The main reliance, however, in the Emmanuel treatment is on faith, reinforced first by hetero-suggestion and then by patient and persistent auto-suggestion. The man who would be permanently free from insomnia must be an optimist. He must have a philosophy of life wholesome enough to keep him buoyant, cheerful, and serene amid all the changes and the chances of this mortal life. With the Persian he may hold that “He’s a Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well;” with Socrates that “To the good man no evil thing can happen;” or with St. Paul that “All things work together for good to them that love the Lord.”

Whatever language he may use in the formulation of his life philosophy, he must believe with all his heart and soul that life in spite of all appearances is worth living, that there is love and goodness at the heart of things, that the word God, whatever be its content, does stand for a concept indispensable in our everyday existence, and that there is somewhere, everywhere, One who, by a paradox as strange as it is true, is both the centre and circumference of all that has been, is, and ever is to be—The Absolute and Unconditioned wherever we may chance to be in time or space. “If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there: if I go down to hell, Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning: and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall Thy hand lead me: and Thy right hand shall hold me.”12

A man who wants that serenity of mind on which the soundest sleep invariably depends must get right and keep right with God, whether he defines Him in the terms of Persia, Greece, or Christianity.

But this is not enough. A man must be right also with his fellow-men. He must love his neighbour as he loves his God. “He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” He must have more than a languid interest in his brother. He must wish him better than well. He must have done forever with sharp practice, hard bargaining, ungracious criticism, and that subtle disloyalty which often through sheer cowardice stands mute while slander wags its tongue or envy shoots its Parthian arrows back as it retreats.

With the spirit’s eye he must see even in the poorest and the meanest of his fellows some charm which others have not found. He must with the Christ insight pierce to the heart of the roughest boulder that was ever hewn from the hard mountain-side of seamy human nature and let loose the imbedded angel always there and always struggling to be free. No man has any right to sleep, in fact to any of God’s better gifts, who goes through life with slanting eye and lowering brow sullenly protesting to himself: