All this shows how necessary it is to put hopeful, manly, constructive conceptions before those whom we try to help or instruct; constantly suggesting to them not the weak and sinful things that they are, but the living and radiant things which they can become.
Further, this tendency of the received suggestion to work out its whole content for good or evil within the unconscious mind, shows the importance which we ought to attach to the tone of a religions service, and how close too many of our popular hymns are to what one might call psychological sin; stressing as they do a childish weakness love of shelter and petting, a neurotic shrinking from full human life, a morbid preoccupation with failure and guilt.

Such hymns make devitalizing suggestions, adverse to the health and energy of the spiritual life; and are all the more powerful because they are sung collectively and in rhythm, and are cast in an emotional mould.[114] There was some truth in the accusation of the Indian teacher Ramakrishna, that the books of the Christians insisted too exclusively on sin.

He said, "He who repeats again and again 'I am bound! I am bound!' remains in bondage.

He who repeats day and night 'I am a sinner! I am a sinner!' becomes a sinner indeed."[115] I go on to the law of Reversed Effort; a psychological discovery which seems to be of extreme importance for the spiritual life.

Briefly this means, that when any suggestion has entered the unconscious mind and there become active, all our conscious and anxious resistances to it are not merely useless but actually tend to intensify it.