Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/368

352 proof that it was heard, because they did not sufficiently understand God to be able to demonstrate His power to heal, — to make harmony the reality and discord the unreality.

Our Master declared that his material body was not spirit, evidently considering it a mortal and material

belief of flesh and bones, whereas the Jews took a diametrically opposite view. To Jesus, not materiality, but spirituality, was the reality of man's existence, while to the rabbis the spiritual was the intangible and uncertain, if not the unreal.

Would a mother say to her child, who is frightened at imaginary ghosts and sick in consequence of the fear:

“I know that ghosts are real. They exist, and are to be feared; but you must not be afraid of them”?

Children, like adults, ought to fear a reality which can harm them and which they do not understand, for at any moment they may become its helpless victims; but instead of increasing children's fears by declaring ghosts to be real, merciless, and powerful, thus watering the very roots of childish timidity, children should be assured that their fears are groundless, that ghosts are not realities, but traditional beliefs, erroneous and man-made.

In short, children should be told not to believe in ghosts, because there are no such things. If belief in their reality is destroyed, terror of ghosts will depart and health be restored. The objects of alarm will then vanish into nothingness, no longer seeming worthy of fear or honor. To accomplish a good result, it is certainly not irrational to tell the truth about ghosts.