Article October 10, 1931 Issue

Attaining Perfection

MARY H. CUMMINS

When Christ Jesus said to his disciples, in that matchless address known as the Sermon on the Mount, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," he placed before humanity an entirely new standard of thought and conduct, a standard perhaps hitherto undreamed of. Perfection! It was a startling thought, an arresting demand. Who could hope to attain it? And yet the Master's injunction in this respect was clear and unequivocal. Furthermore, he intimated that only in the degree that perfection is attained are we like unto the "Father which is in heaven."

Different phases of existing social order had been taken up and dealt with by Christ Jesus in his discourse. First, he pointed to what the law up to that time had demanded and accepted as ethical, and then said, "But I say unto you," stating the requirement of the new dispensation — the fulfillment of every obligation through a higher sense of love and spiritual law. This is what the Apostle Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians calls "a more excellent way."

All through the ages individuals have caught glimpses of perfection, have endeavored to conform their lives thereto, and have labored to bring the vision to others. Of the prophents and seers of ancient time, Enoch and Elijah seem to have approached most nearly to perfect spiritual attainment, for it is recorded that they escaped the mortal experience called death. In Christ Jesus, however, we find full and complete spiritual apprehension, unclouded vision, an unwavering grasp of spiritual truth. Principle and its idea, Love and its expression, were to him the only realities. He indeed lived, moved, and had his being in the one Mind, God. Moreover, his every thought and action conformed to this standard, and this conferred upon him complete mastery over sin and death.

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