Earthly experience is not all sunshine; it includes shadows. The sunshine of human happiness and prosperity, of human health and affection, is variable, interrupted by shadows of doubt and disappointment, discord and discontent. Is there something significant about these shadows? Is there a lesson to be learned from them? Christian Science says that there is, and the following statement by Mrs. Eddy points it out: "The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being."Retrospection and Introspection, p. 21;
Human consciousness has long accepted the testimony of the senses that existence is material and consequently that the conditions of matter control the life and happiness, the welfare, of every individual. It is this acceptance of material sense testimony, involving as it does sin, ignorance, and fear, which introduces shadows into human experience and blots out the sunshine.
Christian Science offers to human consciousness the opposite evidence of spiritual sense: that Life is God, the one infinite Mind; that being is wholly spiritual and is found only within this Mind; that the changeless characteristics of true being are freedom and harmony, infinity and joy, holiness and immortality. Acceptance of this spiritual evidence into human consciousness lets in the sunshine of Truth. Shadows flee before it.
