The divine demand to be perfect has been recognized by all devout Christians. In turn, many of them have been forced to the recognition that creeds and dogmas offer no practical means of attaining perfection. Believing, as they have, in the reality of both good and evil, seeing evil so often ascendant in human experience, giving evil power by common consent through so-called laws of heredity, environment, predestination, circumstance, accident,—even upon occasion specifically denominating it "the act of God,"—what wonder that evil should seem inevitable, and good almost unattainable? The absoluteness of the demand for perfection, coupled with the fact that the Christian church offered no practical means of obedience, served even to drive some earnest seekers of Truth completely from the Christian fold, through the byways of philosophy and speculation into frank skepticism and infidelity; and there they remained until rescued by Christian Science with its logical and compassionate answer to hope and prayer.
"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"! So was our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, divinely guided to designate her book, the textbook of Christian Science. What promise and what fulfillment are found therein! In the little more than fifty years since its first edition was offered to the public, how many thousands have borne joyous and grateful testimony to the truth stated and implied in that title! In spite of every onslaught of evil by ridicule, abuse, plagiarism, falsehood, and misrepresentation, it has risen higher in the hearts of its students and in the esteem of the world at large. Its teachings are steadily leavening the world of science, theology, and medicine. Not only does it reiterate the Scriptural demand, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," but it urges with equal emphasis, "Now is the accepted time." And because it is really a "key" to the Scriptures, it shows how perfection is demonstrable and attainable here and now, not by any formula of creed or doctrine, but by the progressive demonstration of the divine truth that man as God's image and likeness has never fallen from his high estate. Furthermore, it never departs from Scriptural authority and precedent. Christ Jesus is the Exemplar and Way-shower; and, as such, he is always acknowledged, revered, and adored by all Christian Scientists.
Jesus overcame every claim of evil, even the "last enemy," death. Christian Science teaches that Jesus did not perform his marvelous works to show his personal ability to overcome the so-called laws of evil which bind humanity, but to show the nothingness of these so-called laws and how mankind may overcome them. He told the sick woman that Satan had bound her; and at another time he exposed Satanic belief as "a liar, and the father of it." During his wilderness experience, immediately preceding the beginning of his career of Messiahship, he refused every claim of evil to substance and vitality, denied its asserted ability to reward or attract, rebuked the temptation to personalize his power over it, and finally dismissed it, nullified.
