Thou art Truth’s honest child,

Of pure and sinless heart;

Thou treadest undefiled

In Christly paths apart.

Vain dreams shall disappear

As Truth dawns on the sight;

The phantoms of thy fear

Shall flee before the light.

Take then the sacred rod;

Thou art not error’s thrall;

Thou hast the gift of God—

Dominion over all.

Ps. 37:37 [KJV]

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

Matt. 5:1-2, 21-22, 27-28, 43-44, 48 [NLT]

Jesus began to teach, You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! You are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Deut. 32:3 I, 4 [KJV]

I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect.

Gen. 6:9 [KJV]

Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

Gen. 6:11, 13-14, 22; 7:1- 4, 10; 8:4, 15-16; 9:1, 12-13, 16 (NLT)

Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. So God said to Noah, “Build a large boat from cypress wood and waterproof it with tar, inside and out. So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. When everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous. Take with you seven pairs—male and female—of each animal…. There must be a male and a female in each pair to ensure that all life will survive on the earth after the flood. Seven days from now I will make the rains pour down on the earth. And it will rain for forty days and forty nights. The floodwaters covered the earth for 150 days.

Exactly five months from the time the flood began, the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Then God said to Noah, “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and their wives. Release all the animals so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.”

Then God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth.”

I Kings 8:60, 61 [KJV]

The Lord is God, and there is none else. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day.

Isa. 54:9-110, 13 (NLT)

“Just as I swore in the time of Noah that I would never again let a flood cover the earth, so now I swear that I will never again be angry and punish you. For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken,” says the Lord, who has mercy on you. I will teach all your children, and they will enjoy great peace.

II Pet. 2:5-7, 20 (NLT)

God did not spare the ancient world—except for Noah and the seven others in his family. Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment. So God protected Noah when he destroyed the world of ungodly people with a vast flood. Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes. . . . But God rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man. When people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before.

I Kings 15:9, 11-14 (NLT and KJV)

Asa began to rule over Judah.. . . and did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, as his ancestor David had done. He banished the [sodomites-KJV] male and female shrine prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the idols his ancestors had made. He even deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother because she had made an obscene Asherah pole. He cut down her obscene pole and burned it in the Kidron Valley. Although the pagan shrines were not removed, Asa’s heart remained completely faithful to the Lord. . .

II Chron. 16:1-3, 7, 9, 10, 12-13 (NLT)

In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, King Baasha of Israel invaded Judah. Asa responded by removing the silver and gold from the treasuries of the Temple of the Lord and the royal palace. He sent it to King Ben-hadad of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus, along with this message:

“See, I am sending you silver and gold. Break your treaty with King Baasha of Israel so that he will leave me alone.” Hanani the seer came to King Asa and told him, “Because you have put your trust in the king of Aram instead of in the Lord your God, . . . from now on you will be at war.” Asa became so angry with Hanani for saying this that he threw him into prison and put him in stocks. At that time Asa also began to oppress some of his people. In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa developed a serious foot disease. Yet even with the severity of his disease, he did not seek the Lord’s help but turned only to his physicians. So he died in the forty-first year of his reign.

Gal 3:3 [NLT, KJV]

How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? Are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

James 1:22-25 [NLT]

But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

II Kings 20:1-5 (NLT)

Hezekiah became deathly ill, and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to visit him. He gave the king this message: “This is what the Lord says: Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die.” When Hezekiah heard this, he turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, O Lord, how I have always been faithful to you and have served you single-mindedly, always doing what pleases you.” Then he broke down and wept bitterly. Before Isaiah had left the middle courtyard, this message came to him from the Lord: “Go back to Hezekiah, the leader of my people. Tell him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your ancestor David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you.

Ps. 18: 1-2, 30, 32 (NLT)

I love you, Lord; you are my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior. . . . God’s way is perfect. God arms me with strength, and he makes my way perfect.

Ps. 19:8, 13-14 [NLT]

The commandments of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are clear, giving insight for living. Keep your servant from deliberate sins! Don’t let them control me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Eph. 4:14-16, 23-24 [NLT]

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.

Heb. 5: 5, 8-9 [NLT}

Christ did not honor himself by assuming he could become High Priest. . . . Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him.

Matt. 14:34-36 (NLT)

When the people recognized Jesus, the news of his arrival spread quickly throughout the whole area, and soon people were bringing all their sick to be healed. They begged him to let the sick touch at least the fringe of his robe, and all who touched him were healed.

John 17:1, 6, 16, 21, 23

Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father,. . . I have revealed you to the ones you gave me from this world. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one. . . . I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. May they be perfect in one. [KJV]

Eph. 4:13 [KJV]

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

SH 353:16-18

Perfection underlies reality. Without perfection, nothing is wholly real.

SH 304:14-15

The perfect man — governed by God, his perfect Principle — is sinless and eternal.

SH 337:16

In proportion to his purity is man perfect; and perfection is the order of celestial being which demonstrates Life in Christ, Life’s spiritual ideal.

SH 258:21

The human capacities are enlarged and perfected in proportion as humanity gains the true conception of man and God.

SH 239:29

The perfect Mind sends forth perfection, for God is Mind. Imperfect mortal mind sends forth its own resemblances, of which the wise man said, “All is vanity.”

SH 2:26 Do (only)

Do we expect to change perfection?

SH 149:11-12

The rule and its perfection of operation never vary in Science.

SH 200:16

The great truth in the Science of being, that the real man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is incontrovertible; for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither inverted nor subverted, but upright and Godlike.

SH 476:13-17, 28-32

Mortals are not fallen children of God. They never had a perfect state of being, which may subsequently be regained. They were, from the beginning of mortal history, “conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity.”

When speaking of God’s children, not the children of men, Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you;” that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God’s image is unfallen and eternal.

SH 222:31

We must destroy the false belief that life and intelligence are in matter, and plant ourselves upon what is pure and perfect. Paul said, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Sooner or later we shall learn that the fetters of man’s finite capacity are forged by the illusion that he lives in body instead of in Soul, in matter instead of in Spirit.

SH 208:25 A

A material body only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal man possesses this body, and he makes it harmonious or discordant according to the images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness. You should banish all thoughts of disease and sin and of other beliefs included in matter. Man, being immortal, has a perfect indestructible life. It is the mortal belief which makes the body discordant and diseased in proportion as ignorance, fear, or human will governs mortals.

SH 243:31

Perfection does not animate imperfection. Inasmuch as God is good and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error. Divine Science reveals these grand facts. On their basis Jesus demonstrated Life, never fearing nor obeying error in any form.

SH 253:32-2, 6-8, 12-23

The divine demand, “Be ye therefore perfect,” is scientific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are indispensable. God requires perfection, but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought and the victory won. 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.

During the sensual ages, absolute Christian Science may not be achieved prior to the change called death, for we have not the power to demonstrate what we do not understand. But the human self must be evangelized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material, and to work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual.

SH 259:6

In divine Science, man is the true image of God. The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought-models would allow, — thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying. The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea, — perfect God and perfect man, — as the basis of thought and demonstration.

SH 51:28

Jesus was unselfish.

SH 52:4-5, 9-10

His affections were pure; theirs were carnal. Their imperfections and impurity felt the ever-present rebuke of his perfection and purity.

SH 260:24-28

Selfishness and sensualism are educated in mortal mind by the thoughts ever recurring to one’s self, by conversation about the body, and by the expectation of perpetual pleasure or pain from it; and this education is at the expense of spiritual growth.

SH 72:17

Perfection is not expressed through imperfection. Spirit is not made manifest through matter, the antipode of Spirit. Error is not a convenient sieve through which truth can be strained.

SH 290:19, 25-27

Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be unrighteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, removes all ignorance and sin. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes thus only when he reaches perfection.

SH 248:13-16, 19-21

We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually.

SH 95:28

Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours. Material sense does not unfold the facts of existence; but spiritual sense lifts human consciousness into eternal Truth. Humanity advances slowly out of sinning sense into spiritual understanding; unwillingness to learn all things rightly, binds Christendom with chains.

SH 96:21-23

Mortal error will vanish in a moral chemicalization. This mental fermentation has begun, and will continue until all errors of belief yield to understanding.

SH 248:26

We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.

SH 99:23-29

The calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-immolation, must deepen human experience, until the beliefs of material existence are seen to be a bald imposition, and sin, disease, and death give everlasting place to the scientific demonstration of divine Spirit and to God’s spiritual, perfect man.

Hymn 20

Be true and list the voice within,

Be true unto thy high ideal,

Thy perfect self, that knows no sin,

That self that is the only real.

True to our God whose name is Love,

We shall fulfill our Father’s plan;

For true means true to God above,

To self, and to our fellow-man.

Hymn 370

Hid with Christ in God, O gladness:

O the meekness and the might,

When the risen Christ has lifted

All our thoughts into the light,

Light of Truth wherein no sadness

Dims the radiant peace we find,

As we set our whole affection

On the beauteous things of Mind.