Article March 14, 1914 Issue

Remedy for Ghosts

MARTHA BURR BANKS

In the early history of the world, the indications of unseen power that men noticed about them seemed to them mysterious and supernatural, and they came to believe that the movements or the changes that they observed in wind, water, weather, sun, moon, stars, trees, flowers, or seed, were the effect of what they called "spirits."

Owing to lack of acquaintance with the spiritual universe and to ignorance of man's dominion over all the earth, mankind regarded these forces as fraught with more harm than helpfulness to humanity, and they were considered absolute and irresistible. So it was not strange, therefore, when any one vanished from mortal vision, that it was taken for granted he now belonged to the unknown realm of which the people stood in awe, and that he should become an object of fear and dread. It was supposed that his soul or spirit still lingered about places familiar to him in his earthly existence, or hovered near the spot where his material body had been laid to rest, and naturally those who believed in the reality of such specters would be likely to deceive themselves into thinking that they did sometimes see them.

The old word for spirit was ghost, and among the definitions of the term, Webster and the Standard dictionary give the following: "A disembodied spirit." "The spirit of a deceased person." "A spirit of any kind." "Apparition, shadow." "A shadow or semblance." The first phase of faith in ghosts has largely disappeared from human consciousness through the understanding, due to advancing enlightenment, that there is no such thing as a ghost of this kind; but the race has not yet outgrown all its ghostly superstitions. It still expects manifestations of evil in human experience and looks for the appearance of ghosts in the shape of fear, doubt, poverty, loss, sorrow, strife, misfortune, catastrophe, pain, sin, sickness, and death. Happily, however, through the illuminating teachings of Christian Science we are learning that these things, too, are unreal.

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