Article March 1, 1930 Issue

Returning to the Father

MARGARETHE SCHRÖTER

The parable of the prodigal son is a great favorite with many of us; and in the light which our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, sheds upon the Bible, the deep meaning of the parable becomes clear.

The second son, having received "the portion of goods" that fell to him, wandered away from his beautiful, harmonious home, away from the care of his loving father, and "wasted his substance with riotous living." The father remained at home, continually surrounded by harmony. The son's belief in separation from his father brought its own punishment, and the boy went from bad to worse until, in humility, he resolved to return home and to beg to be accepted, not as a son, but as one of the many hired servants of his father. On his return, his father joyfully received him as a son, as if he never had left.

Do we not often feel that we too have drifted into material pleasures and pains far away from our loving Father; that we have wasted many precious opportunities, have squandered and left unused many a fine talent of spiritual power and perception which our heavenly Father has bestowed upon man? But after we have become wholly dissatisfied with the husks of materiality, like the son in the parable we too turn our thoughts back to our heavenly home, which, seemingly, we have left, and begin to return to our loving Father, from whom man has never been separated.

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