A NEVER failing source of inspiration to the earnest student of the Bible is the story of the prodigal son. The loving thoughts of his parent followed him wherever he went; and when, weary and heartsick and awakened at last to the uselessness of all his search for material satisfaction, he turned toward his home, those same loving thoughts went out to meet him. We read in the Gospel according to Luke, "When he was yet a great way off"—when he was still marked perhaps with the stains of his dissipation and hardships— "his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."
What a fountain of hope for the weary mortal! For if a human father could recognize true humility and repentance, and be compassionate and forgiving to an erring son, how much more—how infinitely much more— will the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, all-loving heavenly Father bestow His blessings on man made in His image and likeness! Mortals may stray far from their consciousness of home and the dominion of right thinking, even for a time may mesmerize themselves into believing that material pleasures satisfy, but when the awakening comes, and they discover they do not want to be bound longer by the swinish elements of socalled mortal mind, but do yearn for the spiritual, when they find they need not be among the impure thoughts of animality one moment longer than they allow themselves to be, when they realize that the only true happiness is not in yielding to material temptations but in rising above them, in leaving them that they may arise and go to their Father's house of right thinking, where they can recognize that spiritual man has "dominion over the . . . cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth"—then they find they are not dead, but "alive again" to all that is pure; then they find that man is not "lost" in materiality, but "found" surrounded by the riches of the spiritual universe. They find—and the scope of these wonderful discoveries is boundless—they find, as they strive to purge themselves of evil and to fill their consciousness with humble, childlike thoughts, that in that very humility they are proving themselves worthy to be called sons.
God's man never fell into evil ways. The true creation contains only perfect man, made in his Father's image. The heavenly Father's love and compassion are ever with His child. All the riches in His possession He gives unstintedly to this dear son. We need to learn this, and to turn gladly from contemplating the husks which never satisfy, to dwell upon the knowledge that all good belongs to God's children, and that error can in no way deprive those children of their rightful heritage. An instant of hesitation in divine Love's giving? Never! As one of our Christian Science hymns states, divine Love "forever waits to bless."
