A man may know that he is wrong yet not be able to reform

It has often seemed to me that the reason for failure, or the ultimate failing to attain success, in a vast number of "Faith cures," is simply because the people who seek them, being generally of a gushing, imaginative nature, are lacking in deep reflection, application, or earnest attention. They are quick to take hold, and as quick to let go. Therefore, they are of all others the least likely to seriously reflect beforehand on the necessity of preparing the mind to patience and application. Now it seems a simple thing to say, and it is therefore all the harder to understand, that before going to work at anything which will require perseverance and repeated effort we can facilitate the result amazingly by thinking over and anticipating it, so that when the weariness comes it will not be as a discouraging novelty, but as something of course, even as a fisherman accepts his wet feet, or the mosquitoes. But how this disposition to grow weary of work or to become inattentive may be literally and very completely conjured away will be more fully explained in another chapter. For this let it suffice to say that earnest forethought, and the more of it the better, bestowed on aught which we intend to undertake, is a thing rarely attempted in the real sense in which I mean it, but which, when given, eases every burden and lightens every toil.

Mere forethought repeated is the easiest of mental efforts. Yet even a little of it asserted before undertaking a task will wonderfully facilitate the work.

"Hypnotism," says Dr. JAMES R. COCKE, "can be used to train the attention of persons habitually inattentive." But, in fact, forethinking in any way is the minor or initiatory stage of Suggestion. Both are gradual persuasion of the nervous system into habit.

And on this text a marvelous sermon could be preached, which, if understood, would sink deeply into every heart, inspiring some while alarming others, but greatly cheering the brave. And it is this. There are millions of people who suffer from irritability, want of self-control, loquacity, evil in many forms, or nerves, who would fain control themselves and stop it all. Moralists think that for this it is enough to convince their reason. But this rarely avails. A man may know that he is wrong, yet not be able to reform. Now, what he wants is to have his attention fixed long enough to form a new habit. Find out how this can be done, and it may in many cases be the simplest and most mechanical thing in the world to cure him. Men have been frightened by a scarecrow into thorough repentance. "A question of a few vibrations of ether, more or less, makes for us all the difference between perception and non-perception," or between sight and blindness. Accustom any such moral invalid to being Suggested or willed a few times into a calm, self-controlled state and the habit may be formed.

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