Article December 15, 1951 Issue

ON MAKING PROGRESS

JEANNE STEELY LAITNER

"Progress is spiritual. 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" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 181). Thus our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in her exact and inspired way defines progress and the pathway of its attainment. Such progress has nothing to do with matter or its accumulation, or with death, but has everything to do with Spirit and with Life. Indeed, it is a spiritual awakening to the nature of God, Love, Life, Mind. Moreover, Mrs. Eddy assures us that progress, rightly understood and pursued, can be painless.

That progress depends entirely upon a deeper and clearer understanding of God was unmistakably proved in the writer's experience not long ago. With an earnest desire to leave the barrenness of material sense and push on to clearer altitudes of thought, she opened "Unity of Good" to a passage in which Mrs. Eddy comments on some remarkable healings in these words (p. 7): "Certain self-proved propositions pour into my waiting thought in connection with these experiences; and here is one such conviction: that an acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else can."

She had often read this passage before and had passed over it with the thought that she had for many years accepted the fact that God is perfect. However, having prayed for guidance that she might find a specific truth which would enable her to advance beyond a seeming mental plateau, she began earnestly to ponder this interesting statement by our Leader. She decided to prove it, to acknowledge the perfection of God and to find out what the acknowledging of God's perfection really means.

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