THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS
95
“It is the recollection of God, the thought of God, which in all places
and circumstances makes us see him present, lets us commune respectfully
and lovingly with him, and fills us with desire and affection for him. . . .
Would you escape from every ill? Never lose this recollection of God,
neither in prosperity nor in adversity, nor on any occasion whichsoever it
be. Invoke not, to excuse yourself from this duty, either the difficulty or
the importance of your business, for you can always remember that God
sees you, that you are under his eye. If a thousand times an hour you
forget him, reanimate a thousand times the recollection. If you cannot
practice this exercise continuously, at least make yourself as familiar with
it as possible; and, like unto those who in a rigorous winter draw near the
fire as often as they can, go as often as you can to that ardent fire which
will warm your soul.”
1
All the external associations of the Catholic discipline are of
course unlike
anything in mind-cure thought, but the purely spiritual
part of the exercise is identical in both communions, and in both
communions those who urge it write with authority, for they have
evidently experienced in their own persons that whereof they tell.
Compare again some mind-cure utterances: —
“High, healthful, pure thinking can be encouraged, promoted, and
strengthened. Its current can be turned upon grand ideals until it forms a
habit and wears a channel. By means of such discipline the mental horizon
can be flooded with the sunshine of beauty, wholeness, and harmony. To
inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may at first seem difficult, even almost
mechanical, but perseverance will at length render it easy, then pleasant,
and finally delightful.
“The soul’s real world is that which it has built of its thoughts, mental
states, and imaginations. If we will, we can turn our backs upon the lower
and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into the realm of the spiritual and
Real, and there gain a residence. The assumption of states of expectancy
and receptivity will attract spiritual sunshine, and it will flow in as naturally
as air inclines to a vacuum. . . . Whenever the thought is not occupied
with one’s daily duty or profession, it should be sent aloft into the spiritual
atmosphere. There are quiet leisure moments by day, and wakeful hours at
night, when this wholesome and delightful exercise may be engaged in to
great advantage. If one who has never made any systematic effort to lift
and control the thought-forces will, for a single month, earnestly pursue
the course here suggested, he will be surprised and delighted at the result,
1
Quoted by L
EJEUNE
: Introd. à, la Vie Mystique, 1899, p. 66.
96
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
and nothing will induce him to go back to careless, aimless, and superficial
thinking. At such favorable seasons the outside world, with all its current
of daily events, is barred out, and one goes into the silent sanctuary of the
inner temple of soul to commune and aspire. The spiritual hearing becomes
delicately sensitive, so that the ‘still, small voice’ is audible, the tumultuous
waves of external sense are hushed, and there is a great calm. The ego
gradually becomes conscious that it is face to face with the Divine Pres-
ence; that mighty, healing, loving, Fatherly life which is nearer to us than
we are to ourselves. There is soul-contact with the Parent-Soul, and an
influx of life, love, virtue, health, and happiness from the Inexhaustible
Fountain.”
1
When we reach the subject of mysticism, you will undergo so
deep an immersion into these exalted states of consciousness as to
be wet all over, if I may so express myself; and the cold shiver of
doubt with which this little sprinkling may affect you will have
long since passed away — doubt, I mean, as to whether all such
writing be not mere abstract talk and rhetoric set down pour
encourager les autres. You will then be convinced, I trust, that these
states of consciousness of “union” form a perfectly definite class of
experiences, of which the soul may occasionally partake, and which
certain persons may live by in a deeper sense than they live by
anything else with which they have acquaintance. This brings
me to a general philosophical reflection with which I should like
to pass from the subject of healthy-mindedness, and close a topic
which I fear is already only too long drawn out. It concerns the
relation of all this systematized healthy-mindedness and mind-cure
religion to scientific method and the scientific life.
In a later lecture I shall have to treat explicitly of the relation of
religion to science on the one hand, and to primeval savage thought
on the other. There are plenty of persons to-day — “scientists” or
“positivists,” they are fond of calling themselves — who will tell
you that religious thought is a mere survival, an atavistic reversion
to a type of consciousness which humanity in its more enlightened
examples has long since left behind and outgrown. If you ask them
to explain themselves more fully, they will probably say that for
primitive thought everything is conceived of under the form of
personality. The savage thinks that things operate by personal forces,
1
H
ENRY
W
OOD
: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, pp. 51, 70 (abridged).