The International Congregational Council which recently convened in Edinburgh was a most interesting religious event, and one of the most impressive utterances on this occasion was a sermon by Dr. George A. Gordon of Boston, having for its text the Master's great prediction, "When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." Dr. Gordon said in part,—
Two worlds confront the religious mind to-day with new distinctness and impressiveness—the world of authority and the world of freedom. Paul's great image of the two mothers, Hagar bearing children in bondage and Sarah bearing children in freedom, is a mirror of our time. There are now as then two Jerusalems, that of tradition, custom, authority, and that of the advancing spirit of the Christian freeman. Many are afraid of the signs of the times. They think that a world half free and half bond is better than a world absolutely committed to freedom. Their faith in freedom as the opportunity of all great human interests is inadequate; the vast possible peril fills them with dismay. They fear for the fate of religion itself, for the records of religion and the philosophy of religion under freedom. They cannot see that the essential lives by its own right, that it needs no sanction beyond its own character, that it depends upon nothing foreign to itself, that it is as lasting as the order of which it is a part. To these men freedom, when it is under limitation, seems to be good for religion: when under no limitation freedom seems to be the supreme peril of religion. In such distractions of the Christian intellect we return to the words of the text for guidance and hope. They are the great assurance of the religious man in the world of freedom: "Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth."
While the dominant thought of this sermon is freedom, there is no very definite statement as to what freedom means nor how it is to be attained. The distinguished preacher calls attention to the popular opinion that freedom has its dangers and that it may be abused, a view which is doubtless held largely by mankind, and which seems to be supported by experience, although it is not in accord with the teachings of the Master, as understood in Christian Science. A false sense of freedom must undoubtedly work ill, as history shows; but happily a false sense of anything can only destroy that which is evil, for all good is secure in the divine consciousness, protected by divine law.
Christ Jesus did not hesitate to recommend freedom to all who would listen to him, and he also stated definitely the only way in which it can be attained. He said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free;" and he also said, "The Spirit of truth ... shall guide you into all truth." It is therefore evident that true freedom cannot be realized apart from a clear concept of truth, and it is surely self-evident that freedom which comes from the guidance of "the Spirit of truth" can never be abused, nor can it ever degenerate into mere license, the counterfeit of liberty.
Of all merely materialistic theories of freedom it may be said, in the words which Jesus addressed to the scribes and Pharisees, "Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." Christian Science teaches that freedom must come from the understanding that man is a spiritual being, governed by unchanging Principle, omnipotent Mind. Mortals believe that man is material, with a chance of becoming spiritual after death, and that he is governed by material laws which hold him in bondage through time and possibly through eternity—certainly so long as he believes in these asserted laws. The bondage of so-called health laws and disease laws is far more of a menace to human freedom than the exactions of the most cruel tyrant that ever lived, and it is from this bondage, as well as the bondage to sin and death, that the truth sets us free. It is surely clear that if individuals are free, in the true sense, the State is also free. The rule and reign of divine Principle, while unbending in its demand for righteousness, ever makes for the largest freedom. Jesus said, "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed," and Christian Science stands by this declaration, maintaining that nothing less than the divine sonship, exemplified and taught by Christ Jesus, is worthy to be called freedom.
One of the most interesting statements in Dr. Gordon's great sermon was the following:—
If we only were deep enough in our moral brotherhood, if we were only profound enough and intense enough in our spiritual fellowship to send psalms, prophetic oracles, epistles, canticles of love and woe, litanies of nations up out of the heart of this present time; if our souls were only great enough in the consciousness of God, and one another as children of God, to create a contemporary Bible, or something like a contemporary Bible, how easy it would be to recognize the greater psalm of the past, the mightier oracle, the gladder and weightier epistle, the diviner Bible. If we lose our faith, it will be through contempt of the divine order of souls in which we live; if we would renew our faith in historic Christianity, we must do it through renewed faith in contemporary Christianity.
While Christian Scientists do not feel the need of a new Bible, they rejoice that through the teachings of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" the treasures of the old are being revealed, with the freedom from sin, disease, and death which Christ Jesus offered to humanity in his day. It is also true that for this freedom they are sending out from grateful hearts "litanies" of praise and prayer for what the Spirit of truth is doing for men to-day, and, to quote Dr. Gordon again, "their voices are not the dirge of a dead faith, but the great hallelujah chorus of the fresh advent of the Lord."
