No imperfection
Recently I came across a small piece of paper I used to carry with me in my wallet for its inspirational message. On it was a statement Mary Baker Eddy wrote to one of her students: “The book Unity of Good was needed or it would never have taken about six months to get that little book published. The way is always blockaded in proportion to the weight of good that is to be carried over it . . .” (Mary Baker Eddy to Ellen Brown Linscott, March, 10, 1888, L08753, © The Mary Baker Eddy Collection).
Mrs. Eddy wrote Unity of Good as the result of an experience she had with a student of hers who was a theologian. She had felt he held great promise, but in spite of her effort to spiritually reason with him concerning a fundamental doctrine of Christian Science—that God knows no evil—he never conceded the point. I love to think about how Mrs. Eddy responded to the circumstance with the unyielding student by writing and publishing this remarkable little book. No amount of resistance from the student concerning the truth being shared with him, nor any later resistance to the publishing of the book, could thwart the blessing it contains.
Considering the ideas on that small piece of paper in my wallet, I thought about the examples Christ Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy set for us. It seemed the more of the Christ they expressed, the greater the resistance they encountered. And the greater the resistance they encountered, the higher they rose in their demonstration of the laws of God’s goodness.
In her discovery of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy perceived that Christ Jesus healed by understanding the law that God knows no evil. “This is the understanding of God, whereby man is found in the image and likeness of good, not of evil …” (Unity of Good, p. 3 ). By applying that same law in my own life, I had a healing about a year ago, which proved to me that God is indeed “of purer eyes than to behold evil” (Habakkuk 1:13 ).
An ugly and bothersome growth had persisted on one of my cuticles year after year. Over this time I prayed often to see the unreality of this imposition. Although it was more of an inconvenience and embarrassment than a threat, the growth loomed large for me because its stubborn presence suggested that it possessed a tenacious nature of its own.
The more of the Christ they expressed, the greater the resistance they encountered.
One evening, as my husband and I studied that week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, my husband read aloud a statement of Mrs. Eddy’s: “… there is no room for imperfection in perfection” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 424 ). Although I had been familiar with these words, it was as if I were hearing them for the first time because of the fresh way they communicated God’s absolute purity and consistency. As I quietly affirmed the truth of this statement, I felt the growth fall away. Even though it had appeared so deeply rooted and unyielding, it simply fell off, leaving no evidence that it had ever been there. For me this was proof of the fact that there is no condition, circumstance, person, or thought that has independent power to resist good.
Mrs. Eddy states that “an acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else can” (Unity of Good, p. 7 ). As I continue to do this faithfully, I understand better the unassailable nature of divine perfection.