IN the Christian Science text-book we read that "as light destroys darkness and in the place of darkness all is light, so (in absolute Science) Soul, or God, is the only truth-giver to man. Truth destroys mortality, and brings to light immortality" (Science and Health, p. 72). That Truth is eternal, unchangeable, and available in all human experience is universally acknowledged in word and almost as universally ignored in practice. While material symbols never fully represent spiritual things, there are some relations between the phenomena of nature which are symbolic of spiritual relations and which point to the universality of the availability of Truth. Such are the relations of light and darkness. Physical science teaches that light is real, darkness only the absence of light; that darkness has no entity, no source, no substance or life of its own. But the unreality of darkness is not evident to the senses; on the contrary, a race uninstructed in science would find it difficult to understand one who came with the message that darkness is not real, that darkness was never created, that it is no thing, has no place and no power.
Would it not be more in accord with ignorant human reasoning to say that darkness is as real as light, for so it seems upon entering a dark room; that it does fill all space where light is not, and therefore has place; that it certainly has power to cause men to stumble and fall, for this they do when darkness overtakes them. Is it not a logical outcome of such reasoning to believe that darkness is an entity, and that it has a creator? Suppose the race, at the beginning of the study of physical science, confronted with the phenomena of light and darkness, and beginning its reasoning with the above premise, were to seek the origin of darkness with the conviction that it is equal in power with light: the conclusion would be reached that it must have at least an equally powerful source. The senses say that light comes from an orb sending out brilliant rays, lighting, heating, and vitalizing the earth. Would it not be natural to conclude that if darkness is real it is also emitted by some orb which sends forth blackness, hiding the light, hiding earth's beauty, and carrying in its wake fear and dread of possible evil dwelling in its deep recesses?
Following the analogy still farther, might not the thought of seeking the source of darkness be a natural one? If the source of darkness could be found and destroyed, then light could not be hidden, and darkness with all its attendant evils would be no more. What would have been the result, if students had spent their time in seeking the origin of darkness? Suppose that the research after the sources of light had been made in the opposite direction, first with the hypothesis that a black orb of equal size and energy with the sun emitted darkness, and then with the hypothesis that the sun itself had created the darkness. Would the effort to learn something of the process by which darkness comes upon the earth be inconsistent with the premise that darkness has entity? Certainly not. Let us look for a moment at the result of this investigation. The study of the nature and source of light has brought a knowledge of means by which the darkest recesses of the deepest caverns may be made as brilliant as day; but all the ages spent in seeking to discover the source of darkness or in discussing the problem of why or how so brilliant an orb as the sun could create darkness, would never have revealed a light as bright as that of a tallow dip.
