done along this line, various
religious cults have added the application of these principles to
their other tenets and activities, or else have made this the chief
corner-stone of a new structure. There are some reasons why this
connection with religion should continue to exist, and why it has been
a great help both to the building up of these particular sects and the
healing of the bodies of those who combine religion with mental
healing.

We must not forget that in early days the priest, the magician, and
the physician were combined in one person, and that primitive
religious notions are difficult to slough off. Shortly before the
beginning of the Christian era there were some indications that
healing was to be freed from the bondage of religion, but the
influence of Jesus' healing upon Christians, and the overwhelming
influence of Christianity upon the whole world, delayed this movement,
so that it did not again become prominent until the sixteenth
century. About this time, when therapeutics as a science began to
shake off the shackles of religion and superstition, another startling
innovation was noticeable, viz., the division of mental healing into
religious and non-religious healing. This change came gradually, and
as is usual in all reform, certain prophets saw and proclaimed the
real truth which the people were not able to follow or receive for
centuries.

Paracelsus, who lived during the first half of the sixteenth century,
wrote these shrewd words: "Whether the object of your faith is real or
false, you will nevertheless obtain the same effects. Thus, if I
believe in St. Peter's statue as I would have believed in St. Peter
himself, I will obtain the same effects that I would have obtained
from St. Peter; but that is superstition. Faith, however, produces
miracles, and whether it be true or false faith, it will always
produce the same wonders." We have also this penetrating observation
from Pierre Ponponazzi, of Milan, an author of the same century: "We
can easily conceive the marvellous effects which confidence and
imagination can produce, particularly when both qualities are
reciprocal between the subject and the person who influences them. The
cures attributed to the influence of certain relics are the effect of
this imagination and confidence. Quacks and philosophers know that if
the bones of any skeleton were put in the place of the saint's bones,
the sick would none the less experience beneficial effec