SONSHIP

Since God is Mind, and is Spirit, it is clear that this Mind's image and likeness is not corporeal. God and man are mentally alike, not unlike, and as sickness, sin, and death are totally unlike God, so they are equally unlike man. Life, Truth, and Love beget only beings who are living, truthful, and loving, and so God is only visible where goodness, kindness, truthfulness, etc., are to be found. Glimpses of Mind's image or offspring are to be seen in every little manifestation of those qualities which, in their perfect expression, constitute the divine Being we call our Father.

Spiritual man is the expression of limitless good; he is the pure stream flowing from the pure fount, and possesses "not a single quality underived from Deity" (Science and Health, p. 475). The realization of this sonship comes to human beings through their patient elimination of all that falls below the standard of the divine Principle, Love. One may say, But is it not presumptuous even to aspire so high? This is, however, nothing but an evil suggestion, seeking to limit a legitimate expansion toward the divine ideal, for Jesus did not hesitate to say, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." The Wayshower was then addressing human beings for the purpose of explaining to them the sinless yet attainable reality of man's true being. And what is that "Father" but the universal, impartial divine Mind, the only creator? Jesus could truly say, "I and my Father are one," for his thoughts were one in quality with Life and Truth and Love. He reasoned from spiritual premises, and it is as if he had said, I and the divine Mind are one.

Hence it is that we mental pilgrims can claim this relationship only so far and so fast as we improve the groundwork of our thought, modeling it upon that of the parent Mind, and adding thought to thought in proof of our sonship. A good thought originates in God, and when such a thought steals gently, like a shaft of light, into human consciousness, then conscious sonship has begun, and will continue until all belief in an evil or fleshly origin has been eliminated. Paul says, "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." On the other hand, mortal mind falsely claims to be a universal cause, and when its thoughts of fear and sin and perplexity come thronging toward us, we must disown them and "call no man [our] father upon the earth," but quickly turn to the one Mind whose ministering thoughts are always close at hand.

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EMERGENCE
March 6, 1909
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