The likeness of one thing with another may be valid and real, but the likeness of a thought with a thing is often merely fanciful. We very frequently unconsciously counterfeit external objects and laws in the region of mind and morals. Out of a physical fact or condition we fabricate a mental or spiritual condition or experience to correspond. Thus a current journal takes the fact that the sun obscures but does not put out the light of the moon and the stars, and from it draws the inference that the light of science may dim but cannot blot out the objects of faith. It counterfeits this fact and seeks to give it equal force and value in the spiritual realm. The objects of faith may be as real and as unquenchable as the stars, but this is the very point in dispute, and the analogy used assumes the thing to be proved. If the objects of faith are real, then the light of science will not put them out any more than the sun puts out the stars; but the fact that the stars are there, notwithstanding the sunlight, proves nothing with regard to the reality of the objects of faith. The only real analogy that exists in the case is between the darkness and the daylight of the world within and the darkness and the daylight of the world without. Science, or knowledge, is light; ignorance is darkness; there are no other symbols that so fully and exactly express these things. The mind sees, science lets in the light, and the darkness flees. If there is anything in our inward life and experience that corresponds or is analogous to the night with its stars, it is to be found in that withdrawal from the noise and bustle of the world into the atmosphere of secluded contemplation. If there are any stars in your firmament, you will find them then. But, after all, how far the stars of religion and philosophy are subjective, or of our own creation, is always a question.