During a conversation on Christian Science, two students recalled the experience of a woman who fancied she had locked herself in her closet. Upon investigation it was found that the door could readily have been opened from the inside by turning the blunt end of some hardware which took the place of a knob. The woman had not been locked in at all, yet she had suffered sufficiently to be in a state of semicollapse. The students asked themselves what had caused the woman's suffering. The closet? No. Only her own false concept of the situation.
This statement from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy then came to thought (p. 372): "The Science of being, in which all is divine Mind, or God and His idea, would be clearer in this age, but for the belief that matter is the medium of man, or that man can enter his own embodied thought, bind himself with his own beliefs, and then call his bonds material and name them divine law." Considered in their scientific sense, the following words bring out the same point (James 1:13, 14): "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed."
It would be well for all of us to ask ourselves, To what extent are we, like the woman in the closet, thinking of ourselves as matter bodies involved in material situations, embodying and entering our own false concept, binding ourselves with our own beliefs, and declaring that our bonds are material and are inflicted upon us by a power beyond our control? Really we are not "locked in" at all, any more than this woman was.
