Article May 16, 1908 Issue

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

MARY WHEELER.

Who can tell when the spring begins? Who can say when throbs the first pulse of nature's awakening life? Where springs the first green blade of grass? Where sounds the first note of returning birds? Wearisome and long is the night of winter, irksome the sway of darkness and cold. The senses chafe midst the colorless silence of earth and sky, the flesh faints under the spell of death which seems to bind forest and field. Cheer seems benumbed, and feeling grows torpid for lack of the sensible symbols of beauty and melody and life.

Yet nature is not dead. Within a seeming death she yet lives, and waits. Never for a moment has her heart ceased beating. In root and bud sleep seed-time and harvest. All the while, over the edge of the world, the sun has not ceased to shine. And presently, out of the shadow, each day more and more the patient earth turns her bosom toward the warmth of his rays; each day farther and farther the usurpant darkness retreats. Gently the icy bonds are lifted, steadily the sky takes on more blue, the air mints more of gold. All at once, the brook-runs show a fringe of green. Without warning, the willow-bushes are furry with catkins. A bluebird wakens the morning with his liquid greetings, and promises summer with the hue of his wings. Then, one day, while the children of men are still blinking and yawning out of their sleep, suddenly the spring is here, nature is wide-awake, and all outdoors shouts aloud, "Life, life, life! Joy, joy, joy!"

So is it with mortals not yet at home in the realm of the real, not fully attuned to the order supernal. So is it with those who, "watching and praying," attain but slowly, yet "yield not to discouragement" (Science and Health, p. 254). Times there are, when the heart's world seems sinking into darkness and the shadow of death, when the sun of righteousness seems slowly to withdraw itself, and its life-giving rays shine pale and feeble. Purpose seems mesmerized by apathy, effort is supine. Well-doing brings no thrill, the truth is veiled in illusion. The rapture of vision is as a summer fantasy, intuition is chilled by the icy blasts of finite reason, the harp of joy is mute. Whence this inertia of feeling and will? When will bloom again the gardens of paradise, when will ripen the fruite of the Spirit? What shall make vibrant once more the vacuous ether of consciousness?

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