Love is the liberator.— Science and Health, p. 225.
Liberty "containing itself in the limits of virtue" is a trustworthy index of individual and social progress. Even the way men conceive of and define liberty is a reliable index of their moral progress. The bad conceive liberty to be the right and the opportunity to do wrong, ignorant of the fact that all wrong doing leads to slavery. The good conceive of liberty as freedom from evil and unity with good. Even the lowest and worst type of mortals desire freedom or exemption from the consequences of wrong doing. The best and wisest men desire freedom from sin even more than from the consequences of sin. The absence of restraint that the ignorant and the vicious desire and seek is not freedom, but anarchy; not liberty, but license. The perfect knowledge and conformity to perfect law that the wise and virtuous hunger and strive for bring the only true freedom and real liberty.
The hope and prophecy of perfect freedom and universal liberty lie in the fact that all evil leads into captivity and is its own punishment, while all good thoughts, words, and deeds emancipate from evil and the painful consequences of evil; that all evil condemns itself and punishes itself, while the good is self-sufficient and wholly satisfying; and that evil is temporal, fleeting, and capable of being destroyed, while the good is real, permanent, and indestructible. Humanity never has found and never can find any real satisfaction in sin, ignorance, and bondage; neither can we be permanently reconciled to tyranny or anarchy of any kind. The most interesting chapters in the history of the human race record the aspirations and struggles for freedom from all forms of lawlessness and all forms of oppression.
