Noting the admonition in Hebrews that we "lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us," many of us wonder how it is to be obeyed. What are these false weights, and where are they? As understood in Christian Science, they are materialistic beliefs of pleasure and pain lodged in mortal thought and dislodged through spiritual understanding. Weights of fear, dishonesty, sullen temper, depraved will, false appetites, draw their victims down into ignominy and suffering. How shall they be laid aside? Not by fearing, resenting, or excusing them. Not by believing in their obduracy and clinging power. Not by attributing them to ancestry, to lack of training, or, in fact, to any cause whatever, for such a diagnosis would be fettering.
False weights are laid aside through realizing that they are contrary to the will of God, and through learning to express the divine nature naturally and spontaneously, as Christian Science teaches us to do. This spiritual vision of man's real being is the scientific corrective leading to overcoming and corresponding liberation. There is no need to depart from the way of righteousness in order to find the way of happiness and success.
Neither in the premise of Spirit nor in its blessed manifestation is there any weight of guilt or depression. Applying this scientific fact for humanity's betterment, we find that one and all can enjoy righteousness and health, purity of heart and peace of mind, because these are the fruits of spiritual enlightenment. In this enlightenment lies the way of escape from every kind of trouble; it is the basis from which Christian Science brings healing and regeneration to stricken humanity. In the proportion that we learn to direct our thoughts and our lives according to the standard of divine Principle which Christian Science unfolds to us, we cease to be enslaved by sin and suffering. Just so far and so fast as we manifest God-likeness, the old baffling fears, sinful traits, and self-inflicted unhappiness are laid aside, and so we are lifted out of slavery into freedom.
