"Another question, and a very important one, was: 'What is the difference between the different teachers of Christian Healing?' I can best give the substance of Mrs. Pearl's reply by reference to Mrs. Fuller, the healer from Trenton.
"You remember when she gave her parlor lecture at Mrs. Haight's, she said: 'Everything that did not come from her teacher was mesmerism, that it was altogether false, and it was so much of a power that it was indeed to be feared, for there was no telling what its subtlety and cunning would suggest and execute; that no cure effected by it was permanent, but that the patients would sooner or later be worse than before.'
"Oh, dear, I must not rehearse it, for of course you remember how my old headache overtook me when I got home, and how wrought up I was all night. Now I know what caused it, and now I know the difference.
"In the first place, these people are taught the pure and beautiful foundation of pure Christian Healing, but instead of holding to their premise that all is good, they begin to talk about people and things that are not good, imputing false motives, and giving false power to those who, as they say, are not in the truth.
"If they would only remember that counterfeits can have no power except as it is delegated to them, that unreal thoughts must disappear in the presence of true thoughts, they would not be troubled and puzzled. Adhering to the law, they would recognize and talk about the Good only.
"Ah, John, here is the secret of Jesus' words, 'Resist not evil.' If we resist anything, we recognize it as something. If we regard evil as an entity, we can not help fearing or fighting it, but if we know it is nothingness claiming to be something, we deal with it accordingly.
"Whoever resists evil or calls evil a power, has not denied the reality of evil faithfully enough. To talk of anything as having power, is to believe in the power and become entangled in its meshes. That explains Mrs. Fuller's remark that she was 'actually afraid to meet one of those false teachers on the street, and always took pains to warn people against them.' I speak of Mrs. Fuller because you know so well what she did and said, that you will understand this explanation better.
"Another remark she made was, that 'this power of mortal mind is wholly ignored by these false teachers, although they secretly use it so effectually and disastrously.' Because they do not talk so much of evil, she thinks they ignore it, while really they silently but earnestly and vigorously deny it, thereby getting a sure control over it. She was taught to call this seeming power of mortal thought Mesmerism, and Animal Magnetism, and after giving it such formidable names, and so mighty a place, it is most natural for her to say that it affects herself and family or her patients, causing them to be slow in yielding to treatment. Thus you can readily see how she accounts for her failures.
"Mrs. Pearl teaches that we can deal with this influence of carnal or mortal mind, by denying for the patient the conscious or unconscious reflection of it from these five different sources. To the patient who is ignorant of truth, mortal thought has a power, because he has acknowledged it as having power, but in our silent conviction of its powerlessness, we speak the true word that sets him free. The whole secret lies in our own freedom from belief in this false power.
"The name Mesmerism or Magnetism makes it seem like some awful monster, lurking in every corner, ready to devour us, while, as Mrs. Pearl says, we go our way, quietly denying all appearance of evil, proving the law of Good by recognizing only the Good in thought and speech.