In the Scriptures we read of Jacob, who, in a strange place, in darkness and alone, yet had a vision of divine help, and later declared, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not." Thousands of years after Jacob's time, we read of that other who knelt alone in the darkness of Gethsemane, and amid the greater darkness of the world's hatred and misunderstanding. Alone and in darkness, there he, also, communed with God, and found strength with which to tread the path which lay before him.
Darkness! The very word seems like a knell upon the heart. Darkness seems to embody fear; and in the darkness all fears are magnified. There is even a phrase which speaks of "the power of darkness." When brave sunshine comes again, we smile that we ever feared; yet, when night falls, once more we are apt to feel the touch of dread. In the darkness do we not more earnestly turn to the invisible good we know as God? In the darkness we realize the need of something outside ourselves. Certainly, we seem more self-sufficient when things are bright and the outlook clear, whether it be a sunny day or a bright stretch of harmonious existence. Let shadows fall, and many of these things which before seemed so real and substantial are found to be quite undependable, quite insufficient to comfort or to help us; and yet, when it becomes dark we behold the stars. The lonely mariner, the traveler on the desert,— how these two welcome the companionable lights which speak of far-away fellow-travelers in the blue empyrean. The stars beam serenely, or flash with glory, or seem to look down as sweetly as forget-me-nots from their dark azure fields. Their message is of something above earth's smoke and discord, above its smirch and stain and grind; and the thought which beholds them is lifted, in its turn, above some of the harshness which may have been part of the day. They breathe a message of another world, of a purer life. David felt this when he wrote in one of the psalms, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained." And, so, we cannot fail to see that not the royal sun nor the mild moon can utter to the heart of man just what the stars in their beauty say.
In the dark places which we sometimes traverse, as we journey from sense to Soul, we are lifted up and strengthened by the stars which shine out upon us. Divine Love has not neglected to provide stars for these darknesses. Are we not often amazed, when we come into the gloom of a personal grief, to find how many stars there are sparkling all about us, stars of friendly love and kindliness? Perhaps we never realized before how loving the hearts of men are, how delicate and tender their proffers of service and of help. Then also, we find glowing there those great stars, God's promises. These beam upon us serenely, with their messages of unchanging goodness. In such a place we see and appreciate, as we never did before, that great golden light of the life of our Savior, he who walked the earth and served humanity amid all its sordid and sorrowful phases. Then, also, because our eyes have come to know better how to pierce the darkness, we more rightly appraise the majesty of Christian Science, revealing the spiritual good of the Scriptures in endless whirls and loops of small and great points of glory.
