Editorial February 10, 1973 Issue

"A wideness in God's mercy"

Carl J. Welz

Christian Science teaches the perfection of God and man. God is perfect Mind, and man is Mind's perfect idea. In this perfection, of course, there is no need for mercy as we think of it on earth. But one can think of mercy in an absolute sense, which implies Mind's tender care for its every idea, Love's infinite supply, Spirit's clear direction always. Mary Baker Eddy gives the absolute sense of God's care in such words as these from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts, even as He opens the petals of a holy purpose in order that the purpose may appear."^{Science and Health, p.506;}

Insofar as we perceive and understand our identity as Mind's ideas, we find our human experience following the pattern of the spiritual thoughts that constitute our real being—each item of our day coming in a place and time that illustrates the care with which He causes His purpose to appear. But insofar as we fall short of such perception and understanding, we live lives that are only approximations of man's perfection, and we are proportionately less conscious of His care for us.

The gap between the perfection we express in reality, as God's ideas, and the imperfection we express as human beings struggling to be perfect is mercifully filled by the truth of God's infinite goodness. In His goodness there is no such gap. There is no imperfection. But mortal life is a dream of imperfection, and insofar as we believe the dream and live in it consciously, we need what we humanly call the mercy of God—a sense of His motherly understanding of our inner goodness even when outwardly we are less than good. And we have His mercy always. The Bible describes it in this way, "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not."^Lam.3:22;

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