Editorial April 24, 1965 Issue

The Standpoint of Present Perfection

Helen Wood Bauman

Many human problems derive from the past—from the fears, sins, illnesses, ignorant beliefs, and accidents that have impressed thought. Or problems may derive from beliefs of prenatal influence and heredity—also the past—with their cruel impositions and conglomeration of so-called natural laws. The person in trouble may feel that he is the victim of the past and that the future is to be dreaded. Christian Science overrules both conjectures and provides a truly scientific standpoint from which to reason and to cure mankind.

Humanly speaking, it is right to learn lessons from past experiences; and from the same standpoint, it is intelligent to arrange one's affairs so that anxiety and dread of the future are dispelled. But from the standpoint of pure metaphysics, or divine Science, man lives in the full consciousness of present perfection as God's image. Mary Baker Eddy says in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 12), "We own no past, no future, we possess only now." And in the same paragraph she adds, "Faith in divine Love supplies the ever-present help and now, and gives the power to 'act in the living present.'"

In order to correct the woes of human life, one must identify himself as God makes and knows him—as the spiritual idea of divine Mind, coexistent with Mind and forever expressing it. Reasoning from this standpoint, one knows that he is just as perfect, just as sinless, just as healthy, just as God-controlled now as he will ever be.

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Editorial
Fear Has No Power
April 24, 1965
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