LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 19, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 29.

LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS.

PROF. LEWIS SWIFT, the astronomer, was at one time in charge of the Warner Observatory, Rochester, N. Y., writes Rev. Dr. Samuel Campbell in the Homiletic Review. There was in Rochester a sculptor by the name of Mundy, whose sight was almost gone, but Dr. Swift determined to make him see a star once more. It was winter, and magnificent Sirius, brightest of all the fixed stars, was shining in the south. Swift led Mundy into a dark alley, set up the instrument, trained it on Sirius, and bade him look. He did, but reported that he could not see a thing. The darkness was dense, but, observing a street lamp burning at the corner of the alley, the astronomer suspected that even its feeble flame was blurring what was left of the vision of his friend. He ran and turned it out. Groping his way back through the inky darkness, he again adjusted his instrument, most carefully fixed the focus, and bade Mundy look again. It was a thrilling moment; for then that eye, that for long had seen little of earth and none of heaven, received the flood of light that poured down upon it from a far-away world, and the sculptor exclaimed in a rapture, "I see it, I see it!"

God puts us in darkness that we may see His lights up yonder; even then the effort often fails, because of the extreme insensibility of our spiritual vision. When one light after another has been withdrawn from our earthly comforts, if He at last turn out the only one that is left, it may be the darkness of earth that will finally reawaken our vision to the glory of heaven.—Selected.