Article October 12, 1918 Issue

"Into his marvelous light"

ISABELLE PATRICK

Before coming into an understanding of Christian Science, light to us had always meant the sun, and much of our happiness and our sorrows had seemed to result from sunshine or gloom, even so-called disease being traced to weather conditions. In studying the Bible in connection with our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, we see, in more than sixty references, the metaphysical significance of light. As the sun has stood for the light of the material universe, the eye has stood for the light of the body. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 393 of Science and Health, "When Jesus declares that 'the light of the body is the eye,' he certainly means that light depends upon Mind, not upon the complex humors, lenses, muscles, the iris and pupil, constituting the visual organism."

It was his understanding of man as God's idea that restored sight, raised the dead, and cast out the darkness of mortal belief by the light of spiritual understanding. Jesus said: "If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" When our mentality is darkened by the belief in a power apart from God, we are to that extent blind in our understanding of God; but when we know God as the only power, the only Life, then our single purpose is to think righteously, and our whole thought is full of light. When mortals shut out, as it were, the power of divine Love by thoughts of hate, how great is the darkness. It is as when a curtain has been pulled down between them and the sun, and they grope and stumble until the curtain is lifted and the light is again admitted. The more we understand of God, divine Truth, as light, the farther removed become the mountains of doubt and fear that have, like the curtain, hidden God's light from us. God's light is always shining. No matter how heavy the clouds of error may seem, the light is always the same. Light cannot know darkness, nor can good know evil. When light appears, darkness disappears. Mrs. Eddy brings out this thought clearly when she writes (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 61), "Man's harmony is no more to be invaded than the rhythm of the universe." As our thought is lifted up to see man as God's image and likeness, evil becomes proportionably less real, and as the clouds disappear, the full radiance of Love shines forth.

We never doubt this in respect to the material universe, and our harmony is just as sure when we realize that back of every seeming evil, every seeming difficulty, God is; and as we rise to the spiritual understanding of this ever harmonious, divine Love, the clouds melt away and we realize that there is no power but God, good. The lie is disproved when the understanding of God appears, and we see the light "that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." God's man has dominion over the earth, over every cloud that would disturb the rhythm of harmony. Death, hell, and the grave all stand for darkness, but light is at the door of every tomb where men are buried in these thoughts, as if calling them to come forth from the cold, dark cave of mortal beliefs into the understanding of man's spiritual selfhood—to remove the graveclothes of superstition and bigotry and the napkin of doubts and fears that have been shutting out the marvelous light of Love and Truth.

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"Into his marvelous light"

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