Every student of Christian Science sooner or later wakes to the fact that he has been standing among those of whom Christ Jesus said, "Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not?" and when Truth calls him to come out from among them, it dawns on his awakened consciousness that the very words and phrases which he had repeated so glibly under his former religious teaching—of whatever denomination he may have been a member—are only to be fully understood when taken in the simple and literal sense he had never once thought of attaching to them.
Our text-book teaches us that we need to gain the understanding of a "perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration" (Science and Health, p. 259). This would inevitably destroy all manifestation of error, in whatever shape or form. The idea of infinite perfection is incompatible with a single thought of its opposite. This indisputable fact is very clearly brought out in Mrs. Eddy's writings, but in such different fashion from the teaching of scholastic theology that it is only when we turn aside from preconceived notions of God and man, or as we lift our gaze above the mist-shrouded valleys around us to some sunlit peak above, which reveals a fraction of the glorious reality of the hitherto unseen, that we begin to understand something of our Leader's meaning. The mists of error melt away before the eternal fact that the doctrine of perfection is a fundamental demand of Christianity. Christ Jesus said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." He gave this definite rule to his followers and never qualified it in any way. The intervening centuries have wrapped it around with human opinions; have buried it, and revered it as a dead letter of divine law. Christian Science has raised it from this tomb, and like the disciples of the risen Messiah, we find that the stone has been rolled away, and the perfection of holiness (wholeness) is a living and ever present reality as well as a present possibility.
The large majority of those who come to Christian Science at the present time, have been led to it by a desire to be freed from physical or mental affliction. When all material means of alleviating sorrow and suffering have proved unavailing, we are more ready to turn for aid to the always-acknowledged omnipotence of our heavenly Father. Why did we not do so at first? or, having asked His aid in all sincerity and earnestness, why did we not obtain it if He "is faithful that promised"? Was it not because we asked this help from a false god of our own creating,— because we were bowing down to a concept fashioned after our own fleshly minds; because we had no right concept of the true and only God, perfect, eternal, and "of purer eyes than to behold evil"?
