THERE is but one law, governing all, and that is the law of God; hence it cannot be necessary for men to be sick and sinful. God knows no such law, and the real man cannot know what God does not know, for he is God's image and likeness. The spiritual facts of creation express divine law and are scientific, and they do not include either sickness, sin, or death. Man reflecting divine law becomes a law unto himself, and has the ability at all times to commute the mortal sentence to suffer or to sin.
Christ Jesus uncovered and destroyed the belief in evil, and if humanity had understood and accepted his teaching, had known that when the Redeemer of mankind bade the evil spirit depart and enter no more into consciousness, this work was done for all time, we would today realize that his completed work does not have to be done over again, but that we have our own work to do, that our greater work is to believe in and demonstrate a full redemption from sin, disease, and death by following our Lord's example.
We read that Jesus often taught his disciples by means of parables, and in one of these he showed them that "men ought always to pray, and not to faint." Thus prayer is become a law of necessity to every student of Christian Science, as soon as he learns that prayer, as taught in the first chapter of Science and Health, is desire, whether voiced or unexpressed. Belief in materia medica, physiology, laws of heredity and contagion, would make the seeming law of necessity their very own. The false claims of material belief are legion, but the truth is that materia medica and mortal mind continually break their own so-called laws, thus proving them to be an absence of law, for law is that which is fixed and absolute, and God's law cannot be broken. As men may sometimes be false guides, so human experiences may furnish a false rule. The belief in the supposed law of heredity would make a law of necessity by which a man is compelled to be a drunkard, or perhaps a consumptive, because his father was so afflicted; but the law of liberty, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus," delivers men from any such necessity; that is, in Christian Science we are taught that "man is the offspring of Spirit ... Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being" (Science and Health, p. 63). A false sense of law may seem to make it necessary for a man to suffer from doing good, from lending to a brother in apparent need, or from watching beside a sick-bed; but let us thank God that His law knows no such necessity! Obedience to the law of Love protects us from all penalties for fulfilling this law.
