tion, not spiritual
vision, to be the true requisites for the reception of grace, the
healing and renovation of the soul. Thus acquiescence in belief, and
loyal and steady co-operation in the corporate religious life are often
seen to work for good in those who submit to them; though these may
lack, as they frequently say, the "spiritual sense." And this happens,
not by magic, but in conformity with psychological law.

This tendency of the unconscious self to realize without criticism a
suggested end lays on religious teachers the obligation of forming a
clear and vital conception of the spiritual ideals which they wish to
suggest, whether to themselves in their meditations or to others by
their teaching: to be sure that they are wholesome, and really tend to
fullness of life. It should also compel each of us to scrutinize those
religious thoughts and images which we receive and on which we allow
our minds to dwell: excluding those that are merely sentimental, weak or
otherwise unworthy, and holding fast the noblest and most beautiful that
we can find. For these ideas, however generalized, will set up profound
changes in the mind that receives them. Thus the wrong conception of
self-immolation will be faithfully worked out by the unconscious--and
has been too often in the past--in terms of misery, weakness, or
disease. We remember how the idea of herself as a victim of love worked
physical destruction in Therese de L'Enfant Jesus: and we shall never
perhaps know all the havoc wrought by the once fashionable doctrines of
predestination and of the total depravity of human nature. All this
shows how necessary it is to put hopeful, manly, constructive
conceptions before those whom we try to help or instruct; constantly
suggesting to them not the weak and sinful things that they are, but the
living and radiant things which they can become.

Further, this tendency of the received suggestion to work out its whole
content for good or evil within the unconscious mind, shows the
importance which we ought to attach to the tone of a religions service,
and how close too many of our popular hymns are to what one might call
psychological sin; stressing as they do a childish weakness love of
shelter and petting, a neurotic shrinking from full human life, a morbid
preoccupation with failure and guilt. Such hymns make devitalizing
suggestions, adverse to the health and energy of the spiritual life;
and are all the more powerful because