Article September 10, 1921 Issue

The Living Night

JAMES C. THOMAS

No one has to agree with Stevenson's definition of night under a roof as a dead, monotonous period. To be sure, it may seem that and nothing more to plenty of people; and the best vehicle, they may think, for putting the monotony behind them is sleep. But in Mind there is no dull, monotonous period, and Mind, as Christian Science shows, is the Life of idea or man. This Mind is God, the one Principle. Life in Spirit is the exact opposite of the season of lethargy which mortals like to think is a requirement during some of the hours of every twenty-four. Morning, noon, and night are encompassed in divine Mind and the spiritual idea, and all time is the eternity that unfolds. One could not possibly think of immortal Mind passing a season of inaction, for the purpose of rebuilding strength or of overcoming the sameness of an eternity abounding in unnumbered new things. Mind is in and of itself everything, and that everything is composed of the infinity which the mind of mortal man cannot even begin to understand. Spiritual perception alone can comprehend a forever that is rich in diversity.

And since deathless, sleepless Mind cannot be thought of as ever being inactive, then the idea of Mind must be just as incapable of inaction. "Now let us not lose this Science of man," writes Mary Baker Eddy, "but gain it clearly; then we shall see that man cannot be separated from his perfect Principle, God, inasmuch as an idea cannot be torn apart from its fundamental basis" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 186). Idea is another name for thought or mental image, and it is also the name for the spiritual man who shows forth the fullness of divine Truth or God. It cannot be conceived that the thought of unchanging Mind could ever be less than thought,—could be, for instance, diminished thought, which is what sleep means. If thought or idea could be less than thought or less than idea, then Mind would have to be less than Mind, because the fullness of Mind could not be manifest except as the fullness of idea. So that it is just as impossible for spiritual man to sleep or to find a dead, monotonous period in his life as it is for ever living Mind to do so.

Night is not an entity or a reality to dominate man, order his thinking, his utility, and suspend his full life and bring it to a low ebb. The darkness of night cannot urge itself upon men with the crowding suggestions of repose or inertia for certain periods of longer or shorter duration. The living intelligence that is God is always with man, and that infinite unity leaves nothing beyond its active presence to dispute its reign. "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." It is this presence of the Lord, the never absent Principle, that dissipates the shadows of crowding night and sets in their place the irradiance of living Spirit; so Stevenson is right when he says that "in the open world" night passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the open world can be proved to be everywhere, under roof or no. The load of mesmeric night cannot crush the spirit of man turning to the light of everlasting day, away from the gloom of deadening apathy and discord that is pain, for, as Mrs. Eddy writes (Poems, p. 12):—

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