Among the benefits derived from the study of Christian Science is the overcoming of the tendency to make mistakes. The ever-increasing freedom from errors is not something that just happens; it is the result of scientific education.

The Science of being is based on the fact that man is God's image and likeness; that is, that man expresses God. Therefore, since man expresses God, it would be necessary for God to err before man could do so. In this age when God is becoming increasingly understood as Love, infinite intelligence, divine Mind, unerring Principle, and invariable Truth, no enlightened Christian really believes that God is capable of making a mistake. It must follow in logical sequence that God's image is just as incapable of making a mistake.

To the human sense of things, one's experience does not always work out in this way, for the mortal concept is never accurate. The only correct testimony is found in spiritual understanding. Because God is Love, Spirit, intelligence, and never is seen or known through material sense, the understanding of Him must be based on spiritual sense.

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy uses the word "unerring" only sixteen times, but the teaching involved in these citations is wonderful. The last of these references is in the definition of "kingdom of heaven" on page 590 of the Glossary, which reads, "The reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme." Therefore it is into the atmosphere of Spirit that we must look if we are to understand that there never have been and never will be any mistakes.

The effect of a growing understanding of these spiritual facts is freedom in the human consciousness from fear of mistakes and the likelihood of making them. We must know that while the belief about the so-called human mind is that it is susceptible to mistakes, divine Mind is perfect. There is but one God, one Mind. In discussing the subject of one Mind, Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 206): "Omnipotent and infinite Mind made all and includes all. This Mind does not make mistakes and subsequently correct them."

A woman told of the following experience at a Wednesday evening testimony meeting in a Church of Christ, Scientist. She and her husband were living in the Middle West of the United States when an opportunity was presented for her husband to take a position which was on the East Coast and which appeared to offer an advanced step. On his arrival in the eastern city, her husband went to the place of his new employment. Upon returning from it, he told his wife that evidently the whole thing was a mistake, because everything about the new place was wrong.

After some discussion, the couple decided to telegraph a practitioner, whom they knew, for help in Christian Science. Her reply by wire was, "God never makes mistakes." The practitioner's assurance at once replaced the sense of discouragement and despair with confidence that there was nothing to fear. They held to this expectancy of good, and the picture began to change. The outcome was a period of more than twenty years of happy experience in the new position. These Scientists had had proof that the previously quoted statement of Mrs. Eddy's is true: "This Mind does not make mistakes."

Nothing plagues mankind more than the belief in past mistakes. Failure, fear, remorse, condemnation, and a sense of separation from Love can only be healed by knowing that error is an unreal mortal concept and that in Truth the joy of sinless, harmonious, unerring spiritual sense is all that ever has existed and is all that exists now. Material history is never real; man's spiritual history is all that is real.

Mrs. Eddy tells us (ibid., p. 204), "All forms of error support the false conclusions that there is more than one Life; that material history is as real and living as spiritual history; that mortal error is as conclusively mental as immortal Truth; and that there are two separate, antagonistic entities and beings, two powers,—namely, Spirit and matter,—resulting in a third person (mortal man) who carries out the delusions of sin, sickness, and death."

To use Christian Science properly in practical experience, one must realize that not only we ourselves have never made mistakes, but also those we know have never, in reality, made any either, since God never makes mistakes. It is impossible to be entirely free from making mistakes ourselves if we believe that someone else can make one, particularly if we condemn, ridicule, or enjoy error in others. We must give error no reality in consciousness. No proper church work is possible without strict obedience to this fundamental teaching, and daily life can be found harmonious only when the law of perfect, all-inclusive good is adhered to.

The lasting peace for which we all yearn is gained by our understanding of the nothingness of evil. Christ Jesus based his own demonstration of unerring life on his statement (John 5:17), "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." It was because of his understanding of this truth that he commanded us (Matt. 5:48), "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

The comfort brought by the teachings of Jesus lies in the assurance that in Mind man has the power to act without mistakes. This comfort Christian Science brings anew in its teaching that man is sinless, Godlike, and inseparable from Principle. Principle must be unerring in order to be Principle, and its creation, man, must be of like quality. That "this Mind does not make mistakes" is axiomatic. How glad we are that through the teaching of Christian Science we learn to live our birthright of freedom from mistakes!