In the first chapter of Genesis we read, "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." In the world of sense, light is accounted a concomitant of material processes by which physical objects and their relationships are perceived. As revealed by the Bible and understood in Christian Science, light is the unfoldment of God, divine Principle, as omnipotent and omnipresent Mind, which reveals the spiritual nature of man and the universe, and their relationship to Him. Hence metaphysically, spiritual understanding, light, and vision are coordinate.
It is taught by physical science that the outer world becomes visible according as its objects send out or reflect ether waves of certain lengths. The ether is a postulated, invisible medium conceived by physicists to pervade all space and all matter and to be susceptible of vibration or undulation. Because the ether is supposed to penetrate all material substances, certain revolving electrons, the supposed units of matter, set up in the ether transverse vibrations forming waves of different lengths, whose impact upon the retina of the eye is accompanied by sensations of color. The concept of light and vision as the correlatives of physical processes has thereby rendered vision liable to all the disabilities and limitations that may be predicated of matter. The greater part of humanity —during at least some portion of its earthly span of life—pays the tribute of defective vision to this belief that sight is conditioned by matter. Although medical science has striven to relieve and improve the defects of the human eye, still on every side appear those who believe their eyes are fettered by inherited structural defects, by age, or by fading sight.
The compassion of Christ Jesus was many times manifested in restoring sight to the blind. In healing the blind man Jesus declared, according to John's gospel, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life;" the deep import of these sayings and works, pointing to the Christ, Truth, as the actual light of man, has, however, only been restored in its practical application to human needs by the advent of Christian Science.
