ONE afternoon some years ago, a Christian Science practitioner in answering her telephone heard a mother say, "Oh, do help my baby; he is so very ill!" Her voice was tremulous as she told about the baby's alarming symptoms, adding with deep distress, "His father is away, and I am all alone with him!" The practitioner began to declare the truth concerning God and man, but was conscious of a great divergence between the statements she was making and the sense of human sympathy and responsibility she was experiencing. Before long the message came that the baby was rapidly growing worse. "Oh, if his father were only here!" the mother wailed.
"If his father were only here," the practitioner repeated as she turned away, and immediately asked herself, Who is his father? and where is his father? Instantly the answer came in the words of Jesus, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven," She began to realize that the one creator, the "great First Cause," the "I AM," the self–existent Mind, is our Father in heaven. She saw too that this Life–principle must include in itself all real being, and must be that which Mrs. Eddy has interpreted as "our Father–Mother God, all–harmonious" (Science and Health, p. 16).
As the practitioner sat thinking over and over the phrase "Father–Mother God," the question came, Then what is the child? Reason said that if there is only one creator, there can be but one creation, and it must be like the creator, forever existing in harmony or heaven. Still the thought of the sick child aggressively asserted itself, and she cried out for more knowledge of this Father which is in heaven and of His child. The words of the apostle Paul came clearly: "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. . . . And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Turning to Genesis, she read the story of Abraham, and saw in it a type or allegory of individual experience in turning from matter to Spirit as the reality.
