Every earnest student of Christian Science desires to progress in the demonstration of this Science. But sometimes, while we proclaim man's perfection and seek identity therewith, we still persist in clinging to material concepts, to finite personal beliefs about ourselves and others. We do not always realize the necessity for spiritual effort to transform our thinking and bring it into unity with the divine Mind, in order to express the real man. God's man is created perfect, but to understand and demonstrate this perfection involves a continual unfoldment of the truth of spiritual being in human consciousness. Through this progressive spiritual realization of the nature of spiritual man, the so-called human mind is transformed.
Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says on page 359 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "Science is demonstrated by degrees, and our demonstration rises only as we rise in the scale of being." In order to "rise in the scale of being" we must endeavor to realize and express the truth of spiritual being, of man's likeness to his Maker, divine Mind. Human thought must be liberated from false material concepts of God and man, and this requires constant prayer and watchfulness, humility and self-knowledge.
We must acknowledge man's perfection if we would progress in the demonstration of perfection. In the first epistle of John are the familiar words, read as part of the Christian Science church service, "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." This implies that to see God as He is, as Spirit, or Mind, is to become like Him, to become conscious of our true selfhood as His image and likeness, the only true spiritual existence, which is eternal. Christian Science reveals that such spiritual perception and demonstration is a conscious realization of spiritual being, of the oneness of divine Mind, and of the inseparability of God and man.
