CHRISTIAN SCIENCE gives an unfailing test for reality, namely, its perfection. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 353 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Perfection underlies reality. Without perfection, nothing is wholly real. All things will continue to disappear, until perfection appears and reality is reached. We must give up the spectral at all points." What a wealth of meaning her words contain! Not only do they state the great fact that only the real is perfect; they also point out that whatever seems real to material sense but in reality is unreal, imperfect, must disappear; and they likewise admonish us to have done with "the spectral," the imperfect, the unreal, wherever and whenever we may be tempted to believe in it.
Nothing, then, that is imperfect is real: nothing that changes, decays, or is inharmonious, is real. But so-called matter is subject to change and decay; therefore matter is unreal. And since matter is unreal, all its seeming derivatives, all material phenomena, are also unreal. In other words, nothing of which material sense claims to inform us is true. Thus, disease and sin in all their various forms are unreal; inharmony, unhappiness, sorrow—every phase of discord—have no real being because they are branded with imperfection. Christian Science is doing a wonderful thing as it endows men with the understanding whereby to distinguish between the real and the unreal, empowering them to adhere to the one and to reject the other.
Apparently, then, mankind is living in a state of consciousness which is partly real and partly unreal. But the Christian Scientist, knowing the difference between the real and the unreal, through his knowledge of the fact that "perfection underlies reality," is fortified to meet and defeat the false claims of unreality. This applies to disease and sin as well as to every other form of error. It is an unforgettable experience for one suffering from disease to awaken to see its unreality through the understanding that it is not supported by perfect Principle; for such an awakening means the healing of the disease. It is similar with sin: to awaken to the fact that evil is without the support of Principle is to be able to renounce the sin, and to be delivered from its thralldom.
