IMPLANTED deep within the heart of every one, whether it lies dormant or burns with earnest zeal, is the intuitive desire for progress. So great does this desire sometimes become that out of its very intensity is born the fear of retrogression. Manifestly, if this fear is entertained, rightful aspirations become stifled and the desired advancement encounters hindrances, for fear steals from one the needed confidence with which to climb the rounds in the ladder of progress. Mrs. Eddy tells us that "progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil" (Science and Health, p. 233). This statement is being daily proved true by the thousands who have accepted Christian Science.
Retrogression springs from a belief in the reality of both good and evil, and the only escape from its disheartening effect is through a knowledge of Christian Science, which declares perfection to be the Alpha and Omega of creation. Consequently, to metaphysical thought progression signifies the successive unfoldment in consciousness of the one perfect creation. From the material view-point, however, with which humanity beholds perfection, moral progress appears as that law of God upon which universal salvation depends, because it is the law which governs, through improved beliefs, the evolution of human consciousness. It is the law which makes possible the fulfilment of that divine command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," for it eliminates from human consciousness the distorted images of carnality and fills it with true metaphysical concepts.
Since God did not create two sets of laws, the one antagonistic to and reacting upon the other, there is, strictly speaking, no opposition to counteract His divine ordinance of progress. Hence, even relatively, there is no law of retrogression; it is but an illogical belief that the human sense sways continually between good and evil, never completely receding from the former nor yet completely advancing out of the latter. This belief in retrogression is to the human mind what negative quantities are to the student of arithmetic, and it cannot hinder our spiritual progress toward good if thought is kept fixed on the realities of being. A progressive course is no more found within mortality than it could be within an aggregation of falsities, however great the crystallized belief in them.
