AS one comes to think of it, there is no familiar physical fact so central, so all-surrounding as light. Three million suns stud the firmament as silent witnesses to its universality, hence the fitness and frequency of its symbolic use by the Scripture writers. "Let there be light," — the true light, "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," — is the initial, the continuous, and the eternal mandate of God, a mandate addressed to every unideality, every ignorance, sin, disease, and death, from all of which it gives prophecy and assurance of full redemption. It affirms that darkness has no place, power, or right to be, and this is the metaphysical epitome of that gospel which St. Paul has splendidly defined as "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
This teaching is an abiding offense to material beliefs, and the fact that Christian Science has been so resisted in the past by mortal sense is thereby explained. God's infinite wisdom and love, radiated in the life of man as humanity's savior and guide, — this is the declaration of the reality of being expressed in that spiritual message of which Mrs. Eddy has said, "When you look it fairly in the face, you can heal by its means, and it has for you a light above the sun, for God 'is the light thereof" (Science and Health, p. 558).
To open our thought to this light of Truth is to realize in individual experience the event described by Isaiah when he wrote, "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." The prophet portrays, however, only the beginning of the day, and shadows will not wholly disappear until the sun has reached its zenith in human understanding. Our present apprehension and utilization of the healing truth is fairly represented by the relatively trifling amount of the sun's rays intercepted by the earth; and while the recognition of this fact should conduce to great humility upon our part, it should not and does not interdict a constant and ever-increasing joy as in the gentle glow of dawn our uplifted faces are turned expectantly toward the coming day.
