But the Church has yet to learn from M. Bergson the alphabet of this new knowledge, namely, that our senses and our reason are what they are because of a long evolution in action—­not in pure thought.  We have got our sight by looking for prey or for enemies, and our hearing by listening for the movement of prey or of enemies.  Our reason, too, is fashioned out of a long heredity of action, that is to say an immemorial discipline in an existence purely animal.  So powerful is the influence of this heredity, so real seems to us a physical world which is not real, so infallible seem to us the senses by which we fail to live successfully even as animals, that, as Christ said, a man must be born again before he can enter the Kingdom of God—­that is to say, before he can behold and inhabit Reality.

At the head of this chapter I have set a quotation from a leading article in The Times on the recent lectures of M. Coue.  It is now eighteen years ago, treading in the footsteps of Frederic Myers, that I discussed with some of the chief medical hypnotists in London and Paris the phenomena of mental suggestion.  It was known then that auto-suggestion is a force of tremendous power.  It was stated then that “an immense hope is dawning on the world,” but not then, not even now, is it realised that this awkward term of “auto-suggestion” is merely a synonym for the more beautiful and ancient words, meditation and prayer.

We know now that a man can radically change his character, can uproot the toughest habits of a lifetime, by telling himself that his will is master in his house of life[9].  And we think that we have made this discovery, forgetting that Shakespeare said “The love of heaven makes us heavenly,” and that Christ said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:  for they shall be filled,” and “All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive,” or, as Mark has it, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them,” and “According to your faith be it unto you.”

[Footnote 9:  At Nancy even a lesion has been cured by suggestion.]

With our present knowledge of the universe and of the human mind, it is at last possible for us to perceive in the confused records of the New Testament the nature of Christ’s teaching.  He loved the world for its beauty, but He penetrated its delusions and breathed the air of its only reality.  “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth . . . but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . . for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”  “He that hath ears to hear let him hear.”