CHRIST JESUS has set to all a very high standard in his words. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." But no lesser goal is worthy of the Christian Scientist's attention; for only as we seek to destroy all belief in a material selfhood, and strive to gain that perfect spiritual status of man recognized by Jesus as the true likeness of his Father, are we advancing toward that perpetual reign of harmony and bliss which our Leader has explained to us as heaven.
We may start this ascent immediately, without even moving from the place where we now find ourselves. Regardless of what our present condition is, we may find opportunities daily and hourly to purify our consciousness by resolving unpleasant material conditions into false beliefs, such as fear, pride, envy, dishonesty, hatred, selfishness. Then, realizing the unreality and powerlessness of such thought-phantoms, we can turn our gaze to the reality and omnipotence of universal divine Love which destroys everything unlike itself.
Thoreau has very aptly written, "So high as the tree aspires to grow, so high will it find an atmosphere suited to it." As our aspirations and desires grow more spiritual, we find much that is discordant and unlovely eliminated from our mentality; and we commence to dwell in the atmosphere of love suited to such a consciousness. We may seemingly be in exactly the same material environment as before; but if our thinking is being directed away from self and the erroneous knowledge gained from the material senses, to the contemplation of real substance and the eternal verities of Spirit, we may experience and reflect, here and now, more of the kingdom of heaven, which the Master declared is within us—within our own right thinking.
