Editorial December 11, 1976 Issue

Perfection and Healing

Peter J. Henniker-Heaton

"... we should go to a patient with the feeling that he is well and we want to show him that he is well." This is part of the instruction given by Mrs. Eddy on the subject of quick healing, as recorded by one of her students. His record continues, "She told us that when she had healed instantaneously she had lost sight of the personality and realized only the presence of the spiritual and perfect."^{We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Second Series (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1950), p. 23 ;}

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, "Perfection is gained only by perfection."^{Science and Health, p. 290;} Approaching this same point from many angles throughout her book, she repeatedly makes clear that in Christian Science healing we start from spiritual perfection as the present existing fact. We cannot heal by starting and staying with the imperfect—even with a belief in the imperfect—and expecting to change it into its opposite. Mrs. Eddy's instruction is in line with Christ Jesus' words, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."^{Matt. 5:48;}

Human mentality is apt to be a busybody. It wants to feel it's doing something on its own, stirring up and adjusting things more to its liking. Sometimes its intentions are destructive. More often perhaps it aims to improve things; it decides that a body, a business, a marriage, a community is wrong and it will put these right. The efforts of the human mind may have some successes; but too often these successes are short-lived, because they proceed from the impossible basis of attempting to make perfection out of imperfection.

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Annual Meeting 1977