Editorial April 19, 1913 Issue

LIFE'S SUNSHINE

John B. Willis

These days when old earth seems to be speeding in its race toward our northland summer, and when we are enticed on every hand to forget all that hinders our companionship with the sweet out-of-door awakenings, one is led to think again, and with an ever increasing wonder of interest, of the relation of light to life, and of the tremendous fact that this relation is true for all the ranges of history, observation, and experience. One does sometimes come upon low forms of growth in darkened places, but he will look there in vain for the flowers that break out in a riot of blossoming on every sunny slope.

The testimony of all the budding things about us is that light means life and development, while darkness means death and decay, and this is peculiarly true in the mental realm. Apart from the sun's radiation there would be no fragrance or fruitage in our gardens and fields, neither could there have been coal or gems in our mines, and with equal certainty and directness must we trace every spiritual grace and achievement to the perennial activities of Truth. To open our hearts to the Christ-idea, and to escape from that contented spiritual dormancy which impelled St. Paul to revoice the thought of Isaiah and cry out, "Awake thou that sleepest,"—these are always coincident in human experience, and this makes it true that our gains have all been the result of our living in the light.

The capacity to know God, and to become a channel for the divine manifestations of truth and beauty, goodness and healing power,—this, as all Christians agree, inheres in that spiritual and immortal element of human consciousness which is usually spoken of as the soul, but which Christian Science identifies as the true man. When Christ Jesus said to Peter, "Lovest thou me?" he was appealing to spiritual sense, to his possibilities of good; and when Peter could answer, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee," he gave evidence of having awakened, of having come to himself in so far since the hour when mortal fear impelled him to deny his Lord. Peter had moved out of the shadows of a false personal sense, and his after career witnessed to what the light of Love can bring about in the way of golden grain though the human soil be rocky and not a few tares still remain in the wheat.

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