Editorial August 9, 1924 Issue

"What we shall be"

Albert F. Gilmore

On page 353 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy makes a brief statement which contains a fundamental truth of great import. "Perfection," she declares, "underlies reality. Without perfection, nothing is wholly real." Here our Leader briefly characterizes reality as that which is perfect. This statement, at first startling though it may be, upon examination is found to contain a very important fact, so important as to be elementary in what may be termed the philosophy of Christian Science. Perfection, then, is the foundation and superstructure, the center and circumference, of reality. Nothing is real which is imperfect; and perfection alone is permanent and unchangeable.

All will agree that the chief aim of mankind is, in some degree, to attain perfection; but how many relegate this quest to the future under the belief that it is a phase of the "one far-off divine event," when what to many seems a somewhat uncertain place termed heaven will be gained! Pertinent to this line of reasoning Mrs. Eddy makes a statement on page 550 of Science and Health which is worthy of the closest attention of every Christian Scientist: "The true sense of being and its eternal perfection should appear now, even as it will hereafter."

Mrs. Eddy has given no more comforting fact to the world than the glad news that as God's image, His likeness, man is spiritual and perfect now—not the material or mortal sense of man to be sure, but God's idea, constituting man's perfect selfhood, whom God created, and who has remained at the standpoint of perfection, a standpoint from which there can be no departure. The Psalmist voices his confidence that he would be satisfied when he should awake in God's likeness, for then every trace of imperfection would have disappeared and the real and perfect man, God's likeness, alone would be manifest.

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