"God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." These words point to the fact that God, Mind, who is everywhere, is manifested as spiritual light. Therefore it is self-evident that shadow or darkness is only a belief or illusion of human consciousness and has no place or reality in the infinite realm of Mind. The prophet Zechariah refers to a state of human experience which he describes as a day when ''the light shall not be clear, nor dark," but ''at evening time it shall be light." Light at evening time corresponds to the unfolding in human consciousness of divine Science, which reveals the Christ, Truth, the light of spiritual understanding.
The word ''shadow" is defined as "darkness, obscurity, an unreal appearance." A shadow denotes the absence of light or the effect of a dense object obscuring the rays of light. On page 299 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy refers to the dispersing of a shadow in these words: "Corporeal sense, or error, may seem to hide Truth, health, harmony, and Science, as the mist obscures the sun or the mountain; but Science, the sunshine of Truth, will melt away the shadow and reveal the celestial peaks."
Christian Science teaches that man is an idea of Mind, spiritual, perfect, and incorporeal, and that mortal, material man is a product of human belief. Divine Science reveals the fact that the physical body is only the objectification of so-called mortal mind, the shadow of material thinking, which seems to be substance but is in fact unreal. Mortal mind also asserts that the corporeal body is essential to human personality and is indispensable to the individual; that the body may become discordant, incapacitated, or diseased, thus causing the individual much distress or pain. Sin, sickness, and disease are mists or shadows caused by false material beliefs, which obscure the light of divine Science but are dispelled as we permit the rays of Truth to fill our consciousness with the effulgence of spiritual illumination. We need not fear or remain in bondage to the mental shadows resulting from erroneous thinking, if we will heed the admonition found in Science and Health, where Mrs. Eddy says on page 418: "Speak the truth to every form of error. Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed joints, are waking dream-shadows, dark images of mortal thought, which flee before the light of Truth."
