by Mary Baker Eddy

 

(Mary Baker Eddy's Lessons of the Seventh Day, compiled by Richard Oakes, p. 339-340)

 

This article, in slightly different wording, has been shown as penned by an early student of Mary Baker Eddy's, Irving C. Tomlinson, CSD, and titled "The Secret."

 

 

 

I have learned a great secret.

 

I have learned how to demonstrate, I have learned how to make Science a thing of life, not of words.

 

I am going to tell you what the secret is, and it is wonderful.

 

It is this: Not to see or hear or repeat any kind of imperfection.

 

It is seeing and hearing and repeating good only, at all times and under all circumstances, and in spite of everything that appears to the contrary.

 

I make this resolve every morning, when I first open my eyes, and I renew it every hour of the day.

 

I see perfection in myself in my friends, in my so-called enemy, in my affairs and in world affairs.

 

I take my radical stand for the perfection of God and everything and for everything and everybody He has created. I look upon the world with God's eyes and see it just as He sees it, and I refuse to see it in any other way.

 

I stop a dozen times a day, and renew the resolve, and make sure that I am not repeating error or giving way to criticism. I watch my thoughts about people, the lame, the old, the unloved to sense that I pass in the street, stray animals, I except nothing. I have taken my radical stand for perfection and I will not, absolutely will not, relax this perfect standard.

 

The result has been simply marvelous. Try it and you will find that you forget your glasses; they will become unnecessary.

 

You will be seeing with God's eyes, His perfect sight, and you will behold a perfect universe, the outward condition of your inward thinking. To change the picture you must change the sight that produced the picture.