intellectual
scholasticism is in sharp contrast with the overflowing love and
simple transparency which reveal the image of God in every man, and as
an incidental result, possible health and harmony.

History ever repeats itself in the uniform suspicion with which
advanced thought has been received by existing institutions. It seems
difficult to learn the lesson, that the human apprehension of truth is
ever expanding, while creeds are but "arrested developments, frozen
into fixed forms." As might be inferred, the clergy and the religious
press, as a rule, are distrustful of this advance, and see little that
is good in it. It is fair to admit that this disposition is often due
more to misunderstanding, than to intentional injustice.

Another cause for its unwelcome reception is that it distrusts the
dominant medical systems. All honor to the multitude of noble and
brave men who from the old standpoint have battled with disease, and
who have ever been on the alert to utilize every possible balm, in
order to restore disordered humanity. But systems are tenacious of
life in proportion as they are hoary with age. They mould men to their
own shape; to break with them is difficult: tradition, pride,
professional honor, and loyalty, and often social and pecuniary
status, are all like strong cords, which bind even great men to their
conventional grooves.

A further ground for the general unbelief is found in the
peculiarities of the apostles and exponents of the new departure. A
division into schools and cliques, the out-cropping of personality,
exclusiveness, and internal criticism, statements of doctrine in forms
likely to be misunderstood, and a technical phraseology have, in a
measure, prevented a free and full understanding of principles, which
are really simple and transparent.

Popular distrust is also awakened by the fact that, as a rule, mental
healers have not regularly studied pathology, nor even anatomy. But it
will be seen that if the principle of mental causation for disease is
once admitted, mentality rather than physiology should furnish the
field for operations. In order to heal, the mind of the patient must
be brought into unison with that of the practitioner, and therefore,
the latter must wash his own mind clean of spectres and even of
studies of disease, and fill it to overflowing with ideals of health
and harmony.

Another reason for misapprehension is the fact that mind healing is
not demonstrable b