Any conclusion you may reach about yourself and your experiences, whether for good or evil, depends entirely on the premise from which you reason. Present-day judgments are based largely on the premise that man is an imperfect creature, part flesh and part mind, living in a material universe and striving almost helplessly to advance towards a state of perfection, which he believes he must ultimately die to achieve.
Here Christian Science enters the picture to declare with rousing authority in the words of Mary Baker Eddy (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 242), "Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration." Christian Science has brought to humanity the revelation of a demonstrable Principle and the scientific rule for its demonstration. Christian Science begins with the premise that your true selfhood as well as mine is perfect and spiritual now, and the realization of this fact assures the manifestation of untold blessings.
In order to experience and enjoy perfection now, one must acknowledge perfection now. There is no other way. Dare to claim perfection as the reality of your true being, even while you deny imperfection as the false testimony of material sense. In the measure that you perceive this perfection it will appear in your experience.
The study of Christian Science brings the insight, ability, understanding, and comprehension required to recognize man in God's image and likeness. Thus we no longer need to wait for perfection, struggle for perfection, or hope for perfection at some uncertain future time, but we are called upon to begin now to realize and demonstrate man's present perfection. Utilizing Christian Science as the demonstrable truth of man's present and eternal oneness with God, we shall increasingly manifest joy, peace, harmony, health, and abundance— all qualities that belong to the perfect man. As one perseveres in this, he will make the transition in his daily thinking from the erroneous premise that he is a mortal to the spiritual fact that his one real selfhood is the child of God.
If one is perplexed over some problem and baffled because it is not readily solved as a result of his knowing the spiritual truth which is its antidote, he may need to be awakened to the fact that perfection is now. For instance, if one appears to have a severe malady or is wrestling with a chronic sense of lack, instead of dwelling on the false material premise that he is a sick mortal who needs to be made well or an impoverished mortal who needs supply, he can find healing as he realizes that God's man never was, nor can he ever be, sick or in want, for he is the image and likeness of God, infinite good.
If we cling to the false belief that life is in matter and physicality, every conclusion drawn therefrom must be erroneous, since man in God's likeness is necessarily spiritual and perfect. Jesus' demand was that we be perfect, not just want to be or try to be so. A study of his ministry shows that he did his great healing works only on the basis of eternal perfection.
Jesus could not have raised the dead had he believed man to be other than spiritual, perfect, and deathless. He could never have fed the multitude with what appeared to be a scant supply of bread and fish had he for a single moment accepted the disciple's argument (John 6:9), "But what are they among so many?" Nor could Jesus have healed disease if he had believed God's man ever to have been sick, sinning, or imperfect.
When Jesus gave the immortal command in his great Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:48), “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,” he was not referring to mere blind belief in man’s heritage as the son of God. He knew that the perfection of God’s creation was already established, requiring not recreation, but only revelation. Our Leader says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 12), "It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth,—of man's likeness to God and of man's unity with Truth and Love."
Let us then continually protest our oneness with the Father and call to witness the truth of being as taught in Christian Science. This practice will bring into one's consciousness an increasingly gratifying sense of the actuality of present perfection, which will bountifully bless one's daily experience.
Sooner or later all must come to see through divine Science that as God's image their true selfhood is at this very moment perfect and complete, having no human needs. This is the truth about man, and our part is to demonstrate it by replacing in thought erroneous, limiting material beliefs with the spiritual facts of God's provision and protection for man.
To the unenlightened one who may seem to be suffering, these words may sound transcendental or even ironical. Let such a one take these words on faith until he is able to gain confidence in the possibility of their truth. Then the very actuality of perfection will, in the measure of his understanding, begin to be demonstrated in his experience.
In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 461): "Christian Science must be accepted at this period by induction. We admit the whole, because a part is proved and that part illustrates and proves the entire Principle." If, therefore, on the basis that one point proved will lead us into all truth, we will make perfection our starting point instead of our goal in all we do or say or think, we shall have opened our consciousness to receive an influx of divine Mind's unfailing guidance and protection.
This cannot be repeated too often: Claim perfection now! We should declare and know that our true spiritual selfhood is at one with divine power now; that, being in reality children of God, we manifest perfect health, freedom, and dominion now. In proportion as we perceive these spiritual truths, we shall find ourselves at one with God.
An advertising man whose business it was to solicit accounts among manufacturers of commodities, once found himself in a position of abject business failure. Every effort, every presentation, every solicitation, resulted in a final "turn down." In his extremity he took his problem to a Christian Science practitioner, who soon uncovered his fault. It was found that his whole attitude toward a prospective client was a negative one. He believed he should point out the weaknesses in the business, and perhaps show its present methods to be utterly erroneous and obsolete, before he could show how the business could be improved.
The practitioner asked him: "If you were called upon to treat a case of physical disease, would you try to prove a man to be sick, dwell at great lengths on his sickness, and talk about it as if it were real? Or would you endeavor to prove to him and to yourself that God's man is never sick, hence is perfect now, and that God's image and likeness is the only man there really is?"
The young man saw that he had been starting from the wrong premise. He learned that the only activity is the activity of divine Mind, and that this is the only real business. Furthermore, he learned that it was not his work to create business or to change business, but simply to bear witness to the activity of Truth; also that this positive approach would lead him into the best ways and means to demonstrate these spiritual facts.
From that moment on, the young man began to look for the good in honest businessmen and their businesses and to advertise that. To advertise, that is to make known, his new task was to reveal all the good features in a product and a business and to tell others about them. From then on he prospered. Not that he shut his eyes to the appearances of evil, but whenever he uncovered what appeared to be error, he quickly recognized it only as an illusive appearance and not as an actuality. Thus he stressed the good only.
Finding perfection, the kingdom of God, is a happy, joyous privilege which everyone is invited to share. To affirm consistently the reality of perfect God and perfect man now, and deny the sense testimony of material imperfection, will unfold in human consciousness step by step the truth of man's perfect being, with bountiful signs following.
