To the average person there is something fascinating in the thought of light, however caught or diffused. The stars embedded in their azure setting hold their unsurpassed attractiveness throughout the ages. Spread out a modern city with its artificial lights at midnight before the eyes of a savage, and there a spellbound watcher will be found. A well-told story of the flame of a dying candle, its feeble rays battling with the huge spaces in shadow, leading some lost one to a safer haven, has a touch of tenderness that rests alike on civilized and heathen.

Is it not that mortals instinctively feel hope in the idea of light? Does it not symbolize the eternal Father-Mother Love, reaching humanity in its dark hours? The psalmist says, "If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me." The same authority also says, "If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." It is because "God is light" and knows only light, and because the Christ-idea within is ever urging us toward the light,—and not because of any power of our own,—that we eventually struggle out of the pit into which our ignorance or self-will plunges us.

When we begin to analyze light and darkness, we find how mental they are. Who has not, when alone in the twilight or looking out at an overcast sky, found his world illuminated by some secret joy? Again, if on one's heart despondency has laid its cheerless hand, has not the earth seemed dark under the blaze of the noonday sun, or at dawn when the land is fair in the soft light of a summer morning? Little by little we are learning that it is from within, and not from without that our impressions of what we see as externalized things are formed and colored. Our wise Leader, with vision clear and true, reiterates the same fact that David gave to the world centuries ago, when she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 596): "Though the way is dark in mortal sense, divine Life and Love illumine it, destroy the unrest of mortal thought, the fear of death, and the supposed reality of error. Christian Science, contradicting sense, maketh the valley to bud and blossom as the rose."

In our journey to higher ways of thinking and living, our lessons have to be rehearsed over and over again, and given to us in many ways and from many angles, before at length we grasp the real issues. The means by which one such problem became clear to the writer is lovingly offered in the hope that it may be of help to some one in a dark hour, showing, as it did to her, how our thoughts make and control the sense of our surroundings.

Instead of the harmony which the study of Christian Science, when applied, brings into the lives of all faithful students, a certain Scientist who had allowed her thought to be wrongly influenced, and self-will and impatience to go unchallenged and undestroyed, found her little world had suddenly become upset. Nor was she aware at the time of the presence of the ray of light which could be turned inward to find there the cause of the commotion. In this frame of mind she started for home. The hour was late; and she must go alone, and on the street car,—a necessity that never before had seemed a hardship. Indeed, until that night she had rather reveled in the ride and the walk alone in the still night, between the street lamps shimmering like beacons in the country silence, up the long hill to her home. This night, however, she waited at the deserted street corner, impatiently pacing the sidewalk. Minutes grew long and weary until at length her car arrived. In time she reached her home station and stepped from the car. Then she stood for a while bewildered. Darkness such as she had never before encountered lay about her; and presently it became plain that the street lamps were unlighted and a dense fog covered the ground. Since she had gained some knowledge in Christian Science of divine Love's protecting care, she had not been afraid to go alone by day or night wherever God called her; but this night mysterious whisperings came creeping into her thought. The story was recalled of a martyred Spanish general, whose white horse was declared by the Mexican inhabitants of the neighborhood to gallop at midnight across the trail which she must take; and she remembered hearing, a day or two before, that somewhere in the outlying districts of the city an escaped lunatic was at large. Nor was that all,—a little way ahead a vicious dog had a nightly habit of lying in wait for late comers! Till then his fierce gambols had not disturbed her; but that night she felt afraid of him.

Encompassed by such mental darkness, the student began to see where her erroneous thinking had led her; and how exactly her thought was externalized to her in her surroundings. As the prodigal rose from his husks and turned his face toward his father's house, the student turned to Christian Science, there to find something by which she might regain some semblance of poise. Out of her shadows she sought light,—not the light of lamp or star, but the light that indeed does shine in darkness though the darkness comprehends it not. And she found divine Love at hand.

The fog did not lift, neither were the street lamps suddenly lighted, but with the student's change of thought the sense of extreme darkness was gone; and since fear was conquered, she moved quite freely along the familiar way. Hardly had she started on in this better frame of mind, than from out the darkness a friendly dog found his way to her side, and took his place beside her as if he understood her need of the presence of some kindly creature. No king with an army marching at his side could have felt more secure than she. Her neighbor's dog was met and passed; he growled and barked as usual, but she was not afraid. A song was on her lips and in her heart. Unthankful as the hour had found her, though she had indeed made her bed in hell, behold, God was there. Like the prodigal, not her own worthiness but the Father's love had lifted her burden and clothed her in the best robe. No night was in her song. Within her own home, the room flooded with light, she listened to her faithful comrade beating his tail contentedly as he lay at her front door; and toward dawn she awoke from sleep to find the dog still on guard. The joy of sunrise, which later came as a new wonder and glory, disclosed no trace of her friend; nor did she ever learn from whence the dog came or whither he went; but the memory of his quiet and unexpected appearing could not be lost.

Silently, the woman stood at a window on the hill, turning toward the east a face on which a bright light shone. The song of the night awoke anew with an anthem of praise for the breaking day,—the day which she saw symbolized in the scene before her; and it seemed to her thought that as our understanding of light takes on a higher meaning, every dancing gleam will speak to humanity of unfathomable hope. Surely, the ascending rays of that greater light, which is the understanding of divine Love, will pierce the mantle of darkness with which mortals wrap themselves, dispelling the night of materiality, till heaven's song of angels shall burst forth into a carol at earth's diadem of splendor, which, even now, is beginning to be seen rising in the east, as soft and gentle as the dawn's glow.