The true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world is here, though the darkness comprehends it not. As many as receive that Light are given power to become the sons of God. In the hour of world darkness Christian Scientists are specially privileged to walk in the light. The children of light are consciously in the kingdom of heaven; they know that they are being washed clean, that the real man is innocent and intact, reflecting the dawn and its freshness; that he is radiant with joy, is above time and limitation, and is present with the Lord. The true Light rends the veil of the temple of false theology and streams through upon all mankind, uncovering the works of darkness so that all which belongs to the earth and is earthy is shaken, the rocks of material sense are shattered, and the belief in the reality of death has grown so evanescent that the so-called dead are recognized as not dead at all, but alive forevermore.
The children of darkness believe in a God who is despotic, inconstant, and revengeful; and to Him they yield allegiance. Therefore they express unsubstantial characteristics in their own lives. They believe in the reality of sin, sickness, and death, and so succumb to these beliefs. Christian Science with illuminating logic proves that God and evil cannot both be real, and that one or the other must yield not only priority but existence itself in human consciousness. Christian Scientists who follow the light have chosen God and discarded evil as illusion, and therefore claim the right to be healthy, happy, and free from sin, and to overcome death. Among the beliefs of darkness Christian Science reckons those of life in matter, of mind in brain, of the impotence or unwillingness of God to save and heal; the temptation to deify personality likewise comes from darkness, or to account God as the author of poverty, or to attempt to limit the infinite, or the tendency to suspect the motives of divine Love, or to trust in physical force unsupported by righteous power.
Christian Science does not hesitate to lay bare the stale and unprofitable works of darkness, and the doings of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," and to go to the very "seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy," spoken of by Ezekiel. The Christian Scientist who to-day wishes to fulfill his obligations toward a seemingly helpless world and follow in the footsteps of his Leader, is willing to accompany the guide of spiritual understanding and enter the "door of the court" and "behold a hole in the wall; " to dig in the wall and uncover another door, to "behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts," worshiped by the ancients of a false house of Israel. Having cast the light of Truth into these chambers of evil imagery, the Christian Scientist rejoices that these mental abodes of "creeping things, and abominable beasts" are to-day no longer occult, but known.
