This recognition of the power of suggestion is in many instances taking a most undesirable form, and I commend to your notice, in support of this observation, numerous advertisements in certain classes of magazines—many of you must have seen many specimens of that kind—offering for a certain sum of money to put you in the way of getting personal influence, mental power, power of suggestion, as the advertisements very unblushingly put it, for any purpose that you may desire. Some of them even go into further particulars, telling you the particular sort of purposes for which you can employ this, all of them certainly being such uses as no one should ever attempt to make of it.
Therefore, this recognition of the power of suggestion, say even as a mere money-making power, to leave alone other misapplications of it, is a feature which is taking hold, so to say, of certain sections of the public who do not realise a higher platform in these things. It is deplorable that it should be so, but it is in the nature of things unavoidable. You have a power which can be used affirmatively, and which can be used negatively, which can be used for higher purposes, and can be used for lower purposes, and consequently you will find numbers of people who, as soon as they get hold of it, will at once think only of the lower purposes, not of the higher.
In support of what I say—although this is by no means, I suppose, intended as a low application, probably it is intended as a high application, but I cannot say I agree with it—but to show you that I am talking from actual facts I will read you a note which I have made from the Daily Mail, of the 20th January, that I daresay some of you may have seen. It is an article headed "Killing by Prayer," and the article goes on to say that a certain circular has been sent round to the different hospitals and other places where the study of vivisection goes forward to this effect. In this circular, signed with the letters "M. C.," the writer says that he accidentally heard of a person who was in the habit of praying from time to time for the death of one of our leading vivisectors and that always the man indicated died. That is what M. C. heard by chance during conversation at a hotel dinner. Then thinking over this, M. C. goes on to say that he (or she) tried praying that the man most likely to cause suffering to innocent subjects by his experiments might be removed, and the consequence was that about a fortnight later one of our most distinguished medical scientists died.
I do not know who the scientist in question was; I daresay some of you may be aware of the name. However, that is what the Daily Mail tells us, and it also states that the Anti-Vivisection Societies were unanimous in condemning this circular, and very properly so. Now you see the sender of that circular, whoever he was, obviously thought he was doing a very good piece of work. I myself am by no means any friend of vivisection. I do not think any one can have a real knowledge of the truth and remain in touch with it, but I certainly agreed with the Anti-Vivisection Societies in condemning such a circular as that. You see there is the assumption that prayer, or mental power, can be used to remove a person from the stage of life, and M. C. claims that he did it in the case of this particular scientist.
That brings back another parallel, almost, I might say, an historical parallel, to our mind; that of Dr. Anna Kingsford, taking place perhaps some forty years ago, who claimed—of course she was a very strong anti-vivisectionist—that by thought-power she caused the death of Claude Bernard, the great vivisection scientist of France. Certainly at the time that she put out her forces he did die, but on the other hand, it has been remarked that it was from that very date that her own break-up commenced, and never ceased till she herself passed into the other world. So you see these actions are likely to revert to the sender, even if they are successful.
Now in these two cases the ultimate object was not a low one, it was one which was supposed to be for the benefit of humanity and of the dumb creation. But that does not justify the means. The maxim, "The end justifies the means," is the greatest perversion of truth, and still more so if this hidden power, the power of suggestion, is used to injure any one for a more personal motive than in these cases which I have cited. The lower the motive, the lower the action becomes, and to suppose that because mental means are employed they make any difference in the nature of the act is a very great mistake.
It has been sometimes my painful duty to sentence people to death for murder, and therefore I claim that I have a very fair knowledge of what differentiates murder from those cases in which life is taken which do not amount to murder; and speaking from the judicial experience of a great many years, and the trial of a large number of cases which have involved the question whether the death penalty should be passed or not, I have no hesitation in saying that to kill by mental means is just as much murder as to kill by poison or the dagger. Speaking judicially, I should have not the least hesitation in hanging any one who committed murder by means of mental suggestion. Psychological crime, remember, is crime just the same; possibly it is more deeply dyed crime, because of the greater knowledge which must go along with it. I say that the psychological criminal is worse than the ordinary criminal.
One of the teachings of the Master is on this very point. I refer you to the miracle of the fig tree. You know that he exhibited his power of killing not a person, not even an animal, but a tree. And when the disciples said to him, see how this tree which you cursed has withered away, he replied, Well, you can do exactly the same thing, and goes on to say, nothing shall be impossible to you. Therefore if you can kill fig trees, you can kill people, but, "forgive, if you have aught against any," that your heavenly Father may forgive you.
He says in effect: now you have seen that this hidden power can be used to the destruction of life, at your peril use it otherwise than as a Divine power. Use it with prayer to God and with forgiveness of all against whom you have any sort of grudge or ill-feeling, and if its use is always prefaced in this way, according to the Master's directions, then nobody can use it to injure another either in mind, body or estate.
Perhaps some of you may be inclined to smile if I use the word "sorcery," but at the present day, under one name or another, scientific or semi-scientific, it is nothing but the old-world sorcery which is trying to find its way among us as the hidden power. Sorcery is the inverted use of spiritual power. That is the definition of it, and I speak upon authority. I refer you to the Bible where you will find sorcery takes a prominent place among the list of those things which exclude from the heavenly Jerusalem; the heavenly Jerusalem not being a town or a city in this place or that place, but the perfected state of man. Therefore, use sorcery, and you cannot reach that heavenly state.