Editorial January 5, 1924 Issue

"The high goal"

Ella W. Hoag

On page 426 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes: "The discoverer of Christian Science finds the path less difficult when she has the high goal always before her thoughts, than when she counts her footsteps in endeavoring to reach it. When the destination is desirable, expectation speeds our progress." Herein our beloved Leader has amplified a truth which all thinkers have recognized in some degree. Most men will admit that they must desire something before they will undertake to win it; and they also know that they walk more rapidly towards that which promises joy than towards a goal which offers something less pleasing.

If the students of Christian Science are to cease counting their footsteps and find how to have the way made "less difficult," they need to understand what "the high goal" is, and why it is "desirable." Mrs. Eddy defines the goal in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 85), when she speaks of "perfection" as "the goal of existence." "The high goal" therefore which is to be kept constantly before our thought is "perfection." That it is the all-desirable, since it is the expression of infinite good, cannot be doubted. There is no Christian Scientist who does not know that this goal is the one all must finally attain. Each must desire and strive until he eventually wins it; for how otherwise can he be delivered from all that is undesirable and imperfect?

Christian Science teaches very definitely that since God is perfect, man in His image and likeness must here and now reflect perfection. To begin to grasp this marvelous truth and to learn that it is possible of demonstration,—that here and now it may be so understood and proved that every belief in an opposite may be relinquished,—this is indeed to find the most desirable of goals. Hence our desire or prayer for perfection must be so great and so constant that no argument of error shall ever deceive us into turning aside, even momentarily, from its consideration.

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