Fear of being separated from good is perhaps one of the major anxieties of the human senses. With her mothering tenderness and assurance, our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, said to one of her students as she left the class of 1885 on the final day: "Thou art mine, saith the Lord, and none shall pluck you from out my hand" (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Second Series p. 17).

When one lives as the image of good, lives love and its attendant virtues, such as service, kindness, long-suffering, honesty, the assurance of inclusion in God, the one infinite good, becomes increasingly vivid. Paul must have felt this Christly condition in order to utter the words: "In him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Courage becomes more real, joy glows considerably, and spontaneity, energy, and ingenuity appear in the measure that one feels through Christ, Truth, his nearness to God, his Mind, his Soul.

Christ Jesus said of his followers (John 10:29, 30): "No man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one." What incomparable statements of man's relationship to his source and his at-one-ment therewith! Indeed, this relationship is well worth laboring for in the vineyard of Christian Science, wherein the complete way of Life unfolds with its uninvadable protection and safety, in fact, the coexistence of God and man.

In her "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy discusses the unity of God and man in conjunction with the experience of Philip in his conversion of the eunuch to Christianity, as related in the eighth chapter of Acts. She says (p. 77): "This is the Father's great Love that He hath bestowed upon us and it holds man in endless Life and one eternal round of harmonious being. It guides him by Truth that knows no error, and with supersensual, impartial, and unquenchable Love."

And farther on in this volume she says of the one Mind, God (pp. 82, 83), "This Mind, then, is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good."

Fortified with such utterances of man's relationship to his Maker as these, one need not be timid in the performance of his duties, either small or great. He can approach them with a sacred sense of safety, freedom, and sureness, knowing that he has the ability necessary to the perfect performance thereof. No errors of any kind have us at their mercy. The son of God is never at the mercy of matter or mortality. In I Chronicles we read (16:34), "O give thanks unto the Lord ...for his mercy endureth for ever."

One can no more be separated from God, his source, than a ray of sunlight can be separated from the sun. To feel and become demonstrably aware of the joyous condition of coexistence with one's Maker, however, it is necessary every moment of every day to live the truth as completely revealed in Christian Science. This Science is not abstract or theoretical, but provides a living, palpitating way to an all-out subjugation of materiality to the spiritual basis of being, which is the only real.

Christ Jesus, our Way-shower, lived among his fellowmen a life of complete unselfed service and devotion to the spiritual real, and Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and the revered Leader of the Christian Science movement, devoutly followed his example and revealed to us this Science, which enables us to do likewise.

Just as the whole force of electric power in the generators of an electric plant is back of the power furnished to each electric light and appliance connected therewith, so the whole Christ-power is back of and supporting every one of us in the minutiae of his righteous daily living and being, from activity of prime import to the world, to the smallest endeavor of the humblest man, woman, or child.

A human sense of loyalty expressed between friends, between employer and employee, in families, in churches, in business and professional associations, gives evidence in the human scene of the inseverable relationship between Principle and idea. Christian Science develops and unfolds this evidence in the experience of the honest, earnest seeker after Truth.

As thought becomes awakened to the all-inclusiveness of being, individually and personally reflected and expressed, opportunities for development and service will proportionably increase. Just as our thinkers in the field of physical science are breaking through barriers once believed to be impenetrable and exploring the heavens, developing speeds which are breathtaking in contemplation, so will mankind ultimately break through the mythical barriers of disease and limitation and discord in many areas.

But this will come through the one and only real Science, the Science of Christianity. When it is realized that nothing can pluck idea out of its Principle, its cause, then one becomes more fearless, less restricted, and his thought is opened to higher, broader, and increasingly more spiritual possibilities of achievement.

A child feels safe, sure, and certain of himself as long as he knows that his parents love him, will back him up, will care for and support him. In the realm of the real, in which one knows his Father-Mother God as his real and only parent and accepts his eternal relationship therewith, one will gradually learn of his primitive, spiritual being, which never began and will never end. Then all pressure, restriction, heaviness, fear, doubt, limitation, and mental darkness will forever melt away, and one will know of a certainty that "the Father is in me, and I in him" (John 10:38).