WHAT have not men sacrificed to forward human freedom ! From earliest recorded times few appeals have awakened a warmer response in the human breast or stirred men to more eager action than the plea for liberty. Thrilled by the centuries of accumulated sentiment with which that word is charged, men have gladly forsaken all to follow phantoms that promised freedom. In defense of liberty intellectual swords have clashed in far-famed forums, tribes and peoples have struggled in motley masses, sabers have gleamed and cannon thundered on countless fields of battle, and when the storm was over men have found they had but exchanged one fetter for another, which in turn galled its wearer into renewed revolt.
As the concept of liberty has varied from basest license to purest idealism, the ark of humanity has risen and fallen on the waves that indicated the changing moods of men. Gazing backward across the centuries of ceaseless struggle, confident that from earliest time the goal sought has been the same, remembering with what vigor victory has been pursued, with what sacrifice and sorrow defeat has been endured, and yet how through all the woof of human experience has run the golden thread of hope, one marvels not that now and then some puzzled ponderer of the past has cried out in despair, Is there a goal — a God? Why has not the goal been won? Why have so many centuries of recorded struggle failed to vanquish human misery? Is God fighting a losing battle in defence of humanity, or is He deaf to the appeals which have been poured forth? Surely age-long effort merits better reward than can be pointed to by champions of changing creeds and puzzled phalanxes of philosophers!
There is a goal, there is a God, and Christian Science gladdens the pathway toward the one and disperses the mists which have concealed the shining countenance of the other. Refusing to tread the paths of fetish and dogma that have led only through endless mazes of mystery and misery, this Science reverts to the simple teachings of the master Christian and points to the same fruits that follow now as then the application of those teachings. Through nineteen centuries a large portion of the world has admitted that what Jesus taught and practised would, if universally accepted, redeem mankind from every ill; but the great majority of those who admitted the merit of the Saviour's teachings have denied the practical availability of his doctrines.
