OR, PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY AUTHOR OF BY W. F. EVANS, "CELESTIAL DAwn," "Mental CURE," "MENTAL MEDICINE," To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens." MATT. xiii. II. LONDON: REEVES AND TURNER, 196 STRAND, W.C. 1885. 1268. e. 200 PREFACE. THIS volume is designed to contribute something toward supplying the demand in the public for further light on the subject upon which it treats, the cure of disease in ourselves and others by mental and spiritual agencies. The first work of the author having a relation to the subject, was published over twenty-two years ago. It was followed, at intervals of different length, by four other volumes, which have had an extensive circulation in every part of the country, and to some extent in Europe. It is not an incredible supposition that they have had an influence, more or less, towards generating in the public mind the widely spread and growing belief of the mental origin of disease, and of the relation of the mind to its cure. The work is intended to take the reader up where the last volume of the author, "The Divine Law of Cure," leaves him, and conduct him still further along the same path of inquiry. It does not claim to have exhausted the subject, or to have said all that might be said; for the subject is one too vast to be crowded into so limited a compass, which would be like condensing the ocean into the dimensions of a lake. But it is to be hoped that enough has been said to vindicate the propriety of the title,-that of "Elemen tary Lessons in Christian Philosophy and Transcendental Medicine." It was our aim to furnish the teachers and pupils of the spiritual philosophy of healing, with a text-book which should elevate the subject into the dignity of a science. The themes discussed are occasionally of an abstruse nature, but have been expressed in the clearest language at our command. It is not intended to wholly supplant the living teacher, but rather to aid his work by suggesting many things it does not say. The work is written also in the interest of self-healing, and contains the essential features of the instruction which the author has given to numerous persons during the last twenty years. There is a large number of people in the world whose life has been a perpetual struggle with disease, and who have been able to discover no pathway of light that unerringly conducts them out of their troubles. The various systems of materialistic medication have been successively tried, and all have failed. To them the volume is sincerely commended and respectfully dedicated, with the hope that they may find in it somewhere the saving power of the right word at the right time. There is in the minds of men, at the present day, an inward thirst, an unsatisfied craving for spiritual light. We wish it was in our power to fully meet this heart-felt want. But we can only promise, in the following pages, to bring to the reader, "in the name of a disciple," a single cup of water, while we point him to the inexhaustible fountain whence all living, saving truth flows, -the universal Christ, the boundless, everywhere-present realm of pure spirit. Standing by this fountain and well of living water, on which God has never placed a seal, nor stationed around it an armed guard, we would say, in the language of the sublimest of the old prophets, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." (Isa. lv. 1.) For, surely, spiritual truth ought not to be classed among the luxuries which a poor man cannot afford to buy, but rather among the commonest necessaries of life, as air and water, which the Supreme Goodness has scattered, with amazing and beneficent profusion, all over the world, and placed within the reach of all. Of the true water of life, the old symbol of spiritual truth, God has opened a fountain in the inmost region of our own being, one which springs up into everlasting life, if we only knew it. To convince the reader of this will be one of the aims of the present volume. If we succeed in doing this, the book itself will no longer be needed. For when we find the Christ within, "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," we have access to more of life and light than all the libraries of the world can give us. When the reader shall have made the grandest discovery ever made in this earthly existence,-the finding of his true self, and has identified it with the Christ, of whom it is but a personal limitation,-we will gladly step down from the platform of the teacher, and take our place by his side as a fellow-disciple or pupil. We will no longer open our mouth to speak, but open the inner ear to receive the deep and calm revealing. The education of the future will be a system more in harmony with the true meaning of the word,-an educing or guiding out of what is already in us in a state of latency. Spiritual and saving truth is not a foreign exotic which has to be imported from abroad, but is |