Article November 14, 1936 Issue

One in Quality

ELISABETH PHELPS REED

A Child was once asked if he would be afraid to be alone in a forest at night. "No," he replied, "because God would be there." When asked how he could be sure of that he answered, "Because I would be there!"

The child thought, which the Master told us was the only passport to heaven, had discerned a great and scientific fact—man's inseparability from God, because the omnipresence of God includes His reflection, man. To be included in Mind, man must of necessity partake of the nature of Mind; he must be divinely mental, composed not of material elements, but of divine qualities. As this truth takes possession of one's consciousness, it governs one's human experience, because of the self-enforcing Principle it reflects.

One who once found himself bound by a seemingly unyielding error, and who earnestly desired to gain a spiritual sense of the reality which the material senses misrepresent, took paper and pencil and made a list of the qualities expressed by the real man, such as love, joy, humility, individuality, intelligence, all of which are man's by reflection. This simple expedient enabled the seeker so to lift his thought "beyond and above the mortal illusion of any life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter," as Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 302), that he began to catch a glimpse of the spiritual realities. He saw that spiritual qualities are never separated from their source, Mind; that divine qualities are never twisted, dwarfed, sick, or in pain; that man's real being is beyond the reach of malicious or ignorant evil. He saw that man's position is impregnable, because the very nature of his being constitutes his security; that what he is determines what he does.

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