True conception is the outcome of real Life expressing itself. Real Life is God, divine Love. False conception is the outcome of a false sense of life and love appearing to us as material circumstances and conditions.

To the extent that our motives are one with the self-expressing power of divine Life and Love, our conceptions originate in and are formed by the divine, immortal Mind. They are true and pure. To the extent that we are motivated by material circumstances or conditions, our conceptions are the outcome of mortal mind expressing itself. They are false and impure.

Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal. The evil accompanying physical personality is illusive and mortal; but the good attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal." ^{Unity of Good, p. 37;}

It is fundamental that God, not man, is the creator of man. Human conception, therefore, is only as real as it is spiritual. It is as unreal as it is mortal.

The conception of a human child is much more than the result of sexual union. It is the result of the motivation of which such union is but a small part. And this motivation includes much more than the desires and aspirations of the parents. It includes the universal belief in material life and intelligence, in biological laws as well as social and economic laws, all of which affect the parents' life motives. Through the Christianization and spiritualization of thought, motives become more Godlike, and conception becomes more genuinely like the expression of divine Life.

A human child is the result of human conception. If the parents do not challenge the belief that such conception is entirely material, their conception is largely influenced by this belief and subject to its laws. But if, through an understanding of Christian Science, the parents refute the mortal and material belief with the truth of God and man, their conception of the child is to that extent more spiritual.

What the parents then experience as their offspring is as near to spiritual reality as their conception. But the real man—the divine conception—is never less than Mind's perfect idea.

The belief that a child is conceived at a point in time is part of the larger belief in material life that is to be refuted; therefore the spiritualization of a parent's concept of a child can occur at any time, before or after the seeming conception of a mortal. The sooner it comes, the more harmonious is the yielding of materially personal beliefs.

The fact that the real man was never conceived or created by material processes, material urges, or mortal motives gives every child the opportunity to become conscious of his status as a legitimate, perfectly conceived idea of divine Love. Parents or, for that matter, foster parents can do much to help the child gain this consciousness of himself. We can all help each other in the degree that we recognize divine Love as the only Life.

Christ Jesus illustrated the real man's sonship with God in the total love he expressed for mankind. And he said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, ... that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." ^{Matt. 5:44, 45;}

To love unselfishly is to live. To think or feel anything less than love for God and man is to have no truth and no real life. As we live truly, we can express Life as Life is—perfect, whole, complete Love. And we can rule out, with the understanding of Life, any threat to health or harmony in our own lives or in that of a child. As we improve our conception of our children and help them to improve their conception of themselves, we can bring them up in wholesome goodness, in wisdom, love, and fearless joy.

In the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy gives us a definition of "children" that presents both the spiritual facts and the material beliefs: "The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love.

"Sensual and mortal beliefs; counterfeits of creation, whose better originals are God's thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity; material suppositions of life, substance, and intelligence, opposed to the Science of being." ^{Science and Health, pp. 582, 583.}

As our mortal concept of love gives way to an immortal concept of divine Love, we will find our lives reflecting more and more of divine Life. The children we have will show forth more and more the qualities of Mind's eternal ideas.

The real child of God was never born and will never die. He coexisted with the divine Mind before time began and will coexist with Mind after time is no more. He is not one of a mathematically computable number of such ideas having to compete for a space on earth, but an individual expression of infinite Life dwelling in timeless Mind. As we come to understand this spiritual concept of man as the child of God, we will find ways to help our human offspring find their "better originals" and to solve the problems of an ever-evolving humanity.

Carl J. Welz