of skill in surgery, as any where else, is the action of mind. It is, therefore, not necessarily out of place in Pneumatopathy, and may be appropriated as one of its branches. A proper regulation of sensible conditions and surround- ings is the next step, under the direction and inspiration of Pneumapathic wisdom. Finally, when the patient is prepared for it, the direct and declared action of mind upon his mind must be put into operation. This will make his own mental action healthy, and stimulate it into vigorous action. This will in turn operate on the brain, and gradually restore it to its normal form and healthy action, which again will react on the mind. Most of these super-sensible maladies originate in un- CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 23 I due mental excitement, and in fear and care and various anxieties. These affect the brain and the whole nervous tissue, and thence the condition of the entire organism. The materialism of our times leads people in this condi- tion to resort to drugs. It is said "they need to be toned up," and for this purpose nostrums of all kinds and in endless quantities are prescribed or procured. Every house is extensively a depository of drugs and drug bottles. Quack medicines are sold by the cart-load, and they are the most conspicuous and familiar of all classes of advertisements. The starving need to be " toned up" with food. But no one was ever "toned up " with drugs, especially people of this class. Only the healing virtue of a powerful, healthy, mental action can be of any ser- vice to them. To thoughtful men this is becoming well known, and more than they are aware they act on the principle we inculcate. Our asylums for the insane practically ac- knowledge it in no small degree. Their chief treatment is mental, as it must be. But they do not proceed about it formally and scientifically. This makes them im- mensely less efficient than they ought to be. They also to a large extent, reverse the proper order of aims and influences. They seek to operate on the mind through the senses, and ignore the mightier agency of operating directly by mind on both mind and body. They work at the effect instead of the cause of the malady. Some bodily diseases very manifestly imjure the mind and some do not. On the other hand, some mental dis- eases seriously injure the body and some do not. Melan- cholia usually injures or diminishes vitality ; but a happy or stimulating lunacy, or even mania, sometimes or fre- 232 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. quently intensifies and heightens physical vigor, and this class of mental invalids often retain their health and bodily energy to advanced old age, and wear out most of their early keepers and guardians. For the most effective action in this sphere of Pneu- matopathy we need what Pneumatopathy imparts and fosters, a clear intuition of spiritual life and law, and a practical assurance which grows out of this. This will beget a courage which will not falter in emergencies, and an equinimity which is not easily disturbed by cir- cumstances which are either appalling or provoking. These are the conditions always of the most powerful healing agency ; as they are every way the foster-parent of all excellence. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 233 CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE OF PNEUMATOPATHY. We are now prepared for the question of the principle by which the healing is affected. Several answers have been given, all of which are inadequate, and they become misleading when put forth, as they are, as the scientific exposition of the subject. One of these supposed explanations, and the most popular, is that as our own thought affects the body, we cure ourselves and others by generating the conviction of being well. The conviction and cure will often coin- cide, perhaps always ; but they are not related to each other as cause and effect, except in an uncertain and partial degree. Many believe they are well when they are dying. Many believe they are sick and hurt where they are not. Many try to believe they are well and find it impossible. Faith . has its function here, but it is not the exclusive and all-potent factor in the work of mental healing; and what its office is, we shall see as we proceed. Another explanation, is "the understanding of Truth." But this is perhaps, more lame and inadequate than the other. If we apply this to God, we see its utter improb- ability and irrelevancy. God's understanding is always infinitely perfect. It never, in that respect, undergoes 234 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. any changes. If God is the supremely potent factor, and that because of a perfect understanding of Truth, then all must be healed at once and forever. Nay, there could never be any call for healing, for the infinite under- standing of God must preclude all evil or belief of evil, which is itself an evil, especially if false. If we apply this doctrine to man, its fallacy is also strikingly manifest. For one to understand any truth does not necessarily affect for either good or evil those who know neither the truth nor the person who does understand. Timbucto is not affected by our solitary and undisclosed thinking in Boston, however good that thinking and understanding may be, nor whatever truth it comprehends. Further, if the great truth which, if understood, is said to be effective and beneficent, is that "man being the eternal and perfect idea and likeness and reflection of God, there is no eviV , then I need not utter it. My understanding is itself sufficient, as the dogma declares. It is, therefore, quite enough for me to sit still at home, or go about other business. I understand the great truth all the same, having once learned it, whatever I am do- ing and wherever I am. Place and circumstances and occupation do not destroy my understanding of the truth. Hence, no change is ever required of these conditions in order to the fullest action of healing power anywhere. But this does not accord with facts, nor with the prac- tice of those who advocate very dogmatically this dogma. They go about to visit their patients, or have their patients visit them. Then they repeat, audibly or inaud- ibly, what they understand. They thus go through a special mental exercise ; and it is this exercise on which CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 235 they depend for healing. This produces an effect on the mind of the patient, and sets that at work, and thence the body in a health-generating way. These people sometimes do heal, but their theory does not explain adequately their own operation and its results and limi- tations. They are right only in the general principle that mind heals ; but utterly wrong in their theoretic exposition of the intellectual modus operandi. Again, if the understanding of this great dogma, that there is no evil, is of itself the great and exclusive heal- ing agency, then we need not know of any particular case of evil in order to remove it. Our understanding will remove that without any sensible knowledge and action, which are according to the theory in question pronounced to be nothing and powerless. We need not to be informed of the sickness of A, B and C in order to heal them. We understand the great truth just as well before, as after we know them and their " belief." We may say the same of all men and their ailments ; and on this principle we ought to cure them all without knowing them. If our understanding of the truth alone is the healing power, then they would all be healed the instant I or any one attained this understanding. But as all maladies are not annihilated, we must conclude, either that this doctrine is erroneous, or that no one, not even the advocates of the dogma, nor even God himself, has this understanding, so that if the doctrine were true, it is worthless. Understanding of truth is necessary, and faith in in- finite Goodness is necessary. But these are not enough. They must be applied and used, and thus made effective. We must understand the truth and believe that we can 236 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. avail ourselves of it, by putting ourselves in proper rela- tions with it, and with God and our needy fellow-creatures ; and then we must do this. When all this is done, and not before, the divine benefaction comes, and God is present to heal. There is, therefore, for the highest benefit, something to be done by the patient as well as the physician. He must draw nigh to God that God may draw nigh to him, and he must co-operate with the human agent in the work in the process of divine healing. There is a union of intelligent thought and of devout trusting hearts and of active purpose. Suffering is not fundamental and ultimate in the econ- omy of God. It is allowed, not as an end, but a means and accident, and so the divine goodness has ordained by law to end it when our subjective connections and condition render it possible and proper. Into the full exposition of this we cannot enter. We can only give this indication. Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible to give it adequate expression in the written word. The element is too fine and subtle to be caught and transfixed in the sensible stereotypes. The subtler forces of personal presence and its influences and expressions are necessary for the adequate commu- nication, or rather, generation of the conception, and the realization of the Power and its procedure. Growing out of our previous expositions there are certain formula which will occur to the thoughtful stu- dent that might with advantage be often used in treating the sick. It is not necessary or best to put them in print. They are best reserved from the inconsiderate and unenlightened ; and communicated only by the living CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 237 spirit, just as the most sacred feelings find utterance only in solitude or in the ear of most intimate friends. He who is filled with the Spirit of Pneumatopathy will divine the process and will readily comprehend and assimilate what is thus uttered in his prepared ear. 238 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. CHAPTER XXXIX. SYNOPSIS OF PNEUMATOPATHY. PARTS FIRST AND SECOND. How many Grand Divisions are there in Pneumato- pathy ? Six. What are the First and Second Divisions ? They are the Relation of Pneumatopathy to God and historic evolution. How is it related to God ? First, in that all mental action naturally leads up to God. All thought of good suggests God as its source and perfect subject. All thought of evil suggests God as its destroyer. The student will here enlarge and give examples, and show how all mental healing thus depends on the action of the Infinite, directly or indirectly. How else is Pneumatopathy related to God ? In that the agency of mental healing is involved in the very conception of God as the Infinitely Perfect Mind. How does that involve Pneumatopathy ? Because the mind of Infinite Goodness must do good and only good ; and that must be divine mental healing for the sick under proper conditions ; and it will also naturally make the created mind a channel of its healing agency. How else is Pneumatopathy connected with the thought of God? CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 239 Because God must be conceived as making his crea- tures in this respect like himself. As they are finite minds, this gift must be conceived as a part of their en- dowment. How is this further seen ? In history, since history as a whole is a progress in mentality, an advance toward and in spiritual conception, so that the conception that all is mind, and that so mind is the only power, is the latest and highest evolution of thought. Let the student enlarge on this and give the steps of the historic progression. PART THIRD. What is the Third Great Division of Pneumatopathy ? Its relation to Law as an essential characteristic of all things. What has that to do with Pneumatopathy ? It suggests that there are Laws of mental healing, that, therefore, there is a Science of mental healing, which science is rightly designated by the term Pneuma- topathy. What is the source of Law ? The nature of things. Their action is from their nature, and therefore, so long as their nature is the same, their action will be the same in the same conditions. So long as stones are stones, as stones they will act. So of everything else. Thus law is a necessity from the nature of things. (Let the student elucidate this by further examples.) What connection has this with Pneumatopathy ? It shows the fundamental character of Pneumatopathy 24O CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. — that it is not artificial and superficial, that it is inher- ent in the nature of all reality, in the nature of the divine mind, and thence in some degree in the human mind, which improves in this power by connection with the divine ; and that the healing power is not accidental and arbitrary, but follows necessary laws, which we are to observe. There are laws of the divine activity. God must act from and in accordance with his eternal nature, which gives the perfect laws of his action and of his require- ments ; and these are perfect, because the divine nature is perfect, and they all, therefore, operate for the highest good in their ultimate issue. Hence, there are laws of finite and human activity and responsibility. What two great classes of laws are there ? The class of Executive laws, and the class of Injunc- tive laws. Let the student define these and illustrate them by examples, and show how one generates tempo- rary evil as well as good, and how the other enjoins only good, and then show how to turn the temporary evil into eternal good. Hence, there is a law of duty in regard to healing, enjoining the use and development of the power in re- sisting and conquering certain forms of evil which are designed to be temporary, and which may endure longer or shorter, according as man developes and uses well this great power. What is the Third Part of Pneumatopathy ? Part Third is Pneumatopathy in relation to Good and Evil. What are good and evil ? CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 24I They are the harmony and discord of experience and mental action. Here let the student enlarge and illus- trate by instances. Why do you say harmony of experiences and mental action, instead of saying harmony of things ? Because we know things only by experience, and as experiences or mental actions and states, and because it is only the harmony of subjective states that is of any importance. What is the value and interest of anything except for its bearing on character and happiness ? Here let the student illustrate at length. What relation does this sustain to Pneumatopathy ? A close and vital relation, because Pneumatopathy expounds and exemplifies the laws of harmony in our organic, as well as super-sensible conditions or experien- ces. It is the bestowment of health, wholeness, sanity, perfection, and an exposition of the principles by which this is achieved. What is the origin of Good ? It has no origin. It is eternal and infinite in the being: and attributes of God. How does this bear on Pneumatopathy ? Pneumatopathy is like religion, and is a religion, in that it is the science of goodness, of the laws of diffus- ing good and destroying evil. It is, therefore, the ex- pression of eternal and immutable principle. It is vitally rooted in the eternal substance of Being. It is the supreme law of existence to do good and to remove and destroy to the utmost every form and degree of evil. This is the source of Pneumatopathic healing power, and the warrant for all honest effort in this direction. 242 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. No one who wields any such power needs any human certificate of right, though certificates are often a safe- guard against quacks and pretenders and dishonest per- sons, and unreliable or unsound characters. Is there any evil ? That meets us everywhere, and to deny it were a satire on the sanity of the speaker. Evil is conscious discord, and of that we are all too well aware, else we should not here be out of harmony with the assertions of any other person or party. The denial of the existence of evil is inconsistent with every theory of healing, physical and mental, because in that case there is no healing, and no room for a meaning in any theory of healing. How is the existence of evil consistent with the exist- ence of infinite goodness ? If goodness is infinite, where is the possibility of evil ? Infinity is not an aggregated quantity, and therefore, it is not made up of all the separate objects of the universe. Such an infinite would be only the indefinite, because however vast and multitudinous we conceive this uni- verse and its objects, we shall always be able to say that these might be greater ; and, however high in the scale of excellence it may be, we should still be able to say, it might and possibly will be or may be more excel- lent ; for we conceive that it exists and is operated under the law of everlasting progress. Therefore, the term in- finite good does not apply to the finite phenomena of the universe. These are not God, who alone is infinitely good ; and these objects may, therefore, be variously im- perfect and involve degrees and forms of incidental and temporary evil. This we know to be a fact, explain it as we may, or leave it unexplained. CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 243 How is it possible for Infinite goodness to permit the existence of evil ? Because he cannot help it. Does not that imply that God is limited, as John Stuart Mill argues, either in his power or his wisdom or his goodness ? No, because it is not the prerogative of the Infinite to prevent all evil, but only such evil as cannot in any wise be effectively connected with or conducive to a higher good than were otherwise possible. Why does not the Infinite attain the higher good with- out the evil ? Would not that be far better ? That were impossible even for the Infinite. Is anything too hard for God, and will you limit the Holy One of Israel ? As evil is known to exist, it is more honorable to God to relieve him of all responsibility for it, than to say, he could have prevented it, and would not. There are some things manifestly too hard for God, and to say this is not to limit him, because infinity has its logical limitations. Infinity cannot be finite. Eternal Truth cannot lie, and Infinite Intelligence cannot err or contradict itself. Nor can Infinite Power do anything which involves a self-contradiction. It cannot make valleys without hills, or a short line without ends. It cannot endow the finite without the prerogatives of infinity, or exempt it from the conditions necessarily inherent to finity or the special forms and limits thereof. It cannot confer the fixity of unvolitional necessity on freedom, nor moral responsibility on the unconscious or the unvolitional and necessitated. 244 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. What classes of evil are there ? There are two classes, the moral and the non-moral. What is the non-moral ? It is that which comes inevitably from the action of natural law. Here examples are to be given. What is moral evil ? That is sin. — It is the wilful perversion of free moral agency. It is doing evil when we should do good, or failing to do a required good, which it was in our power to do. There is such evil, and this is incomparably the most dreadful of all evil. Can natural evil be turned to good ? Yes, in various ways, so that ultimately moral good will bring all things into harmony with itself ; and this is the law and end of finite existence. Here give illustrations of this principle, and show its partial working. What has Pneumatopathy to do with this ? Pneumatopathy is a moral agent using natural law for its moral intent, to bring all into everlasting harmony. It is thus the expression of the divine mind and the highest form of created agency. Natural good and evil through the uniform action of natural forces, is a necessary guide to man's growing in- telligence, and also a proof and test of individual charac- ter; and it furnishes a field for the developement of character, intellectual and moral. Let the student unfold this at length. Has God any knowledge of evil ? Yes, because he knows all things, all thoughts, all ex- periences, whether sensible or super-sensible, which CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 245 include evil as well as good. We know evil, much more he, though he cannot know it by experience as we know it. Here go with the student over the Biblical and psy- chological proofs on the subject. If God is omnipresent and is wholly good, where is there room for evil ? God and goodness do not fill space. That is only filled by sensible phenomena, which are no part of God, and which are both good and evil. Then there are evil thoughts and feelings which are super-sensible, and which, therefore, do not occupy space. Does God's knowledge of evil endorse it ? No more than our knowledge of it endorses it, and no more than Christ's denunciation of known hypocrisy endorsed it. God knows it, to disapprove and to destroy it as rapidly as possible, and in the proper way, which way he also knows perfectly ; and this way Pneumato- pathy endeavors to expound and exemplify. PART FOURTH. What is comprised in Part Fourth ? An exposition of the relation of Pneumatopathy to mind and matter. What three great theories of the universe are made the theoretic basis of mental healing ? The materialistic, which affirms that all is matter ; the dualistic, which affirms two kinds of substances entirely unlike each other, and the idealistic or spiritual, which affirms that all is spirit, that what is called matter and its phenomena, are only the ideas of spirit or mental phenomena. 246 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. What is the historic order of their development ? First, the material theory, then the dualistic, and lastly, the spiritual. This indicates the permanence of the last. With this, Pneumatopathy began its course, and still holds to it for the most part, and the other two theories have tried with ill success to graft it on to them- selves. What is the evidence that all is mind ? The evidence of consciousness, which never gets be- yond itself, so that all we immediately know are modes of self, and hence we should affirm no more, and are soon found contradicting ourselves if we do. Give examples. Is there any other class of evidence ? Yes, the Bible, which says God is a spirit, and that we are made in his likeness. What is the advantage of this doctrine in relation to Pneumatopathy ? Its simplicity simplifies Pneumatopathy. It avoids the conflict of laws between matter and spirit. As matter is conceived as wholly opposite to spirit, all its laws have to be opposed in mental healing, which makes the work unnatural, and augments it to a degree that renders it incredible ; and all the great works of the Bible are dis- credited. If all is mind, then all its action is on itself, a modification of itself in accordance with its own highest law, so that it violates no law, suspends no law, but ful- fills all law. Are we then to ignore or to contradict the senses ? We are to do neither, but observe and rightly interpret and utilize them for higher ends. What is the function of the senses ? CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. 247 To symbolize, test and educate the super-sensible faculties. What is PART FIFTH? The relation of Pneumatopathy to other sciences, such as Surgery, Physiology, Therapeutics, Hygeine and Psy- chology. It assigns to each their proper place and pre- sides over and utilizes them all. These sciences are all spiritual, because all is spirit, and in their proper conception they are branches of Pneumatopathy, which is the head of all. What is Psychology ? The doctrine of soul. It is the term which designates the science which expounds the laws of mind as mind, finite or infinite. Is there more than one mind ? Yes, there is the Infinite Mind, and there is a vast indefinite number of finite minds. These are not modes or parts or variations of the Infinite Mind, but distinct individualities, the creatures of the one Infinite. Has the human mind any intrinsic healing power as a natural endowment ? Yes, this is one of its faculties ; and men differ in degree here, as they do in other endowments, and it should be cultivated. Can bad men heal ? Sometimes and in some degree, which needs to be elucidated. Can they do harm by mental action ? Some, but not much. The law of mental influence does not favor maltreatment so much as it favors good. What is that law ? 248 CHRISTIAN PNEUMATOPATHY. It is a law of voluntary co-operation. We can do little good, usually, by mental action, where the patient does not co-operate, but resists ; and as they will resist known evil action, they are generally quite safe from its power. Was the healing power of " Christ Jesus" purely human and natural endowment ? No. It was immensely exalted by divine influence, which was bestowed in response to the spiritual needs and capabilities of Jesus. This is the proper condition of healing. The highest healing is thus the divine agency through the human, the divine suffusing, inform- ing and empowering the human. This is Pneumatopathy in its highest form ; and this is to be attained only by earnest spiritual culture. INSTITUTE OF PNEUMATOPATH, [MENTAL HEALING] 54 MONTGOMERY ST., BOSTON, MASS., AND ASBUEY PARK, N. J. Patients, both absent and present, receive faithful and ef- fective treatment at moderate prices. After long and profound study, Dr. Wm. I. Gill has con- structed the doctrine of Mental Healing into a coherent system of philosophy, which is sure to command universal confidence, and satisfy all rational and spiritual needs, and disclose the laws of all health of both body and mind. TERMS MODERATE. PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM, A metaphysical work of profound and subtle character, for advanced minds, in opposition to materialism and dualism. This profound work serves as a philosophical foundation for a true Christain Science. Address the author, WILLIAM I. GILL, 54 Montgomery Street, Boston, Mass., or at Asbury Park, N. J. In paper, 85 ce?its ; cloth, $1.50 ; postage paid. ■\