IN the Sunday edition of an eastern paper there appeared recently a very interesting article under the caption, "Making Darkness out of Daylight." It was given with instructions for experiment somewhat as follows: Procure a wooden box, cover one side with glass, also make a small glass window in each end, and by a simple chemical process (which it is unnecessary to give here) extract all foreign matter from the air in the box. Then, by holding a lighted incandescent bulb to one of the windows, you will see that the light will pass through the box and out of the opposite window, but the space within the box will remain entirely black, the light passing through it remaining invisible. The light enters and comes out, but the interior of the box, as you look into it through the glass front, seems to remain in perfect darkness.
The interest of this experiment lies in the fact that it illustrates the seeming darkness of the interstellar universe. Persons who have climbed to the summit of lofty mountain-peaks say that at these high altitudes the sky seems to be black instead of the familiar blue, and if they could ascend a few miles higher the sun and stars, which would become intensified in brilliancy, would be as they really are, a beautiful blue color instead of golden yellow; but, notwithstanding their increased brightness, it would seem that all space was filled with a darkness which is insusceptible of illumination because there is nothing in it to reflect light. It is sheer emptiness, through which light may pass but which can have no brightness of its own, and it serves to remind us of the Master's words, "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" The light and heat from the sun are said to travel through millions of miles of this inconceivably cold emptiness, without begetting the phenomena of either heat or light, but when it reaches the atmosphere of our earth all is changed; here it encounters that which reflects and refracts the light, and thus produces the illumination which we call sunlight, the temperature which we call warmth.
While reading of these interesting facts, the writer was reminded of that passage of Scripture which likens Truth to the light that "shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." and to the correlative passage in Science and Health (p. 480), "If there is no spiritual reflection, then there remains only the darkness of vacuity and not a trace of heavenly tints." Thought reverted to the . time when again "darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said. Let there be light: and there was light"—in the consciousness of one brave woman, who was spiritually responsive to a degree which enabled her to receive rays of light from the infinite, and arise transformed from sickness to health, from weakness to strength, from despair to hope, from death to life. She had sufficient faith, moreover, to hold on to the truth received until she learned what it was, from whence it came, and how to shed it abroad, till those who were nearest to her—in thought— perceived its steady glow and, struggling through the blackness of doubt and fear, of sin and pain, until they, too, stood beside her in its life-giving radiance and listened to her loving, patient instruction, learned to reflect, with varying degrees of brightness, the same wonderful truth, "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God." After a while the ever-increasing brightness reached even to "one of the least of these." where she groped in the darkness, struggling in pain and sorrow and despair, and dispelled her crushing sense of doubt and fear with the light which is the life of men.
