The seventeenth chapter of The Acts of the Apostles tells of Paul's talking to the people of Athens on Mars' Hill, a place of assembly, and saying to them in part: "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." While superstition "in all things" was evidently apparent in the affairs of these learned men of Athens it was most markedly shown in their numerous and diversified deities through which they attributed influence and power to innumerable material causes, whereas Paul knew through his understanding of the Christ that a knowledge of the oneness and power of God would destroy belief in idolatry and its attendant superstitions.
With the same message to-day of the one God, divine, ever present Mind, and man as the conscious witness of this Mind, Christian Science as given in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, its Discoverer and Founder, uncovers and dispels the ignorance and mystery of every phase of superstition and reveals the fact that many hitherto respected devotions of daily experience are nothing more than the indulgence of superstition unconsciously obeyed.
The word superstition is derived from the two words super and stare, meaning in combination, to stand over, or, to stand in awe of, to have an irrational estimate of some mysterious influence supposed to exercise control over the destiny and life of man. The category of conventional superstitions is by no means confined to objects of magnitude, such as the sun, moon, and stars, but includes the influences for good or evil of the lesser things of earth, such as the creases in a man's palm, or the shape of his finger nails, the picking up of a common pin, or the finding of a rusty horseshoe, all claiming control over man's existence.
