PROGRESS is a law of God, inevitably made manifest through active, loyal, obedient thought. The student knows well the process in Christian Science: dividing between the real and the unreal. He sees spiritual progress when he is loyal to God; he finds himself standing still or going backward when he listens to the call of the world. The questions are, How shall I progress? and, What shall I avoid that will hinder progress? Our Leader says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 156): "It is their materiality that clogs the progress of students, and 'this kind goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting.' It is materialism through which the animal magnetizer preys, and in turn becomes a prey."
"It is, of course, in proportion to our ability to disprove materiality in our thinking that we silence "the animal magnetizer." How does materiality come in? Always through a false concept of man, the human instead of the divine; always through arguments and claims which may attach themselves to the human, the mortal, but which could never apply to the perfect, the divine. See how our Leader met the attacks of evil. We read (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 139): "Rest assured that your Leader is living, loving, acting, enjoying. She is neither dead nor plucked up by the roots, but she is keenly alive to the reality of living, and safely, soulfully founded upon the rock, Christ Jesus, even the spiritual idea of Life, with its abounding, increasing, advancing footsteps of progress, primeval faith, hope, love." What a trenchant, vigorous denial this is of the seeming efforts of evil to hinder our moral and spiritual progress, or fasten physical beliefs of sickness upon us!
"Living, loving, acting, enjoying"! Living in the consciousness of spiritual being, oneness with God; living abundantly; living to bless others, to do the works which Jesus said we should do; living in the realm of unfoldment, not accretion; living in the domain of spiritualized, purposeful thinking, our lives ordered by God's directing—this consciousness of living silences the arguments of depression, inactivity, stagnation, lack of illumination, death. Paul said, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." God is the source of this life: it is His expression. We can know this, know that we are active according to His will, purpose, and plan. The real man cannot stagnate, for he is the idea of the infinitely active divine Mind, governed by the divine law of progression. Illumined spiritual thinking belongs to man, for his being, consciousness, and life are one with the Father.
