“He knoweth what is in the darkness.” This is what the prophet says in connection with the affirmation, “He revealeth the deep and secret things.” We must not imagine that darkness is symbolical only of evil. The shadow is as beneficent as the sunbeam. (Text.)
(661)
The love of evil prowlers for the darkness is not confined to the insects named in the extract. It is also a characteristic of those who hunt men’s souls; the saloon-keeper thrives best by his night trade.
Tarantulas are night prowlers; they do all their hunting after dark, dig their holes, and, indeed, carry on all the various business of their life in the night-time. The occasional one found walking about in daytime has made a mistake, someway, and he blunders around quite like an owl in the sunshine. (Text.)—Vernon L. Kellogg, “Insect Stories.”
(662)
A whimsical treatise entitled, “William Ramsay’s Vindication of Astrology,” propounds the absurd theory that the absence of the sun is not the cause of night, but that there are tenebrificous stars by whose influence night is brought on, and which ray out darkness and obscurity upon the earth as the sun does light.
Are there not some men and some institutions that shed darkness rather than light on the world? (Text.)
(663)