ONE of the commonest phases of limitation to which mortals submit unresistingly is the so-called law of arrested development. On the one hand we may behold stunted and imperfect bodies, from whose eyes look out rebellious and imprisoned mortals, groping vainly for a solution to their age-long problem; on the other, we are confronted by those of attractive and well-nigh perfect physique, whose blank, unseeing stare attests mental vacuity. When is superimposed upon these deplorable conditions the resigned acceptance thereof, by the beholders, as the will of God, either by reason of His inscrutable wisdom or as punishment for the sin of "this man, or his parents," one who has gained ever so slight a perception of the "good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God," marvels that the stones seem to remain silent, and that the universe does not cry out in unceasing protest against such blind submission to this crowning superstition of the ages.
"The time for thinkers has come," Mrs. Eddy writes in the Preface of Science and Health (p. vii), and can any one reasonably doubt that any thinker throughout the history of the world has failed to question the goodness, the justice of the Almighty, even though at the same time bowing despairingly beneath the belief that His will had sorely afflicted the thinker's self, or one of his nearest and dearest? Can any conceive of the hopeless petitions that have been uttered with the longing that in some miraculous way they might be heard and heeded at the throne of the Most High? Is it possible to fathom the depths of darkness into which the unanswered seeker plunged when the heavens remained brass, and the conviction became a certainty that the god upon whom he had called was, like Baal, asleep, or on a journey?
Into the chaotic gloom of the primeval world God uttered the creative word, "Let there be light," and with hushed voices we read that the mandate was obeyed, "and there was light," despite the seeming darkness upon the face of the deep. To the vision of the historian came successive periods of light and obscurity, of longer or shorter duration, until in the prophetic days the light had become so darkened through the false beliefs and unbrotherly acts of mankind that only occasional faint gleams gladdened the weary eyes of those who strained their vision in that twilight of the world.
