But though the power of suggestion is most obvious when employed by the scientifically trained physician of today, it has been successfully, though often unconsciously, used in all times.  Prophets and saints of old, the touch of a king’s hand, the sight of relics or images, have wrought striking moral and physical cures through this same mental law.  Christian Scientists and mental healers of various sorts are curing people daily through them.  Cases of religious conversion, where a man’s whole inner life is turned about through a powerful emotional appeal, show best of all the possibilities of suggestion in the moral field.  These are the extreme cases.  But, indeed, all our moral education is, in psychological language, but so much “suggestion.”  The imperious necessity for man of preaching, of ritual and liturgy, of prayer and praise, is to drive home the high and noble thoughts which in his sanest moments he recognizes to be what he needs.  The aim of the preacher is to bring to his hearers ideals of right living and to make them as appealing and vivid as possible.  Yet even the best preaching comes only on Sundays, and there are six days between of other sorts of suggestion, which are often counter- suggestions, so that it is no wonder we lag so far behind our Sabbath- day ideals.  In subtle and unrealized ways all the factors of our environment are so many sources of suggestion, constantly working upon our minds.  Could we always command powerful and inspiring moral influences, and keep out of range of evil ones, our morals would perhaps take care of themselves.  But while seeking so far as possible these external props, and if necessary having recourse to the still more effective help of the professional hypnotists, there remains a vast deal that we must do for ourselves if we are to resist successfully the downward pull of evil influences, solve our own individual problems, conquer our own peculiar temptations, and attain our ideals.  We must practice autosuggestion.  It is noteworthy that the loftiest spirits have always practiced it, in their habit of daily prayer.  For whatever else prayer accomplishes, it certainly brings the mind back to its ideals, concentrates it earnestly engaged in, is the best possible form of suggestion.  The lapse of this habit helps to explain why unbelievers so often degenerate morally.  Comte, that positive disbeliever in supernatural dogmas, clearly recognized this danger, and enjoined upon his followers a consecration prayer three times a day.  In recent years the writers who call their doctrine by the name of The New Thought — and other kindred thinkers have called attention to the possibilities of self- help, directing us to “retire into the silence,” there to concentrate our minds upon those beliefs that are comforting and inspiring to us; and have helped many thereby to attain peace and self-possession.  But still the conscious use of autosuggestion for the attainment of personal ideals has been very little discussed, and in the employment of this great power we are astonishingly backward.