ERROR IN MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY
A radical error in mental physiology which most of these persons hold relates to the will. Referring to the theory which explains the cure of many diseases by bringing the person to exercise special will power, Mr. Simpson says:
Why is it that our physicians and philanthropists cannot get the sick to rise up and exercise this will power? Oh! that is the trouble to which we have already adverted. The will is as weak as the frame, and the power that is needed to energize both is God: and Faith is just another name for the new divine WILL which God breathes into the paralyzed mind, enabling it to call upon the enfeebled body to claim the same divine power for its healing. We are quite willing to admit the blessed effect of a quickened faith and hope and will upon the body of the sick. This is not all. There must also be a direct physical touch.
A hotel-keeper in New Hampshire, lingering at the point of death, as was supposed, for weeks with typhus, saw the flames burst from his barn. "Great God!" cried he, "there is nobody to let the cattle out!" He sprang from the bed, cared for the cattle, broke out in a profuse perspiration, and recovered. The burning barn gave him no strength, but the excitement developed latent energy and will.
Mrs. H. had long been ill, was emaciated and so weak that she could not raise a glass of water to her lips. One day the house took fire. She sprang from the bed, seized a chest full of odds and ends, and carried it out of doors. This, as a result of an effort of will, she could not have done when in health without help.
A letter recently received from the Rev. J. L. Humphrey, for many years a, missionary in India, now of Richfield Springs, N. Y., says:
