"NOW the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," wrote Paul to the Corinthians. Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, tells us in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 224): "Truth brings the elements of liberty. On its banner is the Soul-inspired motto, 'Slavery is abolished.' The power of God brings deliverance to the captive." The United States has enacted laws whereby the elements of true liberty may be insured and enforced. Do we not often, however, still see and hear the words "personal liberty" used with apparently little or no thought of their true meaning?
It would seem that we have yet to learn of spiritual law, the knowing and living of which makes for true freedom. Do we not to-day find God's law of universal love and of the brotherhood of man often perverted into self-love and self-gratification, which ultimately end in cruel bondage? In the textbook (p. 226) we find this wonderful statement by our revered Leader: "God has built a higher platform of human rights, and He has built it on diviner claims. These claims are not made through code or creed, but in demonstration of 'on earth peace, good-will toward men.' Human codes, scholastic theology, material medicine and hygiene, fetter faith and spiritual understanding. Divine Science rends asunder these fetters, and man's birthright of sole allegiance to his Maker asserts itself." Mankind, without any fixed standard and governed capriciously by material sense, becomes double-minded, unstable, and wavering in all its ways.
Now Christian Science demands absolute recognition of and obedience to the one and only God, the one divine Principle, or Mind, in order that good may be established in character and love and stability in conduct. It is of the utmost importance to differentiate between liberty and license. A dictionary defines liberty as "freedom, exemption from the domination of others, the right of free government;" while license is defined, in part, as "an ignoring and defiance of all that should restrain, and a reckless doing of all that individual caprice or passion may choose to do,"—a base and dangerous counterfeit of freedom. Through study and application of the truths of Christian Science, we find that its teaching leads up to the absolute fact that the only real, permanent liberty and freedom for men is in goodness, leading to deliverance from the so-called bondage of evil and its manifold modes of deception.
