Christ Jesus' words, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5: 48), may seem beyond human comprehension and attainment. Yet Christian Science teaches that man is perfect and that his origin is spiritual. It impels mankind to understand man's spiritual perfection and shows the way that this is to be demonstrated in daily life as God's unchanging law of harmony.
Spiritual perfection leaves no room for human imperfection or for mortal mind with its discord, sorrow, and sin. The human mind, reluctant and resistant, gives way slowly, for it does not easily yield its false conception of life in matter. It clings to the pains and pleasures of matter as tangible instead of seeing them as a mockery of true existence. The acceptance in the slightest degree of the spiritual perfection of man enlightens the human thought and awakens it to an understanding of the potency of Spirit, God.
Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 254), "Imperfect mortals grasp the ultimate of spiritual perfection slowly; but to begin aright and to continue the strife of demonstrating the great problem of being, is doing much." The spiritual understanding of true existence increases as our conclusions are based on the first chapter of Genesis, in which we read: "God created man in his own image. . . . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." When we grow in the understanding of God and man's inherent relationship to Him, we progress toward spiritual perfection and thus begin to establish in our thinking the demonstrable law of God.
