IN this age of rapid building and quickly changing methods, a tendency to slipshod, careless, and inaccurate work is apt to creep into the performance of one's daily tasks, even if one has a keen desire to do all things well. Error may argue that such a vast amount of work is expected and demanded of one each day that a perfect performance of it is impossible; that some new development to-morrow will undo today's work, so why strive to do it perfectly; or that certain portions of one's work are of no great consequence and need be done only in a manner that will "get by."
Prevalent thought, in fact, is apt to excuse small inaccuracies. It says that they are unimportant and easily corrected, or that such things are bound to happen; that everyone makes mistakes; that something less than perfection will do. Such excuses, appearing in plausible and subtle guises, may for a time trick even the worker who is eager to do his task perfectly, whether or not this is being demanded of him. But one who is daily striving to progress in the demonstration of the teachings of Christian Science will soon see through the subtlety of such reasoning and recognize in it the attempt of evil to blur the manifestation of the perfect, infinite, unerring Mind which each individual, as the image of God, reflects. He will then recognize that there is no excusing the slightest mistake.
One who is endeavoring each hour of the day to demonstrate his oneness with God, his perfection as God's image, cannot condone even the smallest error, for he realizes that in so far as his daily work is inaccurate, incomplete, or mistaken, to just that extent is he failing to express the highest possible perfection. No thought or act is of too little consequence to go by uncorrected, for one slight inaccuracy multiplied may become a large mistake. A mason building a wall knows that each stone, even the tiniest of all, must be laid in perfect alignment, or the final result may be a wall entirely out of plumb and not able to bear the weight it was intended to carry.
