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?
Moral two: Isolation is not always conducive to progress. Listen to what the man thought after he had seen the rays of sunshine. "If," said he to himself, "one of those little rippling rays were to imagine that he was a self-contained entity, a separate planet revolving in his own peculiar orbit, wouldn't he just find himself a trifle dark suddenly!" Are we not foolishly doing this very thing? Are we not always saying, "To-morrow I will go there and trade;" "I will build me greater barns wherein to bestow all my goods"? O foolish Dives, you are deluded by the artificial light from your own false sense. It were better to be as friend Lazarus, who is comprehending the darkness of his darkness, thereby being helped to see the rays of sunshine filtering through the shutters of his false senses. Envy, malice, jealousy, murder, — all these evils spring from this belief of separate entities. Look upon your brother as a distinct ray of light from the same sun. See how you cannot fill his place nor he yours. Note how he contributes light and beauty to your environment; and when you see this, hatred, suspicion, and all the dark brood of rivalry's night will vanish in the sunshine of brotherly love.
Moral three: If we want to find the rays, let us look for them. It is related in a Persian story that a crowd had gathered round a dead dog in the market-place, and were speaking contemptuously of its various defects. One said, "He has a blind eye." Another remarked, "See his miserable coat." "He is lame in one leg," said a third; but Jesus, who was standing by. said, "Look what beautiful white teeth he has." Should we not then look for the "divine influence ever present in human consciousness" (Science and Health, Pref. p. xi.) in our fellows, appeal to that, call it forth out of its tomb, declare its freedom, as our Master did when he said of Lazarus, "Loose him, and let him go." Men search eagerly for veins of gold in the earth; do they search as assiduously for the layers of gold lying below the top-soil of rubbish in human character? When they apply here some of that energy which is displayed in the opening up of a new gold region, they will find a mine that will never give out and its yield will increase in the direct ratio of the effort expended to find it. A prospectus with a statement like the foregoing would not wait long for shareholders to purchase the shares. Should not we then, "the children of light," be as enterprising as the "children of this world"?
One of the biggest diamonds in the world was discovered by accident, and yet really it was not. Similar circumstances might have placed the diamond in the path of an ignorant savage, and it would not then have been discovered. It was the knowledge of what a diamond is that enabled the discoverer to recognize it when circumstances apart from special effort brought the object within the radius of that knowledge, but this latter was absolutely essential to the recognition. So we must be as ready with our understanding of Truth, to recognize its idea when fortuitous circumstances present it to our gaze unexpectedly. The very darkness in the room seemed to accentuate the rays of sunshine, the dark mud served as a background for the scintillating points of the rough gem, and the wrath of man cannot obscure the divine image. Let us seek, then, for after all a Magdalene is as well worth the finding as is a Kohinoor.
Weaving these shining strands into a veritable cloth of gold for a garment of praise, we may see the beautiful meaning of the words written by our inspired Leader on p. 299 of Science and Health: "Corporeal sense, or error, may seem to hide Truth, health, harmony, and Science, as the mist obscures the sun or the mountain; but Science, the sunshine of Truth, will melt away the shadow and reveal the celestial peaks."
Duty, faithfully performed, opens the mind to truth, both being of one family, alike immutable, universal, and everlasting. —
