In a certain unit of our American armed forces during the present World War there was a young man who for some years had been an earnest student of Christian Science. His bunk mate, however, made frequent boasts of being an atheist. Yet one day, of his own accord, he picked up the Christian Scientist's copy of the little volume, "Christian Science and Its Discoverer," by E. Mary Ramsay, and began to read it. Included in the accounts of Mary Baker Eddy's experiences is that of her early years, when chattel slavery in the United States was an issue of great import and intensity. It depicts the brave and noble stand she took against the legal bondage of human beings, and her writing of articles for publication against the institution of slavery.
The young man became deeply interested in the fact that Mrs. Eddy recognized God's power as able to release all mankind from bondage—from slavery of all sorts. He saw at once that he himself had been in bondage for many years to a physical difficulty that had caused him to use a medicinal remedy every day. Now, for the first time, faith began to appear, and it brought a new light, a transformation of thought he had never before felt or experienced. His healing took place then and there, and the use of the material remedy was discontinued. Several days later he discovered that a growth on one of his hands had disappeared; moreover, he had lost all desire for tobacco, and the use of it, like that of the medicine, was also discontinued. Thus he was freed from several forms of bondage and began to learn life anew in Christian Science.
There is much in the inspired Word of the Bible and in the teachings of Christian Science as to how one may be freed from the slavery and bondage of limitations of every name or nature—bondage to physical disease, sinful appetites, financial lack, discord, and unhappiness. One such illustration of man's inalienable birthright of freedom as a child of God is found in the Biblical story of Isaac and Ishmael. Herein it is seen that man is spiritual, complete, perfect—not a combination of truth and error, or of good and evil; that his divine heritage is that of good and good only. In the awakening as to his own nature as God's pure and upright man, forever free, one can more readily see that this is the spiritual fact concerning all the men and women of God's creating. Would not such an understanding, if universally applied, make for the ending of all wars and strife among the inhabitants of this world?
