Article November 5, 1955 Issue

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK!

MARJORIE D. MANLEY

The Scriptural statement (I John 1:5), "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all," shows us that he who truly believes in God has no reason to fear darkness of any kind. Christian Science helps us to understand that any apparent darkness is but a phase of mortal belief. There is no actual source for darkness; it has no place of origin. There is nothing to be turned on, like a faucet, to flood us with blackness. It has no place at all in the realm of Spirit God.

While light stands for understanding and clarity, darkness has long been a symbol of uncertainty and insecurity. Day is popularly associated with activity and progress, but nighttime with mystery and evil-doing. When we are at a loss for the solution to a problem, we say that we are "in the dark." When we understand, we say, "I see." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 215): "We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the absence of light, at the coming of which darkness loses the appearance of reality. So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before truth and love."

A woman who for many years had lived in the shadow of invalidism found release from her many ills when the light of Truth, as revealed by Christian Science, flooded her consciousness. Healing experiences began with her very first visit to a branch Church of Christ, Scientist. The enlightenment gained there gradually replaced many misconceptions. One by one the "phantoms of error" fled before the illuminating truths which were heard and read. Two difficulties were slow to yield, however. These were insomnia and fear of the dark.

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