Article November 4, 1916 Issue

Seeking the Light

NELLIE GARDNER MASON

Upon one occasion, while exploring a partially darkened cellar, I observed a quantity of potatoes which had sprouted, and my attention became focused on a long sprout which had entered a fissure in the cellar wall. On investigation I perceived that it had pushed its way through the narrow aperture to the light outside, and on the tip were little leaflets unfolded. I could not help but be impressed by this evidence of the tremendous vitality of all that expresses life, and its tendency to dislike darkness and pursue light. Thus human sense is drawn by divine Mind to seek for and to find a loophole of escape. In the case of the potato vine, as soon as the encompassing walls were left behind and air and sunshine reached, the pale leaflets started,—an indication that no manifestation of life can be suppressed by so-called false environment.

Since I became interested in Christian Science, this incident has been vividly recalled, and the lesson conveyed has become a valuable and significant one. The seemingly inert tuber, reflecting life, could not be satisfied with an unnatural position and surroundings, or remain inactive. Movement must be manifested, and the new growth crept day by day along a difficult path to the fissure in the cellar wall. Without fear or hesitation it entered the tunnel in the hard stone and crept on through a winding passage, seeking the light of day.

Material beliefs can sometimes be used to point a valuable lesson. Therefore it may be said that mortal man leaves the prison of erroneous belief by a process similar to the one described above. His environment is not satisfactory, and he finds no real rest while at home in the senses. The dawn comes when a new life, a purified desire, is born, and mortal man starts to grow away from his limited and darkened sense of things. He seeks, consciously or unconsciously, the light of life in God. His journey from sense to Soul may seem to be hindered by obstructions which he must pass over or through in demonstrating their unreality, and the apparently solid wall which confronts him is the belief of life and intelligence in matter. But divine Love always furnishes an opening through which he may pass; it is the way of Truth, pointed out to this age by Mrs. Eddy in the text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

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