Editorial March 14, 1942 Issue

Progress for All

Alfred Pittman

It has often been observed that human happiness arises not so much from any given human state of things as from progress. What were considered very joyful circumstances when one first attained them become dull and unsatisfying unless they improve further. And, on the other side, almost any set of conditions will be pleasing if they are better than what one had before. Because of these facts, unhappiness is generally traceable to the belief that progress, or enough of it, is impossible.

Christian Science leaves no question with anyone who grasps it that this belief is always false; and it reveals furthermore that the progress which is always available is not only as good as progress has commonly been supposed to be, but far better. In absolute reality, which is to say in perfection, progress is not of course a process of improvement, but is the unfoldment of infinite Mind, the eternal and ever new self-revelation of Deity, Truth, Life, and Love—unfoldment which is not more natural for Deity than it is for man, His expression. "Infinite progression," Mary Baker Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 82), "is concrete being, which finite mortals see and comprehend only as abstract glory." In human experience, authentic progress is the progressive appearing of this perfect and unlimited intelligence in the thoughts and lives of men. It is therefore progress in understanding, in wisdom, and in love; and its effect, as it appears, is not only the limited liberation which men often have hoped for—the advancement of their human enterprises, the increase in their supply of material things, and so on, all within the bounds of mortal existence—but, step by step, the destruction of the very roots of mortality itself, and the demonstration of Life which knows no bounds.

As Mrs. Eddy writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 181), "Progress is the maturing conception of divine Love; it demonstrates the scientific, sinless life of man and mortal's painless departure from matter to Spirit, not through death, but through the true idea of Life,—and Life not in matter but in Mind." And this progress, bringing to light along the way all the good that men need, and more than they have commonly hoped for, is proved in Christian Science to be available for everyone.

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