Editorial March 15, 1982 Issue

You can progress

NATHAN A. TALBOT

We needn't feel discouraged or defeated if there's a slippage—a reversion to what we thought had been left behind. Instead we should search out the spiritual law of God that conquers such a human tendency. The process of losing ground is characteristic of the entire mortal concept of existence. From the long-range perspective, a mortal is losing ground from the day he begins!

But God's law for His spiritually perfect man is one of eternal progress. Love's provision for its creation is one of perpetual unfoldment of good—the very opposite of what mortality offers. This law of God, this provision by Love, is practical; it gently cares for the human need. Through the Christ— the influence of divine Truth in consciousness—we perceive the law of progress, and this spiritual discovery melts limited, rigid views; it opens the way for advancement.

Read through the first chapter of Genesis; discern its spiritual import. The whole thrust of that message is one of unfoldment, development, progress. The entire flavor of that chapter illustrates the action, the forward movement, of Spirit: "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."^{Gen. 1:2, 3.} Divine enlightenment symbolizes Spirit's progressive dawning, the opening up, the continuing unfoldment, of spiritual creation. Commenting on Genesis 1:9, Mary Baker Eddy writes, "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 with Key to the Scriptures, p. 506.} In her discussion of this chapter she draws our attention time and again to the fact that God is Spirit. Spirit's purpose and design are unfoldment rather than contraction.