"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.

When our Leader tells us that she kept "the high goal" before her thought, she had certainly proved it possible to demonstrate this steadfast contemplation of perfection, and she had gained thereby a freedom from difficulties in her progress Spiritward. What a wonderful example and what an encouraging promise for every earnest follower who would go and do likewise! Surely it is our duty and privilege to follow in the way she has pointed out, in the way she herself has walked, for thus only can we leave the false for the true.

After we have once turned our faces towards this goal, we should always remember the words of Jesus, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." So, however often we may seem to fall short of perfection; however far away the goal may sometimes seem to be; however error may attempt to argue failure and incapacity,—nevertheless, there "the high goal" stands unchanged and unmoved, and we can immediately turn again to its contemplation. What though so-called mortal mind may attempt to discourage and dishearten, through falsely insisting that the goal can never be won, even daring to say that our God-directed efforts to dwell in thought with the perfect are fruitless,—still, there is perfection, all untouched and all unharmed, safe in God! There it always is, to be kept before the thought and thus have the path rendered "less difficult." However loudly error may claim to talk, "the high goal" should still be persistently considered. For what but perfection seen, acknowledged, understood, and demonstrated can ever silence the lies of imperfection, can ever prove them unreal?

It seems to take Christian Scientists a long time to learn that what they contemplate assiduously is what they inevitably express. To dwell in thought with perfection is to bring it into present evidence. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 309) Mrs. Eddy says, "He advances most in divine Science who meditates most on infinite spiritual substance and intelligence." It takes "the preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue" which are from God, divine Mind, properly to discern the perfect. To declare for perfection, its omnipresent reality and glory, and then wait for divine Mind to unfold it,—this is to lose the sense of false responsibility and of fear. This is to gain the ever increasing realization that every earnest effort towards perfection will make it possible to drop some imperfection, until all that is unlike God, good, shall have been relinquished and we shall have come into "the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

Ella W. Hoag

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