Page:Saints or Spirits, Agnes Repplier, 1920.pdf/9

1920.] Gertrude Kingston, in a very able paper on telepathy and hypnotic suggestions, comments upon the general absence of ghosts in Italy. Every house in England or Scotland that has witnessed a crime of sufficient magnitude harbors its family spectre, who appears at appropriate intervals, and keeps alive ancestral traditions. But there are blood-stained old palaces in Rome, in Florence, in Perugia, whose very walls might shriek their tale of horror, yet where no man's sleep is broken. Miss Kingston attributes this peaceful atmosphere to the influence and practices of the Church. "Ghosts," she writes, "are not encouraged in Roman Catholic countries, owing to the habit of saying Masses for the repose of the dead, thus preventing all subconscious suggestion of an uneasy spirit's return, by removing the motive of its visit."

This is the Communion of Saints. This is the service rendered by the living to the dead. If we content ourselves with a spiritual bond, which is a real and vital thing, if we can dispense with rapping tables, and the spelling of words on a ouija board, and the intrusion of controls, then something stronger, sweeter, holier than the disjointed intercourse of the séance will unite us with the faithful departed. Like David, we shall go to them, but they shall not return to us.