But there in the darkness of that dungeon a struggle for life and hope goes on as important to the life involved as that of building a throne or destroying an empire. Never did a hero dare or a nation fight more bravely to attain its aspirations than did that little seed or bulb lying in the darkness. A slender beam of light gives it a hope of escape, and, cold and chilled, its prayer for life has slowly evolved a delicate pale vine which creeps toward the sunbeam. Each day it has seen that beam of light fade and pass, and darkness and mildew paralyze it into the stupor of unconsciousness. And again that sunbeam awoke it to consciousness and life. At last it reached the crevice whence came the light, and, lifting itself as a prisoner escaping from death, it springs forth into the sunshine and opens its blossoms of beauty and perfume to greet and gladden the world of light and life. Thus has humanity struggled for light, and toiled for hope and joy and sunshine through a thousand ages of gloom and chilling mildew of ignorance and darkness. And wherever a gleam of light and truth has pierced the shadows of life's struggles and tragedies, like the tiniest seed or fragile vine, the aspirations of his nature and his longing soul have reached up toward it. What the ray of light is to the flower seed in the dungeon, religion is to man. Wherever man has crept, like the vine, in the darkness, towards the light it was his religious spiritual nature and aspirations which led him. Truth, which comes from the bosom of the eternal Good, streams down into the darkness and lifts man's soul up into the light by the same law that the flower and the vine seek the sunshine, and all true science and philosophy sustain the religious concept.