Although a cursory glance might cause some readers to think the freedom of prohibition a paradox, metaphysical reasoning indicates that instead of interfering with individual liberty, prohibition, by denying to man sin, sickness, and death, reveals him as the unfettered idea of Mind—free from the bondage of evil. Divine intelligence maintaining its likeness, the forever untrammeled manifestation of consciousness, prohibits man from wrong acting, speaking, or thinking. It is only by being thus prohibited from the mortal seeming that man is seen to express the freedom of harmonious action that confers health and happiness. Necessarily, understanding that man is satisfied with good, content to be the effect of perfect cause, it thus appears that for-fending evil does not take away liberty; it only takes away a mortal's license to submerge himself in materiality.
The taboo of the primitives which was the early form of the present day prohibition was purely the result of fear in the guise of self-preservation. Had the Adam and Eve of the allegory obeyed the mandate of Mind, then the false supposition, matter, would have exercised no power over them, but fear being the basis of obedience to the taboo against the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, fear could not maintain the facts of Life, and the Adam, or mortal belief, which could never be anything but the product of materiality, yielded to the argument of the serpent, the desire of so-called individual liberty to deny man's birthright. It is never necessary to yield, as did Adam and Eve, to the illusory suggestion of a fallacy; for a supposition cannot claim power in the presence of Truth. Under no circumstances, then, need one be discomforted by a seemingly formidable problem, for the argument that one lacks sufficient truth to overcome the error fails before the metaphysical fact that one invariably possesses adequate understanding to solve any problem that presents itself. In other words, no belief could suppose itself as consciousness unless the truth were first present as consciousness. That ever present Truth which is all the reality there is, unreversably heals.
With the growth of spirituality, the original taboo that operated against things and people is replaced by the prohibition of self from any supposed evil, the protection which reveals the real man. Present day laws and customs, indicating a higher understanding of Principle, not only protect the individual from the reactive effects of wrongdoing, but they include as well the unselfish protection of others. Anticipatory fear urged economic loss, whereas economic gain has resulted from the prohibition acts which by denying the senses have enlarged the capabilities of man. Mrs. Eddy bids us have faith in the omnipresent intelligence that is always operating, when she says in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 220), "Whatever changes come to this century or to any epoch, we may safely submit to the providence of God, to common justice, to the maintenance of individual rights, and to governmental usages."
