"Heredity is not a law." By many thousands of earth's weary and discouraged inhabitants this statement made by Mrs. Eddy on page 178 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" has been read or heard with indescribable relief and joy, burdened as they have been, through ignorance and false teaching, with a sense of the inevitability and inescapability of this cruel, man-made belief. To learn that heredity is not a law has roused the hope that there is a way of escape from the thralldom of some sin, sickness, disease, impure habit, temperamental belief or idiosyncrasy that had found expression in their thought and, in many cases, upon their body.
How little of justice there is in the assertion that a child or an adult can be penalized or punished today for the wrong thought leading to the wrong action of some person or persons who lived a few or many years ago! Many victims of the human belief called heredity have rebelled against their experience, against what they may have been taught to regard as their lot. But few have understood that their misfortune resulted from their acceptance of the general human belief in medical theories, or their assent to the misinterpretation of Biblical statements. They have regarded heredity as unavoidable, and therefore have submitted with as much grace as possible. But through Christian Science the clarion call has come to mankind to awaken from this error of belief, and from all phases of the dream of life in matter. The way of escape is pointed out through this system of Mind-healing.
Injustices are not remedied simply by recognizing them as such; they call for the intelligent application of an antidote. Where may that antidote be found? In a knowledge of the nature of God and of man's relationship to Him, as revealed in Christian Science. Is God just or unjust? Few would care to deny the justice of God. But human experiences may have made this divine quality difficult to understand. The incompetence of human justice may have adversely affected the concept of divine justice. But real justice is an attribute of God, and is expressed through divine law, invariable, unchanging, unchangeable, forever present, forever active, and therefore available here, now, and always.
