He knows that advance is possible only when weakness is overcome,
when sickness is made well." Das Wesen des Christenthums, 1900, p. 39.

Their notion of man's higher nature is hardly less divergent, being
decidedly pantheistic. The spiritual in man appears in the mind-cure
philosophy as partly conscious, but chiefly subconscious; and through
the subconscious part of it we are already one with the Divine without
any miracle of grace, or abrupt creation of a new inner man. As this
view is variously expressed by different writers, we find in it traces
of Christian mysticism, of transcendental idealism, of vedantism, and
of the modern psychology of the subliminal self. A quotation or two
will put us at the central point of view:--

"The great central fact of the universe is that spirit of infinite life
and power that is back of all, that manifests itself in and through
all. This spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all is
what I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it Kindly Light,
Providence, the Over-Soul, Omnipotence, or whatever term may be most
convenient, so long as we are agreed in regard to the great central
fact itself. God then fills the universe alone, so that all is from
Him and in Him, and there is nothing that is outside. He is the life
of our life our very life itself. We are partakers of the life of God;
and though we differ from Him in that we are individualized spirits,
while He is the Infinite Spirit, including us, as well as all else
beside, yet in essence the life of God and the life of man are
identically the same, and so are one. They differ not in essence or
quality; they differ in degree.

"The great central fact in human life is the coming into a conscious
vital realization of our oneness with this Infinite Life and the
opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. In just the degree
that we come into a conscious realization of our oneness with the
Infinite Life, and open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we
actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of the Infinite Life,
do we make ourselves channels through which the Infinite Intelligence
and Power can work. In just the degree in which you realize your
oneness with the Infinite Spirit, you will exchange dis-ease for ease,
inharmony for harmony, suffering and pain for abounding health and
strength. To recognize our own divinity, and our intimate relation to
the Universal, is to attach the bel