Shall We Practice Hypnotism?

420 IMPROVEMENT ERA. some of the limbs of the trees had to be cut off to permit us to pass. My trip to Mexico was a journey that I would not have missed for a great deal. The heat, the water, the rain, the floods, the tropical vegetation, the groves of oranges, lemons and cocoanuts; the monkeys, tigers, insects, snakes and parrots, and a thousand and one other things, animate and inanimate, contribute to the memory of the trip. SHALL WE PRACTICE HYPNOTISM.? The above is a question that a member of the Church in England recently asked of President Francis M. Lyman. The member had been led to think that a person possessing the hyp- notic power, who studied and practiced it, could possibly benefit himself and others. The reply of Apostle Lyman, as found in the Millennial Star, is good reading for the young people of Zion, and we therefore reproduce it in the Improvement Era: Hypnotism is a reality, anJ though some who claim to have this mysterious power are only tricksters,yet others do really hypnotise those who submit to them. From what I understand and have seen, I should advise you not to practise hypnotism. For my own part I could never consent to being hypnotised or allowing one of my children to be. The free agency that the Lord has given us is the choicest gift we have. As soon, however, as we permit another mind to control us, as that mind controls its own body and functions, we have completely surrendered our free agency to another; and so long as we are in the hypnotic spell—and that is as long as the hypnotist desires us to be—we give no consent in any sense whatever to anything we do. The hypnotist might influence us to do good things, but we could receive no benefit from that, even if we remembered it after coming; out of the spell, for it was not done vol- untarily. The hypnotist might also influence us to do absurd and even shocking, wicked things, for his will compels us. Hypnotism is very much like the plan that Satan desired the Father to accept before this earth was peopled. He would make them do good and save them in spite of themselves. The Savior, on the other hand, proposed to give free agency to all, and save those who would accept s alvation. Our Father rejected Satan's plan, and sacrificed a third part 0 f his children for the sake of upholding this true principle, that men hall have the right to act for themselves, and shall be responsible for heir own actions.