So too, religious teachers informed by experience have always ascribed a special efficacy to "short acts" of prayer and aspiration: phrases repeated or held in the mind, which sum up and express the self's penitence, love, faith or adoration, and are really brief, articulate suggestions parallel in type to those which Baudouin recommends to us as conducive to bodily well-being.[110] The repeated affirmation of Julian of Norwich "All shall be well! all shall be well! all shall be well!"[111] fills all her revelations with its suggestion of joyous faith; and countless generations of Christians have thus applied to their soul's health those very methods by which we are now enthusiastically curing indigestion and cold in the head.

The articulate repetition of such phrases increases their suggestive power; for the unconscious is most easily reached by way of the ear.

This fact throws light on the immemorial insistence of all great religions on the peculiar value of vocal prayer, whether this be the _mantra_ of the Hindu or the _dikr_ of the Moslem; and explains the instinct which causes the Catholic Church to require from her priests the verbal repetition, not merely the silent reading of their daily office.

Hence, too, there is real educative value, in such devotions as the rosary; and the Protestant Churches showed little psychological insight when they abandoned it.

Such "vain" repetitions, however much the rational mind may dislike, discredit or denounce them, have power to penetrate and modify the deeper psychic levels; always provided that they conflict with no accepted belief, are weighted with meaning and desire, with the intent stretched towards God, and are not allowed to become merely mechanical--the standing danger alike of all verbal suggestion and all vocal prayer.
Here we touch the third character of effective suggestion: _Feeling_.
When the idea is charged with emotion, it is far more likely to be realized.