Article March 13, 1909 Issue

DAWN

REUBEN POGSON.

Dawn is that experience of the mortal consciousness when it begins to leave the night of gross materialism for the full noon of Truth's eternal day. Across the night sky of error some star of hope has led us on, kept us looking up and away from many of the grotesque forms that seem so solid in the darkness. We have stumbled, we have fallen, but out of our groans and mayhap our curses the desire and the cry for the unadulterated good has welled up; and though so tiny a star, it yet manifested the nature and character of the immutable good whom we know in Anglo-Saxon as God.

There is a stage when we need the sympathetic help of our fellows, the grip of a strong hand in the dark. It is that hour when the moon has ceased to give her borrowed light, when all the stars have disappeared, and darkness, gross darkness, encompasses the earth. It is when we discover that the light which is in us is darkness, and we are appalled at the greatness of that darkness. The reassurance that though this may be as the "Valley of the shadow of death," nevertheless it is but a shadow which can be dissipated by the light of Life, helps to dissolve to some extent the seemingly adamantine substance of what is merely a state of negation. With the coming of light things begin to alter their shape; that which seemed a giant of evil with arms outspread to seize us, begins to take on the appearance of a tree. A whiteness is creeping into space, Truth is gently preparing us for the intense brightness of the spiritual universe. There are recorded instances in the Scriptures where the intense light of Truth has broken suddenly upon the unillumined minds of mortals, but this has not remained permanently, except as an experience to encourage the seers to press on through the reenveloping gloom to the unvarying, unchangeable light of Life and Love.

We look in a particular direction for the light to break. We feel sure that it is the east toward which we are looking, yet the light does not come. Then some one touches us on the arm and points in a different direction. Ah! Mutely we thank God that the light has come, even though it was not in the place and way anticipated. Many of those who come to Christian Science for the healing of some specific disease get disheartened by the slowness of the healing, and it frequently needs a friendly reminder to awaken the discouraged ones to see that the light is breaking on their moral, mental, and physical horizon in other directions.

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DAWN

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