On Living in a Haunted House

There was a time, in childhood, when we were much impressed by houses that were supposed to be haunted⎯a haunted house, of course, being any empty place where people had moved out and dust and cobwebs had moved in. Creaking floors made them live, and the wind made them breathe and move and speak of many things⎯but more of loneliness than of anything else. In some ways perhaps any old and empty house seems haunted: haunted by memories, haunted by forsaken sounds. We are no longer impressed with the supposed specters that we once mistakenly may have thought lingered in lonely houses, but there is cause to be concerned with the specters of the past that can and do haunt the lives of men and take from them their peace of mind: the ghosts of accusing thoughts that will not be silenced, the ghosts of regrets that cloud the present and the prospect of the future. Some of us may be haunted by small regrets, and some by grievous regret, but fortunately for all there is hope of relief: fortunately, because there is no man who is perfect; there is no man who has not made some mistakes; there is no man but who would change some part of the past if he could. There is no man who does not sometime have need of repentance. We can go a long way toward pushing out the specters of the past by doing what we can to right old wrongs, by making restitution, by giving earnest evidence of “a right spirit within ” us. But we cannot well rely on wearing out old fears and accusations without doing something about them. They are stubbornly persistent, and more often they wear us out. Their grooves dig deeper as our thoughts go round and round, and often they catch up with us long after we think we have left them far behind. The price of pushing out the ghosts of the past may be high but seldom is it as high as the price of living with them. And part of the price is prayerful repentance. These are very old words, but an honest and prayerful repentance is one of the greatest remedies in the world and the only remedy for much of what ails us.