must be. That wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son shows us
that he never ceased to be a son. It was not his Father who sent him away
from home but his notion that he could do better "on his own," and we all
know what came of it. But when he returned to the Father he found that from
the Father's point of view he had never been otherwise than a son, and that
all the trouble he had gone through was not "of the Father" but was the
result of his own failure to realize what the Father and the Home really
were.[9]

Now this is exactly the case with ourselves. When we wake up to the truth
we find that, so far as the Father is concerned, we have always been in Him
and in His home, for we are made in His image and likeness and are
reflections of His own Being. He says to us "Son, thou art ever with me and
all that I have is thine." The Self-Contemplation of Spirit is the Creative
Power creating an environment corresponding to the mode of consciousness
contemplated, and therefore in proportion as we contemplate ourselves as
centers of individualization for the Divine Spirit we find ourselves
surrounded by a new environment reflecting the harmonious conditions which
preexist in the Thought of the Spirit.

This, then, is the sequence of Cause and Effect involved in the teaching of
the Bible. Man is _in essence_ a spiritual being, the reflection on the
plane of individual personality of that which the All-Originating Spirit is
in Itself, and is thus in that reciprocal relation to the Spirit which is
Love. This is the first statement of his creation in Genesis--God saw all
that He had made and behold it was very good, Man included. Then the Fall
is the failure of the lower mentality to realize that God IS Love, in a
word that Love is the only ultimate Motive Power it is possible to
conceive, and that the creations of Love cannot be otherwise than good and
beautiful. The lower mentality conceives an opposite quality of Evil and
thus produces a motive power the opposite of Love, which is Fear; and so
Fear is born into the world giving rise to the whole brood of evil, anger,
hatred, envy, lies, violence, and the like, and on the external plane
giving rise to discordant vibrations which are the root of physical ill. If
we analyze our motives we shall find that they are always some mode either
of Love or Fear; and fear has its root in the recognition of some power
other than Perfect Love, which is God the ONE all-embracing Good. Fear has