The great Master, Christ Jesus, once took a little child and placing it beside him said, "Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great."
The disciples had been disputing among themselves who should be accounted the greatest; they were allowing themselves to be mesmerized by the aggressive suggestions of pride, jealousy, and self-aggrandizement, which certainly have no place in spiritualized thinking. And Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, pointed to the childlike simplicity, trustfulness, and unworldliness which characterize true spiritual greatness. "Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right," Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 236); and it is this receptiveness to good which must be guarded and nurtured.
Perhaps the first step lies in knowing that God is the only Father and Mother of man. The human sense of parentage counterfeits the divine fatherhood and motherhood of God. This does not mean disparagement of the human relationship, but presents a more spiritual point of view in dealing with the problem. The spiritual fact on which the enduring love between children and parents rests, is the eternal love of God for His spiritual creation. In divine reality, man is the image and likeness of God, and he has not a single characteristic or quality unlike good. Man is always at the standpoint of spiritual perfection, being the eternal reflection of perfect Mind, without beginning of years or end of days. Consequently, human birth, growth, maturity, age, dissolution, and death are fleeting mortal concepts, false material beliefs, which never affect true being.
