To the earnest student of Christian Science the word perfection comes to have a deeper, truer meaning when he learns its rightful use as a scientific term, applicable only to that which is real and eternal. This is made clear in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," especially on page 353 where Mrs. Eddy says: "Perfection underlies reality. Without perfection, nothing is wholly real. All things will continue to disappear, until perfection appears and reality is reached." The belief that life is contingent on matter precludes the possibility of a spiritual ideal which forms the perfect model; and without this model perfection cannot be reached here or hereafter. In general use, the word perfection seems too often to express little more than some degree of excellence or improvement above the normal, according to the belief of the individual.
The notion that perfection can be gained in any direction by material forms or conditions is not borne out by human experience. The human idea of perfection, or a perfect state, is so vague and unreliable that the adoption of standards by which perfection can be gauged, to say nothing of its attainment, seems impossible. Such standards as it has are subject to constant change, according to the conception or belief of the human mind, which changes with every wind that blows across the shifting sands of material sense. Ideals which rest upon such foundations are easily swept away, and they never rise above human experience, or the testimony of the senses. Failure to grasp the essentials of perfection, or what constitutes a perfect state, is due to the inability of the human mind to comprehend Truth; therefore its ideals are formed, not on the truth or the Science of being, but on the basis of material beliefs, inseparable from theories of sickness and death, which are the very antitheses of perfection.
We ask ourselves, as people of all times have asked: What is perfection? Who has attained it? Where can it be found? As we scan the brief record of creation and endeavor to separate the material from the spiritual, that is to say, as we strive to grasp what is true in that record of creation as found in the book of Genesis, and follow the evolution of the human race through succeeding centuries to the present time, we conclude that whatever of perfection has been attained, whether of art, literature, Science, or Christian character, has been wrought by those individuals who have had the clearest perception of the spiritual idea. As it is impossible to have a perfect model without a perfect cause, we must look to the spiritual idea for its formation. Here Christian Science comes to our aid, and makes clear some of those obscure points in our study of creation that have been such stumblingblocks in the way of understanding. We learn that God is Spirit, Mind, the only cause and creator, and that He created the universe and man spiritual and perfect. We thereby gain an understanding of perfect cause and perfect effect. On page 259 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration."
