The Power and Peril of Suggestion
By Editor
Thomas Jefferson uttered a splendid sentiment which ought to be taken home to the hearts of lovers of freedom, when he said, “God Himself will not save men against their wills.” After a year’s test in San Francisco, Bishop Nichols of the Episcopal Church declares that the Emmanuel cure is a failure under the conditions followed. He says: “We discovered that it was impossible to secure beneficial results by placing patients in a psychopathic ward associated with a hospital. All the depressing influences of the hospital bore down upon them. The constant atmosphere of suffering made a cure impossible, and finally we were forced to the conclusion that we had failed.” But when Christ heals He can heal even in hospitals. Of course the Emmanuel Movement is based largely on suggestion, and with a thousand antagonistic suggestions it certainly must fail. The “Boston Medical and Surgical Journal” declares that the mainspring of hypnotism and psychotherapy is suggestion. The writer advises at first verbal suggestion; but when this fails, hypnotism. To our minds, it is wicked — the use of hypnotism under any circumstances. God did not design that the human mind should be made absolutely subject to any creature whatsoever; and the fact that it is made so, weakens the will, and makes the yielding to suggestion easier the next time. Of this, baleful influences, human and superhuman, take advantage to enslave the soul forever. A despatch from Rome, Italy, dated April 23, says that Cardinal Merry Del Val, the pope’s secretary of state, has ordered copies of every paper in America which comments on the late incident between Colonel Roosevelt and the Vatican. It is felt in Rome that the comments have been highly favorable to the Vatican, and that the affair will serve to strengthen the position of the Catholic Church in America. Just as tho criticism favorable or unfavorable, just as tho popularity or unpopularity, should decide the orthodoxy of a religion! Leon Denis, a Frenchman, has written a book in which he contends that Joan of Arc was a Spiritualist medium. The reviewer of the book in Annales des Sciences Psychiques, according to the Literary Digest, while criticizing some expressions used in the book, speaks of it favorably, and says that upon that subject Catholics and Spiritualists could join hands. There seems to be no question but that the “maid of Orleans” was led by spirits. Of this she speaks repeatedly. Robert Lee Carter in “The Constitution” declares that Mr. Bryan will withdraw from politics and will give more time to religious work. This will be largely, doubtless, in undenominational religious addresses. He has been doing much in this way for the last two or three years, and his services are in great demand, not only in this country but in England. We hope that if he gives himself to religious work, he will find the great constitutional principles of religion, and hold to them. It seems from a despatch from Atlantic City, New Jersey, of April 23, that the Atlantic Coast had been shaken somewhat. The weather bureau reported a series of earthquakes beginning at 7 o’clock and lasting until 9.20, causing windows to rattle from one end of the city to the other. Some say that the shakings began at 4 o’clock in the morning. In North Carolina, April 15, a Negro by the name of Green Hughes died at the age of 110 years. He was an ex-slave, and the son of a Negro who was the slave of George Washington. He died at the home of his youngest son, who was himself seventy-five years old. Reports are that London society has been driven wild by the barefoot dance mania. And one of the latest is that in one instance the dance was for the entertainment of “men only” and was given in a “non-conformist church.” April 23 the entire commercial section of Lake Charles, Louisiana, was destroyed by fire. The loss is estimated as over $3,000,000.