In his letter to the Philippians Paul expressed the following bit of wise determination: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Such Christianly scientific practice is certainly indispensable to progress. It is folly to contemplate wasted opportunities, when every moment of our time is required for the successful utilization of our present and prospective privileges. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy declares (p. 429): "We look before our feet, and if we are wise, we look beyond a single step in the line of spiritual advancement."
The journey from earth to heaven consists of a mental transformation whereby we overcome evil with good, displace erroneous discordant beliefs with spiritual ideas. We cannot be permanently benefited by the footsteps already taken if we habitually go back to the error which the truth has displaced. Our work cannot be finally accomplished unless we have allowed all error to depart into its native nothingness. It is readily understood that if thought continues to revert to the errors which progress must necessarily leave behind, it practically brings those errors into one's experience over and over again. All the errors of mortal existence are simply dreams of sense entertained and indulged in, and these dreams are overcome only as we hold steadfastly to truth and refuse to admit in theory or practice the seeming reality of ought which pertains to this dream.
Because a dream we have in sleep is understood to be unreal it rapidly fades from our memory, so that before a day has departed, perchance, it has vanished to such an extent that we remember only fragments of it, and by the next day it has gone forever. Why? Simply because we are certain that there is nothing in it, and hence we give it no permanent place in our thinking. We do not regard it as a matter of history or as of any value. We say it is naught but a dream, and therefore allow ourselves to forget it.
