Editorial October 19, 1912 Issue

LIGHT AND LIFE

John B. Willis

They who are privileged to look out upon New England hillsides these days have found themselves surrounded by battlements of color of wondrous variety and richness. On every hand the vision is flooded with a bewildering prodigality of tints which are no less brilliant than profuse, and he who finds good fun in following the rustling wood paths is sure to come home with a deepened sense of the marvels of light. If linked in our thought to the falling leaves, this display speaks for decay and death, but linked to light it becomes a revelation of an inner wealth, vast and unfailing as the resources of the sun. Thought is thus broadened and enriched, a passing pleasure has been transformed into a perennial profit.

This experience is a simple result of an education of sense, and it illustrates, though feebly, the gain of those who through Christian Science have been led to think of God as the source of all real being, all Life, Truth, Love, all goodness and all joy. The localization of our thought of color is a disability only to the freedom of a finer sense, but the localization of intelligence, the belief of life in matter, of mind in personality, bases our most significant thinking upon a misapprehension. It prepares the way for a course of reasoning which would make ideality the source of unideality, righteousness responsible for unrighteousness, God the creator of the devil. It is an error into which the best intentioned have fallen, and for the reason that it is endorsed and insisted upon, even today, by a majority of the world's religious teachers; nevertheless, for every thinking man it can but involve a hazard of the wreck of faith, and in protesting against it Mrs. Eddy has inaugurated nothing less than a Christian reformation. The identification of all real life, all that is forever good, beautiful, and true, as the manifestation of the divine nature and nearness, is the logical and saving sequence of genuine loyalty to the first commandment. It is the only concept of God which is consistent with the declaration that He is the only cause and creator, and it invests every thought of man, of the universe, and of life's events, with a new and nobler meaning. On the other hand, a confused sense of Deity has an ill-shaping influence over all our thinking and activities, and it is more largely responsible for the present devastating rule of materiality than we are possibly able to measure or estimate.

One can accept the fact that the science of numbers sweeps far beyond the compass of his present capacity of thought, and yet have entire confidence in its dictum; but if this science were to demand the acceptance of a contradiction, he would at once become skeptical respecting its reliability and right to rule. So, too, one can honor God, though he recognize his inability fully to apprehend Him; but the moment he is asked to entertain concepts of Him or His doings which are contradictory, which cannot dwell together, then he is sure to become indulgent toward skepticism. Our thought of the oneness of the ray of light is in no way disturbed by the disclosures which the approaching frost has brought us of the complexity of its composition, and this because the unity of the light beam is no less manifest than the diversity of its spectrum. The revelation is simply that of a hitherto undreamed of richness of content or nature.

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