FREEDOM BY THE TRUTH

THE craving for freedom lies deep in the human heart; it is the goal of our struggle. History is strewed with broken promises of its fulfilment. The earliest of these was through external force, with which many heroic names are associated, but not the "name which is above every name." The Master renounced such force. He said, "Resist not evil;" "My kingdom is not of this world." Mankind have also sought freedom through legislative enactment; but no emancipation proclamation has ever fitted men for the use of freedom.

The progress of civilization marks advancing steps of victory over some of the lower instincts, while it contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude. Mankind seem to conquer nature, and in turn become its slaves. Emerson says, "Modern civilization is the lengthening of a gun-barrel." Another aspect is the creation of wants and the manufacture of their supply. A highly civilized community presents a spectacle of bondage,—the workman to his machine, the devotee of pleasure to amusement, the rich to luxury, the fashionable to dress, and all to custom and convention. Emerson again says, "The virtue most in vogue is conformity;" "No one dares to say I 'think,' but quotes some sage." The young man's excuse for foolish conduct is, "They all do it." How few have the insight and moral courage to step aside and let the throng, led by custom and policy, sweep by; or boldly stand within this enclosure of selfhood and ask, "What has it of permanent reality for me?" Yet this must be the spirit of him who follows the Master, through "the truth," to the goal of freedom. Christ Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself;" "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne." Self-renunciation is the gate to Life. Through obedience to Truth we rise to the consciousness of man's original and rightful dominion over all material conditions, and thus attain to perfect freedom.

"Ye shall know the truth," said the Master, "and the truth shall make you free." What, then, is the truth that makes men free? In the Master's teaching its center and circumference is in God,—the Father, infinite Spirit, ever-present Love,—in whom "we live, and move, and have our being,"—the only Cause, the sole force. One of the greatest of living philosophers, Professor Bowne, declares, "Strictly speaking, there is but one Mind." This unity was taught by Jesus; the sovereign control of God, good, was the firm support of his life. In the dark hour of trial he said to Pilate, "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above." In his ascension, like Enoch and Elijah, neither leaving nor carrying with him a material body, he demonstrated for us that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation" (Science and Health, p. 468). The stubborn belief in so-called laws of nature, relentless forces, nauseous sins, and dread diseases, is neither of God nor supported by Him, for these are but products of the mortal dream and cannot block the freedom of him who is conscious of divine sonship; in which relation, as Paul says, "all things are your's;... and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." To attain complete knowledge of this truth as ever-present reality is freedom and full salvation. The truth about man is involved in the truth about God. The man who appears to human sense is a strange enigma; in the places where civilization displays its splendor of wealth and invention, we stand in wonder over the victories of thought, knowing that all which is just and true is the interpenetration of "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." But watch the passing crowds who have attained that civilization—there are low aims, base thoughts, selfish lives, a conformation only a little above the brute. A painful sense of degradation steals over us; mankind seem so great, yet so mean. But the Master's truth solves the problem.

Christ Jesus looked through the mist of sense and saw the child of God. With clear spiritual vision he looked beyond the spurned Zaccheus and saw a "son of Abraham;" beyond the vacillating Peter and saw a "rock;" beyond Mary Magdalene and saw an expression of the infinite Spirit. The ideal is the real. This great truth, though long obscured, has been the hope of the world. Man, the child of God, is spiritual, because the offspring or idea of Spirit; he is complete, because the idea of God is incorruptible; he is eternal, because the idea of God can have no beginning nor end. This is the true concept of man, of whom it was said at the beginning, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion." It is the germ of freedom; the seat of bondage is in mortal thought, which Truth dispels, revealing the consciousness of Spirit's dominion. When thought i? freed it begins a manifestation in the individual life. Sin and disease, those dread oppressors of our race, are seen as phantoms of human thought which Truth overthrows. In the Master's life there were two great outstanding facts. Impelled by ever-present Love, he healed the sick and spiritualized thought; these two are inseparable. The basis of his mighty works was the supremacy of Spirit, and by this primal truth he acted, walking on the waves, healing the sick, raising the dead, ascending into heaven. His spiritual consciousness gave him the mastery, and in proportion as we possess the Mind of Christ will we gain this freedom and become master of all earthly conditions.

When the liberating truth guides thought and begins to control individual life, then it reaches human institutions. God is infinite Spirit, man is God's spiritual idea. This is the firm basis on which rest the unity and equality of the human family; before it, distinctions between rich and poor, high and low, monarch and subject, peer and peasant, vanish. All find their true unity in the one divine Mind. While this great liberating and leveling truth remained unclouded in the early Church, it was causing unholy institutions to crumble. Paul directed Philemon to receive back Onesimus, his escaped slave, as a "brother beloved." Here is the death-knell of slavery; it cannot live in such an atmosphere. Gibbon says that in the time of Claudius one half the Roman empire was slave and one half free, or about sixty millions each. The truth of being was at work on this vast tyranny. The Christians declared, "Whom Christ hath set free, let no man hold in bondage." The early church councils forbade the reduction of Christians to bondage. The council of Rheims prohibited the breaking up of sacred vessels "except for the redemption of slaves." The same truth abolished the prevalent infanticide, elevated woman, who had been only the toy or clrud'ge of man, attacked, the bloody games of the amphitheater. In the reign of Honorus eighty thousand people were gathered at Rome to witness the gladiatorial contest, when a Christian preacher rushed into the amphitheater and parted the combatants. He perished under a shower of stones, but it was the last of the contests at Rome and they soon ceased in the provinces.

If this great liberating truth had not been turned aside by corruption and materialism within the Church, no tyranny could have withstood it. But alas! what a change came. Even the Church, laying its grasp on the state and social life, became one vast machine to crush out freedom. Reformation, revolution, social reform, following in succession, were founded on partial truth, hence their only partial success. But thanks to God, who "in the fulness of time," raised up the one through whom He has given us Christian Science, with its primitive, vital truth that sets men free. Again we hear of the supremacy of Spirit, again we are beginning to see clear evidence of man's rightful heritage as a child of God,—his dominion over sin, sickness, death, and every form of oppression. In the early days it was said of those who were awakening to spiritual consciousness: "Ye are the light of the world;" "Ye are heirs of God;" "All things are yours;" "Fear them not;" "Not a hair of your head shall perish;" "Ye shall tread on serpents;" "Nothing shall be impossible;" "The works that I do shall he do also;" "Ye shall sit on thrones;" "The saints shall judge the earth;" "He that overcometh shall inherit all things." They are called "kings and priests," and they "shall reign on the earth."

Thus every barrier crumbles before the onward march of the spiritual man, for he is God's idea. In the modern world Mrs. Eddy's teaching alone has risen to this commanding Biblical position for all the sons of God. She writes (Science and Health, p. 225), "Whatever enslaves man is opposed to the divine government. Truth makes man free." Again, on page 226, we read these stirring words: "The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of their own beliefs, and from the educational systems of the Pharaohs, who to-day, as of yore, hold the children of Israel in bondage.... Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to foresee the doom of all oppression."

We are lifted by Christian Science, as by the Master's "truth," to a primal law, the supremacy of Spirit. Obedience to this law is the only road to freedom; "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The rapid and irresistible growth of this truth is the handwriting on the wall to vast material and ecclesiastical systems that have long ruled the world with an iron hand. In the preface of Science and Health our Leader declares, "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings."

Day is dawning, though "the darkness comprehendeth it not;" and it is a day of deliverance. Christian Science brings the Christ-idea to the world, and the clouds that so long have rested on human consciousness are passing. The great Master leads the way, and

The poet looked into the far future for the golden day, yet the all-sufficient God is present now as then. Let us awake to Truth, and the golden day of freedom is at hand.