Real emancipation is spiritual freedom. Christian Science is the perfect emancipator, because it delivers mankind from all ills, from those of the human mind and thus of the flesh, and from all tyrannies including those organized by medical and ecclesiastical monopolies. Man is God's reflection, neither separate from nor abandoned by Deity; therefore man is always free to be good and to do good. Evil influences cannot in reality intervene between man and his Maker, yet how persistent has been the effort of evil to insert itself between the creator and His creation and to destroy this self-existent at-one-ment! The human footsteps taken by the race in repulsing such attempts and in reaffirming man's solidarity with God constitute human history. Many emancipators have trodden the stage of earthly life, acted their parts, spoken their inspired words, and, though not always understood, yet have lifted the thought of the world to a higher plane, leaving mankind in their debt.
The genius of America is liberty. In the month of February the United States celebrates annually the memory of two great emancipators who delivered their native land out of the hand of the enemy, and in so doing helped to release the whole world from bondage,—George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Christian Scientists who listened to President Wilson's Thanksgiving Proclamation read in their churches will have noticed that it was dated in the year "of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-third." In 1918 it was one hundred and forty-three years since Mesmer brought mesmerism into notice in Germany. The revolution of the English colonies in America, led by George Washington, was not against the England of their own ancestry, the England of the Magna Charta, of Wycliffe, and of Cromwell, but against England as ruled by a foreigner, imported from Germany.
In the light of this historic fact George Washington then appears as a benefactor of the human race, who was really waging war against a condition of thought which had reached England from Germany and would if successful have converted the British Empire into an autocracy governed by mesmerism. George Washington under divine guidance fought in behalf of the true Anglo-Saxon, as a fore-fighter for Anglo-Israel. In her address to the Concord church, February, 1899, Mrs. Eddy wrote (Miscellany, p. 148): "In the annals of our denomination this church becomes historic, having completed its organization February 22—Washington's birthday. Memorable date, all unthought of till the day had passed! Then we beheld the omen,— religious liberty,—the Father of the universe and the father of our nation in concurrence." So salutary was the effect of the American Revolution upon Great Britain itself that the short-lived attempt to build up an empire by mesmeric autocratic control was promptly abandoned, and the principal British settlements such as those in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and elsewhere took upon themselves the form of independent commonwealths linked to the mother country by the slenderest political ties but by the strongest bonds of affection.
