"Certainty of ultimate perfection"

Duncan Sinclair

Christian Science is doing much today for those who understand its teaching, in that it is either healing them of sickness and redeeming them from sin, or protecting them from both sickness and sin. Furthermore, it is enabling them to be happy, cheerful, and grateful in the midst of much that to material sense is disorderly, lawless, and criminal. Christian Science is doing all that and, besides, it is giving its adherents "the certainty of ultimate perfection." What a vista is this! Mrs. Eddy writes on page 97 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" these heartening prophetic words: "Those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection."

"Those who discern Christian Science"—how much is expected of them! It is they who should be restraining crime and maintaining order, and at the same time retaining their cheerfulness, their joy. As we think of this, Jesus' words of comfort to his disciples come to our remembrance, "Your joy no man taketh from you." The Christian Scientist, then, need not lose his joy! And why? Because in spite of all that material sense may seem to tell him, he knows that in reality he is living now in an absolutely perfect universe. How does he know this? By having regard to the truth about God and His creation, which Christian Science reveals, the truth that God and His creation, including man, are perfect. The Christian Scientist holds to this truth with the glad assurance that it will ultimately be realized by all, even while he admits that mankind is but tardily acknowledging it. As our Leader says (Science and Health, p. 233): "In the midst of imperfection, perfection, is seen and acknowledged only by degrees. The ages must slowly work up to perfection."

Whenever one accepts the basic truth of the allness and perfection of God and His universe, including individual man, he no longer regards material existence as he formerly did. For to understand God, Spirit, as infinite is to rule out matter and all its phenomena as unreal. Man is then seen as never having been subject to so-called matter or material law, but ever under the dominion of spiritual law, and thus perfectly governed and protected. And understanding that man is perfectly protected, he perceives that man is endowed with eternal life. Think what it means to have the assurance that the life of man is eternal! It destroys the fear which so grievously tortures mankind; and with the destruction of fear one of the chief sources of disease is eliminated.

The knowledge that only the perfect is real, and that this knowledge will ultimately be the possession of all mankind, is precious beyond words to the Christian Scientist; and it has the effect of sustaining within him a deep joyousness. Moreover, he knows that as he realizes the truth of the perfection of being he is protected, in the measure of his realization, against everything imperfect. Could there be greater cause for rejoicing than that? When the Christian Scientist is beset by the problems common to mortals the temptation may come to him to be resentful and troubled, but he meets the false arguments of material sense with the truth of the perfection of being and destroys them. In real being, inharmony is unknown: only happiness is there.

Further, God, the perfect creator of a perfect universe, cannot possibly be other than perfect Love. When one understands this, can one be other than joyous? Sometimes the troubled heart cries out, When will the illusion vanish completely, the illusion that a power other than Love exists? When will all men know and realize that nothing unlovely, nothing unlovable, has any trace of reality about it? When will they understand that only that which is perfect is true? Even so, we must persist in knowing that divine Love cannot be dissociated from perfection; that Love's universe is perfect. What power is in this understanding! Held to prayerfully and persistently, it will not fail to change conditions which are inharmonious or discordant, and to bring joy where sadness seems to reign. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 113) Mrs. Eddy writes, "We have nothing to fear when Love is at the helm of thought, but everything to enjoy on earth and in heaven."

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect;" so spake Christ Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Is not this a direct command to his followers—those who understand his conform their lives to perfection? We must keep the truth of the perfection of the real man ever before our thought if we would bring it out in our lives. This we can endeavor to do joyously, since, as Christian Science assures us, no such thing as imperfection in reality exists.

Duncan Sinclair

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As a Man Thinketh

October 29, 1932

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