How often our hearts fail us as we become mesmerized by the belief that some act in the past has been a mistake which can bind all our present and future, and keep us in bondage to its material results! We consent to submit to the material conditions which so hamper us, forgetting that in Christian Science we are given the power to cure wrong conditions. When God appeared to Moses, He did not tell him to help the children of Israel endure the hardships in Egypt. He said, "I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey."
God did not need to show the Israelites how to endure the hardships of the plagues to which the Egyptians were subject because of their more material beliefs. He spared them from being touched by them. When they started from Egypt to the Promised Land, God went before them, and led them in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He furnished them with food and water, and their clothes waxed not old during the time when they seemed to be entangled in the wilderness. His encouragement He never took from them; nor did He cause compassion for the fate of the Egyptians to turn them back. He had caused Moses to show many signs of His power unto the Egyptians while they were in Egypt; but He did not allow the children of Israel to be robbed of their heritage by a false sense of sympathy for the Egyptians. The progress toward the Promised Land was not hindered by any false sense of the Israelites bearing the responsibility of the happiness or salvation of the Egyptians. That redemptive work was His to do in His own way; and the Israelites' progress was not delayed in the least by it. Moses was able to see that it was their duty to go ahead to claim the Promised Land as soon as possible. He knew that by so doing they could furnish the surest proof of God's power to the heathen.
When the prodigal son saw the mistake in the course he had been pursuing, he immediately said, "I will arise and go to my father." There was no uncertainty about his being able to go; there was no doubt in his thought that the citizen could find another swineherd; there was no false sense of responsibility to the swine. He knew that they belonged to the citizen, and that the citizen could care for them. The prodigal's return was made immediately after he had determined it to be the right course. He might have been mesmerized into believing that he should force himself to become content with the husks, and to endure them until death set him free. But he was a wiser son, and understood better the love of his father. He knew that his father, who had abundance, was ready to overlook his mistakes and give him suitable food and a comfortable home. He had no fear that his father would say: Son, you have made a very serious mistake; I have all things and abound, but your conduct has cut you off from enjoying these things now! You must wait a good many years before they can be yours! You will first have to learn to endure the husks to which your youthful folly has reduced you, and find all your happiness in prayerful hope that at some day in the far-distant future you will be able to obtain and enjoy these good things!
