To many millions of the world's citizens today, one of the most relentless suggestions is separation. Train, plane, bus, and ship often seem to have but one mission, the rending of human ties, the parting of loved ones.

But students of Christian Science, in their understanding of divine reality, have the means of escaping lonely hours or years in an arid waste of belief in separation. In meeting this claim, let the student of Christian Science be radical in his stand from the start, heeding well the Biblical instruction. "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."

The "I" which sets forth life and blessing is the divine Mind, described in the textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 591) as, "The only I, or Us; the only Spirit, Soul, divine Principle, substance, Life, Truth, Love: the one God." That which, on the other hand, sets forth cursing and death is the belief in a material selfhood separate from God or Truth, and in this belief is the only sense of separation which can possibly exist.

The divine Ego, or "I, or Us" of true being, knows nothing of separation, because it knows nothing of the material sense of distance, which implies duality of place. In the consciousness of Mind's ever-presence separation and loneliness are unknown. It is well when denying rampant human evil to deny at the same time the deceptive counterfeit of good, for accepting the one may beget suffering from the other. Good is always divine, always exists purely in the realm of spiritual understanding, is always the fundamental condition of true being. Believed in as human or personal in any degree— to that degree it is mortal. Spiritual good—reality—never resides in material personality, place, or thing. It cannot be defined by dimensions in space, because all that can be so defined can be lost, can be subjected to separation, can appear to be elsewhere.

This mortal sense of division, minds and souls many, is but a reiteration of the Adam-dream, in which separation first took place. Divine Love's all-inclusive oneness knows only the eternal completeness and ever-presence of that which is true and real.

But how, one asks, does this help me to overcome the devastating sense of loneliness and fear? In the recognition and acknowledgment of the true is to be found the destruction of error. If there is but one "I, or Us," where can separation take place? Surely not in this perfect Ego or Mind, wherein no division has ever been known. The Christ-consciousness, the substance of spiritual selfhood, is Immanuel. Individually expressed, it manifests every real quality of Mind.

A student of Christian Science whose husband had been flying on bombing raids in an outpost of the world, found complete freedom from fear by perceiving at the outset that either there is no such thing as omnipresence, or else omnipresence means allness, being ever present.

It is possible, through spiritual reasoning, to blot out the dark shadows of mortal-mindedness, with its suggestions of fear, loss, separation, destruction, and death. One may feel, even in the midst of these false pictures, the peace that passes all understanding, the peace of at-one-ment with the reflection of infinite Life, which cannot be localized and so separated from its own manifestation of itself.

This peace is not stolid, cold, and distant, a mere disciplined refusal of human emotions. It is the warm, vital, and active peace of Soul. Tenderness is basic to this peace, is its strength and eternal fragrance. One Being, infinite and universal, knows no divisions.

This fact has been beautifully expressed by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, whose human experience was singularly fraught with opportunities to prove the radical worth of her discovery of pure Science—that is, the knowledge of divine reality untinged and untainted by human misconception. On page 37 of "Unity of Good" she states, "Because God is ever present, no boundary of time can separate us from Him and the heaven of His presence; and because God is Life, all Life is eternal." And in the Christian Science textbook (p. 303) she further says, "Spiritual man is the image or idea of God, an idea which cannot be lost nor separated from its divine Principle."

Our only refuge from the aggressive insistence of the claim of separation lies in the acknowledgment of our one true being, forever untroubled by the pictures of meeting and parting, even when humanly they seem to appear. This knowing sustains our active unfoldment of ever-present good, even in the midst of experiences which seem like the uprooting of long-established ways. Not only shall we be sustained, but individual reality will become more gloriously apparent as we learn that we live eternally in Mind, God. As we grasp the great opportunity of the hour, old standpoints drop away naturally, and the time world, with its shadows, ceases to seem substantial or desirable, the while we learn the blessed fact that infinity is ours today.

How wise was the Psalmist who discovered and acknowledged, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee." In these words he proclaimed the infinite One in divine Science, in whom all being is ever present, the continuous, spontaneous fulfillment of itself.