res of many kinds which seem harmless and good at
the time, and are pursued because many accept them--I mean
conventionalities, sociabilities, and fashions in their various
development, these being mostly approved by the masses, although they
may be unreal, and even unhealthy superfluities."

Here is another case, more concrete, also that of a woman. I read you
these cases without comment--they express so many varieties of the
state of mind we are studying.

"I had been a sufferer from my childhood till my fortieth year.
[Details of ill-health are given which I omit.] I had been in Vermont
several months hoping for good from the change of air, but steadily
growing weaker, when one day during the latter part of October, while
resting in the afternoon, I suddenly heard as it were these words:
'You will be healed and do a work you never dreamed of.' These words
were impressed upon my mind with such power I said at once that only
God could have put them there. I believed them in spite of myself and
of my suffering and weakness, which continued until Christmas, when I
returned to Boston. Within two days a young friend offered to take me
to a mental healer (this was January 7, 1881). The healer said: 'There
is nothing but Mind; we are expressions of the One Mind; body is only a
mortal belief; as a man thinketh so is he.' I could not accept all she
said, but I translated all that was there for ME in this way: 'There
is nothing but God; I am created by Him, and am absolutely dependent
upon Him; mind is given me to use; and by just so much of it as I will
put upon the thought of right action in body I shall be lifted out of
bondage to my ignorance and fear and past experience.' That day I
commenced accordingly to take a little of every food provided for the
family, constantly saying to myself: 'The Power that created the
stomach must take care of what I have eaten.' By holding these
suggestions through the evening I went to bed and fell asleep, saying:
'I am soul, spirit, just one with God's Thought of me,' and slept all
night without waking, for the first time in several years [the
distress-turns had usually recurred about two o'clock in the night]. I
felt the next day like an escaped prisoner, and believed I had found
the secret that would in time give me perfect health. Within ten days
I was able to eat anything provided for others, and after two weeks I
began to have my own positive mental suggestions of Truth, w