THE man was huddled in the gloom of depression, enveloped in the darkness of the room. Internally and externally were depths of darkness; the uselessness of human effort, the feebleness of good, the solidity of evil, the why of it all,— Was the game worth the playing? the race worth the running? Nay! who could say yes? He wearily yet impatiently removed his head from his hands, and flung himself back in his chair. In so doing he half turned towards the door, and there, streaming through the narrow opening at the top of the door, glinting all the dust atoms with radiance and color, were rays of sunshine, all glorious, gorgeous, and fresh from their morning bath in the pure snowy clouds. Each ray trembled, shimmered, and sparkled, as if it remembered the millions of dear little dewdrops it had kissed as it dashed along on its joyous mission of light. The man stroked his beard, knitted his brows, and saw no rays; then he unknitted his brows, and became aware of the sunbeams again. He did this two or three times, and became interested in the operation; then, when he saw the cause and effect of the phenomena, he very unpoetically but naturally said, "Well, I'm an ass!" With this self-condemnatory expression he rose from his chair, went to the curtains and pulled them aside, then elevated the blinds, and the room was flooded with the light of a golden August day.
Are you asking who the man was who behaved so foolishly? Nay, nay! Let us be charitable and not push these awkward questions too hard. Let us be scientific, and say it was "mortal man," but let us not thrust the moral away when we use the impersonal method; morals in stories are made, as they should be in ethics, for personal application. Shall we then make morals while the rays shine? for the night cometh when no rays shine, and morals, too, lose their substance. Cheerfully, then, let us help ourselves to the rays of sunshine; cheerfully, because there are too many knitted brows in the world, and the mission of Christian Science is not a leaden one, it is not a bullet in a flame of gunpowder. The depths of Truth are too deep to need from you and me any ponderous oracular utterances to increase their immeasurable profundity.
For our first moral we may well query if it be at all wise on a golden summer day to sit in a room with the blinds and curtains drawn and the door closed? And oh! poor little unscientific human ostriches that we are, is it not likewise unnecessary and unwise for us to shut up our consciousness in the darkness of material sense, and shut out the omnipresent sunshine of divine Love with the heavy blinds and curtains of worry, fear, and discouragement?
