choice of an adjective. If then we wish to explore all those mental
resources which can be turned to the purposes of the spiritual life,
this is one which we must not neglect. The religious idea, rightly
received into the mind and reinforced by the suggestion of regular
devotional exercises, always tends to realize itself. "Receive His
leaven," says William Penn, "and it will change thee, His medicine and
it will cure thee. He is as infallible as free; without money and with
certainty. Yield up the body, soul and spirit to Him that maketh all
things new: new heaven and new earth, new love, new joy, new peace, new
works, a new life and conversation."[101] This is fine literature, but
it is more important to us to realize that it is also good psychology:
and that here we are given the key to those amazing regenerations of
character which are the romance and glory of the religious life.
Pascal's too celebrated saying, that if you will take holy water
regularly you will presently believe, witnesses on another level to the
same truth.

Fears have been expressed that, by such an application of the laws of
suggestion to religious experience, we shall reduce religion itself to a
mere favourable subjectivism, and identify faith with suggestibility.
But here the bearing of this series of facts on bodily health provides
us with a useful analogy. Bodily health is no illusion. It does not
consist in merely thinking that we are well, but is a real condition of
well-being and of power; depending on the state of our tissues and
correct balance and working of our physical and psychical life. And this
correct and wholesome working will be furthered and steadied--or if
broken may often be restored--by good suggestions; it may be disturbed
by bad suggestions; because the controlling factor of life is mind, not
chemistry, and mind is plastic to ideas. So too the life of the Spirit
is a concrete fact; a real response to a real universe. But this