"Every day make its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power," Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 233 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." These higher proofs are the progressive demonstration of our spiritual and perfect selfhood, and our Leader further tells us: "These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil."
By our very endeavor to learn and to follow God's behests we place ourselves under His law and progress is inevitable, for God, who is Love, demands of man only what He enables man to accomplish. Every day, through the study of the Bible and Science and Health, the student gains a clearer sense of God and His reflection, man. The utilization of the truths thus unfolded inevitably destroys some phase or phases of error, and the resultant spiritualization of thought meets the demand for progress.
The Bible contains many outstanding illustrations of the progressive overcoming of the claims of error. For example, in Exodus we find the account of Moses leading the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt to the promised land. Many are the grateful ones who have received much help and inspiration from this account of the trials and triumphs of the Israelites, for numerous analogies exist between their struggles and ours. Their efforts to rid themselves of the bondage imposed by the Egyptians and our efforts to free ourselves from bondage to mortal beliefs of sin, sickness, and death imposed by mortal mind parallel each other in many ways. The great desire of the Israelites to reach the promised land—a land described as flowing with milk and honey— is echoed in our desire to gain that spiritual altitude of thought where matter and its attendant beliefs lose all reality.
