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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. It would be useless to multiply further authorities; the evidence in support of the phenomenon is more than sufficient, and, consequently, there is no room for doubt. As regards the inhibition of pain, it is now regarded as quite an established rule that a suggestion adopted by a person, in the waking state, is generally more potent than one given, by another, after the induction of hypnotic sleep.
We may now resume the thread of our narrative of the great sacrifice Jesus had determined to make for the welfare of humanity. How he was betrayed, arrested and taken to the Chief Priest are narrated in the Bible, and so we need not tarry to describe them in detail. It was, however, discovered that there was no evidence worth the name to charge him with an offence. Only two persons seem to have deposed against him, and even their testimony was so discrepant that it was not considered safe to rely upon it. The Chief Priest and his companions were perplexed, and did not know what to do. Here was the very man for whose destruction all the plotting and planning had been done, but just at the very moment when they thought that he was in their power, he seemed to be escaping out of their hands, for want of good evidence. In sheer desperation the priest resorted to the device of bullying the prisoner into making some incriminating statement against himself. Turning to Jesus, he demanded ::
"Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee ?” (Mark, XIV, 60).
Jesus held his tongue, but a moment's reflection enabled him to see that his silence might be the undoing
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