Editorial June 28, 1913 Issue

REMAINING SHADOWS

John B. Willis

She was speaking of her personal problems and manifestly thought of some of them as of a kind that would demand great effort for their solution. Responding, her friend said: "Don't make such hard work of it. Let us remember that light dispels darkness without strain or effort, and that Jesus said, 'I am the light of the world.' Our sense of struggle in spiritual overcoming simply witnesses to the fact that we are looking upon the situation from the human point of view instead of from that of divine Mind. Christian Science should illustrate in us, as Mrs. Eddy has said, 'the unlabored motion of the divine energy' (Science and Health, p. 445). In so far as we apprehend this, and truly commit the work of our redemption to Truth, it is certainly possible for us to find relief from all sense of burden, and rejoice in our freedom regardless of present human limitation." "But," she answered, "we have the shadows when the light is present!" "That is true," he replied, "but it is explained by the fact that we admit the light at one point only. We raise the shade of a single window while keeping the others closed to the light. When it is permitted to enter from the north, south, east, and west, then there is no hiding place for the shadows and they flee away."

Musing afterward upon the conversation, the friend was impressed with the manifestly limited number of those who have proved in their experiences that they have answered the Master's "Wilt thou be made whole?" with an intelligent and unqualified affirmative. Most people want to escape hell, as Jonathan Edwards used to say, but they are not entirely willing, and the many do not know how to yield human belief to the redemptive Christ-idea. Some of the obligations connected with a religious life can be assumed without any inconvenience, and this professional conformity may prove an open window through which not a little light is admitted; but shadows will certainly remain so long as through ignorance, prejudice, or sensual desire any beam of divine light is unwelcomed.

The dawn of freedom is likely to render the disabilities of enslavement more manifest and correspondingly more irritating, but the increase of liberty will in due time eliminate the pains of human travail and establish a redeemed society. The awakening to Truth likewise precipitates that struggle with remaining false sense through which Jacob passed at Peniel. In most experiences there is a period in which shadows not only remain, but they often seem more intense because of the brilliance of the illumination of a single field of thought. If, however, "gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear" (Science and Health, p. 324) describes our attitude toward the coming day, then the question as to the persistence of sense shadows is settled once and for all.

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