“Perhaps,” said I, “Mr. Winslow is a little too hasty in supposing them to be the innate power or force of human nature. This power exerted by the mesmerizer may well be natural and yet not be human. It may be one of the mighty forces of universal nature, which the mesmerizer has the secret of using or bringing to bear in the accomplishment of his own purposes. In mesmerism, perhaps, we may find the key to the mysteries of nature, and the secret of rendering practically available all the great and mighty powers at work in nature’s laboratory, so that a man may learn to strengthen himself with all the force of the entire universe.” “The power you speak of,” said Mr. Wilson, an ex-Unitarian parson, and who passed for a Transcendentalist, “I believe to be very real. We sometimes ascribe it to the will, and it is true that under certain relations the will has great energy, and is well nigh invincible. Yet it is not, I apprehend, so much the energy of the will itself as of faith, which brings the will into harmony with the primordial laws of the universe, and strengthens it by all the forces of nature. ‘If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed,’ said Jesus, ‘ye could say to this mountain, be removed and planted in yonder sea, and it should obey you.’ I am far from being able to prescribe the limits of full, undoubting, and unwavering faith. Faith is thaumaturgic, always a miracle-worker, and if we could only undertake with a calm and full confidence of success, I have little doubt but the meanest of us might work greater miracles than any recorded in history. ‘If ye believe, ye shall do greater works than these.’”