We see that in reality it has never been otherwise for the simple reason that in the very nature of Being it _could_ not be otherwise; and when we see this we see also that what has hitherto been wrong has not been the working of "the Father" but our conception of the existence of some other power, a power of negation, limitation, and destructiveness, the very opposite to all that the Creative Spirit, by the very fact of Its Creativeness, 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.