God's purpose for each child of His care is one of progressive unfoldment, increased spirituality, an ever-enlarging manifestation of strength and power, and an improved sense of vitality, grace, and dominion. Man reflects Life unending, ever present, infinite, here and now. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, states (p. 246): "Man, governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty, and holiness." What a glorious privilege it is to realize that passing time, with its multifarious deadening and stultifying suggestions, is but a human concept. Men always have the immediate opportunity to express and embody more and more of God's goodness.
Is not age a fraudulent assumption, which at various periods in human experience would argue its particular and special symptoms? The lies of weakened activity, the lessening of the faculties, such as sight and hearing, are false mental arguments which spiritualized thought subdues and relegates to the oblivion of nothingness. Man's understanding of God constitutes his true being. As men in their lives reflect the changeless nature of the one Mind, they remain untouched by the vagaries of the passing years. Since God is infinite, man possesses unlimited ability and power over every creeping belief of limited capacity, failing faculties, circumscribed means, and curtailed development. The qualities of love, grace, wisdom, and purity are ageless, and, expressed individually, they exclude weakness and infirmity, ugliness and crabbedness. Spirit forms nothing unlike itself, and man, God's idea, is ever obedient to the law of Spirit.
Thoughts of harmony, holiness, and consecration to high ideals, inwardly cultivated and nurtured, result in the outward expression of beauty and symmetry in form, outline, and color. When walking in the country at springtide, one sees the fresh young trees gently bending to the breezes, while the stiff, straight branches of the sturdy oaks and hemlocks yield less readily to the wind. As the thoughts of men become more childlike, transparent, and resilient, bending humbly to the will of God, false character traits, even of long standing, yield. Thus a more buoyant and released sense of life is attained. It need take neither time nor years to mold thought according to the divine pattern, for in the now of divine inspiration and revelation lives can unfold in God's way. Problems often become unwieldy because preconceived notions affirm that they must be worked out according to a set mortal plan, in a determined and fixed way. With the unchanging and faultless operation of God's law apprehended and held to, pride and arrogance melt away in the calmness and mellowness of succeeding years.
