Article September 25, 1971 Issue

Progress Without Negative By-products

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

Making progress is admirable and stimulating. As we notice a city skyline changing with new, tall buildings, or read of a faster, more comfortable aircraft, or of the strengthening economy of a developing country, we often feel more than a moment of satisfaction and excitement over this progress.

Frequently, however, when progress is merely material, injurious side effects begin to emerge. The growing city creates traffic and smog problems, the faster airplane a troublesome sonic boom, and the development of an individual or nation may be at the expense of another individual or nation. Industrial development may multiply the range of automobiles available to us or bring down the cost of color television, but the manufacturing expansion required may at the same time spoil the environment.

Progress, from a spiritual point of view, is a developing and strengthening understanding of God and real, spiritual being. True progress may be outwardly manifested in more commercially profitable ventures or in personal success, but it is not these things themselves. Making an important breakthrough relating to progress, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes: "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;}

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