"The body is what we may call the thermometer of the mind and registers the quality of thought. Universal beliefs in error find their common expression on the body. Every thought of sickness, sin or discouragement is recorded or bodied forth.

"With all our belief in and fear of evil, sickness and death, we are continually subjecting ourselves to false and undesirable conditions, until, as Job said, 'Lo, the thing that I feared has come upon me.'

"Fear is more quickly productive of disease pictures than any other kind of thought. Some one has aptly said, 'if the human race were freed from fear, it would be free from sickness,' which is verily true. Even the most learned doctors of medicine admit that an epidemic takes hold of those first who are most afraid, and frequently leaves the absolutely fearless unmolested.

"Why is this so? Because fear weakens the power of mental control, and consequently weakens the body. To leave the doors unlocked, and then watch for the thief, is almost equal to having the thief in the house.

"The material scientist says an epidemic has a material cause; the Christian healer says it has a mental cause. Before there is an object to fear there must be the sentiment of fear. Let scarlet fever appear in a community, and every parent will immediately send out the most agonizing thoughts of fear. Where will they go? Everywhere, because thoughts can not be restrained. Their influence goes out in every direction. To the tender children especially, because particularly directed to them. All who have left the door open to fear, though they may be sleeping in their unconsciousness of danger, will be liable to receive these uncontrolled thoughts, and some day when they least expect or fear sickness, it may be upon them.

"So the children, to whom have been directed such thoughts, only prove their susceptibility to them, by picturing forth fear in the form of scarlet fever, or whatever may have been the naming of the error.

Anybody manifesting sickness without consciousness of fear proves pa.s.sive or unconscious fear, while those suffering sickness through a conscious recognition and fear of sickness are manifesting active or conscious fear.

"There are two departments of mind sometimes spoken of as the conscious and unconscious. The conscious mind is the conscious thought, which is easily swayed or changed. It has an immediate or direct influence on the body as is shown by the blood that rushes to or recedes from the face at some sudden change of thought. The unconscious mind is the aggregation of past individual and universal conscious thought, and is the character formed, the second nature or instinct.

"As the flesh and bones are more fixed than the ever moving blood, so the unconscious mind is slower to receive impressions, and slower to show them forth. Our bodies to-day are showing a harvest of the thoughts of generations or ages of the past. The person manifesting consumptive tendencies is not only expressing his own conscious thoughts, but is veritably the picture of the thoughts of his parents, ancestors and the entire race, concerning a belief in consumption. Year by year the thoughts of this error have been writing themselves in his face, his eyes, his chest, his very walk and talk and breath. Unless he offsets them with thoughts of absolute Truth, they press him out of our sight.

He yields to the belief of death, because he never said no to sin or sickness, because he was at one with the world in its false beliefs.

"'The last enemy to be overcome is death!' reads the inspired statement of Paul, confirmed and strengthened by the Master's never-dying promise, 'If a man keep my saying he shall never see death.'

"There are certain fixed beliefs inherent in every mind which we call universal beliefs. They are often referred to as belonging to the unconscious mind; as, for example, the fear of pain or suffering under certain circ.u.mstances will come to the surface of consciousness, proving that despite every feeling of confidence and fearlessness it has not been destroyed, but sleeps in the unconscious mind.

"These unconscious beliefs and fears of sickness are ultimately expressed on the body in different forms of disease, sometimes given one name and sometimes another. The material scientist calls a certain outshowing on the body cancer, the Christian healer calls it the picture of a belief of cancer. In this way disease is always the manifestation of both conscious and unconscious thoughts.

"Special forms of disease are born by constant attention to the thought of disease and their symptoms. It has been stated on good authority that physicians who make a specialty of certain diseases are apt to be afflicted with what they have especially fitted themselves to cure. In a medical journal a case was cited not long since of an eminent physician who read before a great convention of doctors, what was considered to be the ablest treatise on insanity ever written. 'On going home from the convention he killed his wife, four children, and then himself, in a fit of dementia.'

"This reveals a startling fact, which might be corroborated by many others, that the body ultimately pictures forth the idea. But the thought is not confined to the individual. It not infrequently finds the most striking expression in some member of the family or in any one under his influence.

"If one man's thoughts so influence himself, family or friend, think of the influence of such thoughts on those who go to him for advice or treatment, those who deliberately place themselves under his inspection and allow themselves to be guided both directly and indirectly by his erroneous opinions. Think of the vast stream of such thoughts going out from all medical colleges, students and pract.i.tioners. No wonder diseases increase as physicians increase, as some of the best thinkers of the age declare.

"Not that one cla.s.s of people is more to be reflected upon than another, for some kind or degree of erroneous thought is held by all cla.s.ses.

Physicians talk sickness and death, ministers preach evil and punishment, the entire race believe in and suffer for sins.

"It is centuries since it was first discovered that ideas were transmitted without the ordinarily accepted means of communication, but, to-day it is positively and repeatedly, yes, continually proven that thought transference is not only possible or probable, but an every-day occurrence. To realize that

'Thoughts are things.

Endowed with being, breath and wings, And that we send them forth to fill The world with good results or ill,'

is to be mightily responsible for what we think. To know that we are verily our brother's keeper, and that every thought makes misery or happiness for the whole world as well as for the individual, is something that should engage our deepest and most earnest consideration.

"All thinking is for the weal or woe of the world that is yet in its infancy of knowledge. As consciousness of truth takes the place of consciousness of error, thoughts become light and beautiful and true with corresponding conditions.

"Let us no longer slumber in the arms of indifference and ignorance, but awake to truth and righteousness. 'Better be unborn than untaught; for ignorance is the root of misfortune.'"

CHAPTER XXIX.

"Blessed influence of one true, loving soul on another. Not calculable by algebra, not deductible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing ta.s.seled flower."--_George Eliot._

"Oh dear!" exclaimed Kate as she laid down the letter containing the lesson on Thought. "I didn't know we were so responsible for every little thing that comes into our mind."

"Or goes out of it," said Grace, smiling, as she finished tinting a dainty plaque. "Now we can understand that 'where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,'" she added rather absent-mindedly.

"Yes, but I think I prefer the wisdom to the bliss. Do you understand this lecture as well as the rest?" asked Kate, again glancing at the letter.

"Why shouldn't we? It is plainly told, and is a natural sequence to the others. I should think it very helpful, and if there really is so much power in thought, it is time people knew it."

"But what of the people who do not know it? Are they utterly defenseless?"

"As long as they believe in the reality of sin, sickness and death, they must suffer from them," replied Grace, picking a loose hair from her blender.

"Then they ought to know how to learn and understand these things, but I could not tell anybody."

"We can solve any problem by going back and reasoning from the premise.

If any shock of sin or sickness come over us, we have simply to remember the spiritual, which is the only real creation."

"It is not so easily done though. To-day I met the most miserable looking cripple sliding along without any limbs. I held my skirts aside as he pa.s.sed, and forgot to even think of him as G.o.d's child," confessed Kate, in a regretful tone.

"Anything takes time, and we can't expect to leap into perfection at once, but what did you do after he had pa.s.sed?" asked Grace, with some curiosity.

"I pitied the poor creature and wondered what made him so."

"That was the very way to keep him in the same condition," said Grace, rapidly mixing some paint. "This last lesson very clearly explains that _every_ thought has an influence, and that you help to make the body manifest whatever you think of it. If you think the real and true, you help to make that show forth, if you only think of the external or apparent trouble or defect, and regard it as the real, you are harming instead of helping."

"I can readily see that we may affect ourselves, but it seems hard to believe that we affect _everybody_," protested Kate, incredulously.

"It is because we cannot realize the law of thought transference. I was reading just last week about that. An instance of Stuart C. c.u.mberland's mind-reading was cited. It was wonderful. And then long ago I read an old book written by Cornelius Agrippa about it, but I was not very much interested, and did not understand nor believe it at the time, so my memory is not worth much concerning it."

"Then you really think I added another weight to that unhappy creature's burden of trouble?" cried Kate, in sharp surprise.

"It would be best for you to deny his apparent conditions and affirm his real ones, and instead of thoughts of pity, which are only weakening, you could think of happiness and contentment. I truly believe we can learn to think of people this way, if we only catch ourselves for correction every time we think wrong."

"How shall I ever learn to bridle my thoughts?" was Kate's despairing wail.

"By learning to bridle your tongue; I found a splendid text to-day on that very theme. It is in James iii: 2. 'If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able to bridle the whole body.'

"Why, it tells in those few words the substance of all we have learned in these lessons," exclaimed Kate.

"Only we would never have had sense enough to understand without the lessons," added Grace, with a smile.

"They may be likened to a golden key that opens royal gates," said Kate, going to the piano to play while Grace was putting away her paints and brushes.

A little later Grace went out to mail a letter. As she turned from the post-box, she found herself face to face with--whom but Leon Carrington?

"Ah, an unexpected pleasure, Miss Hall!" he said, extending his hand and warmly grasping the one she slowly held out to him. He looked searchingly into her face, with clear, questioning eyes.

She dropped her lashes and drew back with a touch of the old haughtiness, murmuring something he could not hear.