The natural right of a man or a woman is to express God and thus to demonstrate Godlikeness. This is a divine right, and the Christian Scientist is called upon to prove that God's plan of boundless freedom for all His perfect creation is the only plan that truly exists. To understand this plan and come into harmony with it lessens and heals the disturbing sense of rebellion against unjust human laws, for then it is seen that these are powerless to interfere with the perfection of true being.
True equality, an essential part of God's plan, is based upon the Biblical statement, "Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?" and upon Mrs. Eddy's admonitory declaration (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 469, 470), "With one Father, even God, the whole family of man would be brethren." Such must be the basis for any correct thinking on the subject of rights, place, and law.
Economic fears of the past few years have deprived many of hardly won and justly deserved occupations, leaving them no choice but to give up interesting and profitable employment. The temptation to admit resentment is often great under such provocation, but meeting error with error only increases the difficulty. Truth, and Truth alone, must be our remedy in this as in all else, if a satisfactory and permanent solution is to be obtained. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," and this should be the watchword of the hour.
Mary Baker Eddy defines "man" on page 515 of Science and Health thus: "Man is the family name for all ideas,—the sons and daughters of God." And on the following page, she states, "Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God."
It is to this ideal, spiritual nature, appearing in individual consciousness, that God has given dominion. The real man is the expression of God, not the limited, personalized sense which appeared in the Adam-dream. The divine qualities of manhood and womanhood, eternally one in being, are the true heritage of the sons and daughters of God. This inheritance contains no inequalities. It is the open fount which cries, "Ho, every one that thirsteth." Where, indeed, may the longing heart look for satisfaction? Nowhere, save in divine Science, is there a permanent and satisfying answer to the heart's questions: What is my place? Where do I belong? Why am I here? What can I hope for?
A realization of spiritual equality intrinsic to divine creation, and therefore a necessary human consideration, is needed for the demonstration of healing in Christian Science. It is essential because, just as Christ Jesus revealed God as Father, so Christian Science reveals God as Mother also, these terms being combined in a line of the spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious" (ibid., p. 16). A recognition of this twofold nature of God and His ideas—"the sons and daughters of God"—is the basis of present and ultimate harmony.
This realization, although so feebly glimpsed in the intervening centuries between Jesus' ascension and the discovery and founding of Christian Science, has been and is the root of the growth of justice and equality in human laws. Like leaven, it works on invisibly, bringing out diviner hues of right. To see the divine facts of manhood and womanhood is to do away with the age-old debate between races and sexes, and to replace it with joyous acceptance of the one universal family, wherein each individual is the complete reflection of God.
In considering any question of rights and privileges, Christian Scientists have before them the high standard of their Leader, expressed on pages 254 and 255 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany": "The Magna Charta of Christian Science means much, multum in parvo,—all-in-one and one-in-all." She adds, "Its rules are health, holiness, and immortality,— equal rights and privileges, equality of the sexes, rotation in office." This correct view of equality protects from the clash and counterclash of material views pro or con, and progressively proves the righteous freedom and dominion to which both men and women are entitled in human experience.
Pushing the claims of sex or race does not advance the cause of an individual or of humanity, for this is an evidence of the mist that went up "from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground," a mist which blinded thought to the complete nature of God and man. The false sense of a divided creation has been the root of inequalities from its inception. Materiality cannot behold the true nature of power as the tender, spiritual might of divine Love which Christ Jesus later revealed, a might which alone demonstrates spiritual dominion over all the illusions of material sense.
The belief in inequalities must ever receive the rebuke of omniscience, "Where art thou?" Are we dwelling in a material sense of creation with its traditional limitations and divisions, or claiming the fullness of Life in a present reflection of "our Father-Mother God," not alone for ourselves, but for all?
One's place in human affairs is never in place of, replacing, or displacing another. Each one's place is in the divine consciousness of it, and as this is claimed and demonstrated, the truth about health, home, harmony, right occupation, supply—our God-bestowed heritage of good—is made manifest in experience. This is never done by taking from another, but comes about through a realization of the present availability of all the divine ideas of God. Thus, whatever pertains to equality is revealed as a present and ineradicable status of divine perfection, belonging to the sons and daughters of God.
There can be no possible double standard in the demonstration of Christian Science in any direction of thought, for this would be a "kingdom divided against itself," which cannot stand. Every man, woman, and child in Christian Science has one measurement for all—the Godlike stature of Christ, Truth. This is his measure for himself and for all his fellows, and as rapidly as each individual recognizes universal equality—the kingdom of heaven at hand—he glimpses the universe peopled with the pure beings of Love's creation, expressing the love, joy, and understanding which mortals long for, but never attain, until material supposition is exchanged for immortal Truth.
Obedience to the laws of his country is an essential standard of every Christian Scientist, and thus it behooves women and men to work actively and earnestly through right thinking, to support all that tends toward a recognition of justice and equality in human affairs. In so doing, one's individual place will gradually cease to be a moot question, and will become a natural and acceptable expression of the universality of the divine good.
