Before Mrs. Eddy gave to the world her gospel of freedom— Christian Science—mankind went heavily along, its back bowed beneath many burdens, which it carried as a matter of course, believing that sickness, poverty, sorrow, the so-called law of heredity, and such like, were either God-sent or else firmly established by some power apart from good. Of all the burdens that men carried, perhaps that of heredity was the heaviest. By it they were heavily handicapped, coming into the world apparently manacled by, perhaps, a heritage of violent temper from one ancestor, a tendency to dishonesty from another, or a tending to impurity from a third. These evil beliefs, born with one, were supposed to be inevitable parts of one's make-up, from which, though one wrestled a lifetime, one might hardly escape.
And then silently, like the almost imperceptible coming of a fair morning, Christian Science dawned upon the earth with the heavenly message that the divine law which it reveals replaces sickness with health, sorrow with joy, poverty with plenty, and the so-called law of mortal heredity with the assurance of man's sonship with God alone. "In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being." So writes Mrs. Eddy on page 63 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." With this proclamation of emancipation understood, can we ever again fear the bondage of any supposed law of mortal heredity?
But, true though this law of divine inheritance as revealed in Christian Science is concerning God and man, if we are to lose our thralldom. to our old fear of mortal inheritance, we must prove this law of God, each of us for himself; and we cannot prove it without understanding it; and we cannot understand it without studying it. It would be easy to voice the proclamation of freedom, and let it go at that; but a mere repetition of the words of any law does not make it ours. This is as true as in mathematics. However firm our belief in its fundamental law, that law does not avail us until by study we learn how to apply it and, by working out many problems, become thoroughly convinced of the rules of its application. It is not otherwise in Christian Science. A belief, however firm, that Mrs. Eddy's words as to man's origin are true will not enable us to utilize them until, through prayerful study, we attain to some understanding of God and man and their true relationship. Only then are we able to apply the rules, based upon the law of divine Principle. In the words of Eliphaz to Job in his affliction, "Acquaint now thyself with him [God], and be at peace."
