Perfection Established

There is just one way to attain perfection and that is to have a single eye for its ever present reality, this minute, everywhere. Perfection from the world's viewpoint has been set up as a goal in some remote future, with a narrow road leading thereto, something to be striven for but unattainable in this realm. Indeed it is interesting to note how many celebrated writers have implied or plainly said that perfection is too far removed from practical realization ever to be attained; and yet Jesus gave us to understand very clearly that nothing less than perfection is to be expressed, demonstrated, and nowwhere in his teachings did he show any patience with a compromise on this point, no gradations of good or evil, no gradual stages, but perfection and nothing short of it.

Since the wonderful gift to the world by Mary Baker Eddy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and her other works, hundreds and thousands of people have agreed to the logic of one ever present, perfect God, divine Principle, and man as the perfect experssion of His being. Many there are who have profited immeasurably by Mrs. Eddy's explanation of the dual account in Genesis of the creation of man, and who now see man as a spiritual creation ever and always expressing the same complete perfection as the creator. At the same time it is well to take account of thought and be absolutely sure that no traces of a belief in a counterfeit creation are lurking in the dark recesses of human compromises, no such beliefs as the existence of a spiritual man and a material man, a true man and a mortal counterfeit. Quite subtly may we argue, if thought is unguarded, that though we know of the perfection of the real self, yet we have a human self to contend with and therein to prove our perfection and harmony by demonstrating painless matter and a pleasant looking physique. This word real, when used to distinguish between two supposedly different states of being, is often the screen in back of which hides the compromised thought. It is easy to admit that man's real consciousness is God, that real being is spiritual, that real self is perfect, but are we at the same time knowing without reservation that this real consciousness, being, self, is the only consciousness, being, self that there is?

A few decades ago any inference as to the unsubstantiality or nothingness of matter was looked upon as a startling statement, but to-day it is generally conceded by thinking scientists that matter, regardless of its outward seeming, when correctly analyzed has no entity whatsoever. Nevertheless the world has not accepted this fact sufficiently to relinquish its belief in things material, and more perhaps than is realized do even those who know the truth ofttimes make compromises in their thoughts and statements in agreement with general material beliefs. Matter is a negation and anything absolute is naturally its direct opposite and is harshly received by human thinking, but the fact re mains (not in spite of but in place of general beliefs) that there is just one truth about existence and the universe, and that truth is not arrived at by compromises and gradual steps, not necessarily by years of preparation and growth, but by instantaneous realization and an absolute stand on the infinity and immortality of spiritual reality, with not even a temporary opposite. Speaking absolutely, Christian Science is not a remedy for human disorders; it is the truth about their unreality; it does not start with negations and change them into realities; it starts with realities and proves the nothingness of illusion. Right now is the time for perfection, and right now is it the present reality, simply to be recognized, accepted, and demonstrated to the full extent of our present vision to bring manifold proofs of the truth and practicability of such reasoning.