The tendencies to revolt against restraint are to be observed everywhere. Throughout what is sometimes superficially classified as inanimate nature, these tendencies are often accompanied by tremendous exhibitions of energy, but they are all accompanied by counterchecks whose opposing tendencies maintain the necessary equipoise. A finite perspective may seem to afford reasons for complaint against what are sometimes designated as the disorders of nature, and to justify Tennyson's words,—
Many things perplex
With motions, checks, and counterchecks.
But our impatience with many restraints is not profitable. True liberty does not mean the privilege to do whatever we please to do; it means the privilege to do whatever we have the right to do under the government of Truth. In order to maintain a harmonious equipoise in our thoughts and lives, the spirit of liberty and the spirit of obedience must go together, just as the centripetal and centrifugal tendencies work together in the sidereal spaces and save the universe from chaos. The tyro in the study of Christian Science sometimes forgets this. He may chafe against this and against that, and may imagine that he is rightly exercising a legitimate longing for liberty. Let him pause at such times to consider carefully whether what he is chafing against, as a supposed restraint upon his thought or conduct, is right or wrong. If right, then it cannot effect any real restraint upon his liberty; it is a moral force which will hold him in his true orbit. Such a centripetal restraint is wholesome and legitimate, from every point of view; and if respected it may save him from disaster.
