God, infinite Love, is aware only of perfection and harmony. Evil is contrary to His nature and finds no part in Him. The Bible says of God (Hab. 1:13), "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity."

So the real man, reflecting God, can experience only a state of sinlessness. He is governed by Soul, not by sense. The realization that man is God's beloved child, encompassed by the allness of divine Love, enables one to understand that he cannot in reality be attacked by the suggestion of past sins and mistakes, and this realization brings freedom from self-condemnation.

Gaining perfection, however, is a gradual process. Mortals discover that they may stumble many times before they are able to establish a measure of perfection and harmony in their lives. As long as a mistake is repeated, punishment will be the result. Suffering for sin is often the means through which mortals are forced into the path of self-correction. And it would be vain to look for lasting happiness in any way other than through self-reformation, "because," as Christ Jesus has told us, "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life" (Matt. 7:14).

Although the necessity of removing evil from our experience should always remain uppermost in our thought, we should beware lest we give in to less recognizable forms of sin, such as self-condemnation.

What is more disheartening than indulging in this kind of thinking? Self-condemnation can safely be labeled as one of the most debilitating and devastating of sins a mortal can give way to. Though at first less abhorrent than more commonly accepted forms of sin, self-condemnation robs mortals of their peace of mind and joie de vivre.

Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 107, 108): "Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin. The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks too little of sin." Here is a thought which should help us to balance our lives so that they will become to the outside world shining examples of integrity and joy.

"The sensitive, sorrowing saint" is as much out of place as is "the sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep." If the latter may sometimes need a startling experience to rouse him from his sinful practice or stultifying sleep, "the sensitive, sorrowing saint" needs the reassurance that God loves him. Once a mistake has been acknowledged and the repentant sinner is alerted to a possible repetition of the offense, the exit from troubled waters is assured.

Christian Science, which gives the proper perspective to our deeds, comes to the rescue of the one struggling against a sense of self-condemnation because of past mistakes. This Science shows him, through logical reasoning, that nothing evil in his human experience was ever actually included in his real being.

Christian Science starts with the premise of the allness of divine Mind, good, and the consequent nothingness of matter, evil. Life, it declares, is synonymous with Spirit, showing existence to be entirely spiritual. Christian Science completely excludes matter from the realm of reality, declaring it to be mortal error, since it is contrary to the supremacy of Spirit.

This teaching can best be summarized in the First Commandment (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The consciousness imbued with the allness of good cannot at the same time dwell on the notion that evil is real. "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth," writes Mrs. Eddy on page 14 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

Scholastic theology would prolong suffering beyond the individual's turning point of repentance and regeneration. Christian Science, however, explains that sin is forgiven once it is definitely forsaken. The regenerated mortal does not have to pay for sins he no longer indulges in. Believing otherwise subjects one to needless suffering and frequently binds him to another form of sin, more subtle, if seemingly less reprehensible, that of self-condemnation.

We read in Isaiah (1:18), "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." These words point to the imperative need for cutting short the evils of regret and self-condemnation before they have had a chance to paralyze our thinking.

Joy in and gratitude for the awareness that the discordant event in question has been but a phase of the Adam-dream and has never happened, really, will lift the individual higher in the scale of existence. These qualities will unveil to his awakening consciousness his true selfhood, which is spiritual and forever untouched by the claims of material sense. Our beloved Leader writes in "No and Yes" (p. 36), "The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of good, of eternal Life, and harmony."

If the individual sometimes wonders why it is that he seems to be the one to make a certain kind of mistake, let him know that in reality Mind, not error, governs man and that he can never be beyond the control of that infinite, perfect Mind. He would also do well to consider the proposition that a desire for immediate perfection often stems from an unconscious belief in a perfect mortal selfhood; whereas his salvation lies in the realization that only as he appraises his mortal existence for what it actually is—namely, a mortal dream—can he expect to achieve a measure of unprecarious joy.

Patience with one's shortcomings, combined with an earnest effort to overcome them with Truth, is the lesson to be learned at every stage of progress. Once a mistake has been recognized and sincerely regretted, let us denounce it and rejoice in the truth that our real self has remained intact throughout, that the spiritual man, the only man there is, has never been touched by the mistake. Then we shall have the joy that comes to those who have realized in a measure the futility of the claims of the material senses. Then we shall see revealed the man of God's creating, upright, pure, perfect.