THE last earthly utterance that marked the passing of the German poet, Goethe, was the cry "More light!" Two words of ordinary meaning in common usage, but fraught with a world of significance, wrung as they were from the paling lips of the great scholar.
Goethe had gathered widely from the tree of knowledge, and with instincts of true greatness in turn gave freely of the fruitage of his labors to the world. The age in which he lived acknowledged him as dwelling on a higher platform of thought than his contemporaries, and down through the succeeding century to the present time he has been regarded in all countries as a great literary teacher; and yet of what avail was all his earth-gained knowledge and acquirement when the shadows of earthly sense gathered into the blackness of night. It was then the hungering cry went forth, transforming the man of giant intellect into little more than "an infant crying in the night: an infant crying for the light."
This almost pathetic view of the powerlessness of what the world calls greatness, is looked upon in another light by the Christian Scientist, who discovers a certain loftiness or eloquence in the appeal; and who shall say that it was not the awakening of consciousness out of the dream of life in matter, and the false concept of Light, to an understanding of the reality of being, wherein God—Good— is supreme and His creation, light-illumed, stands revealed perfect and indestructible.
