A familiar example of the illusory nature of bondage is to be found in the account of a bear in a zoo that had for a long time been confined in a small cage. Presently the bear was moved to a much larger enclosure, where he had a good deal more space and no bars were apparent. Did the bear make use of the wide area and of his extended freedom of movement:' No. Day after day he paced up and down a small area comparable to the dimensions of his old cage, apparently under the illusion that he was still narrowly confined.
Mary Baker Eddy has designated as illusion the situations which humanity regards as narrow and confining. On page 227 of the Christian Science textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she writes, "The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being." Freedom comes as one breaks the dream of material sense.
A student of Christian Science proved that bondage is wholly an illusion of material sense by waking to the truth of her spiritual being as a child of God. For several years this young woman was unhappy in her occupation. Day after day, however, she tried to lift her thought through studying Christian Science and applying it. She had to break fetters of a strong but mistaken sense of injustice. She had to loose herself from self-imposed chains of belief in mortal selfhood with certain suppressed talents. She had to learn to base her liberty on a completely spiritual declaration of independence. This is what she discovered. Man, as the spiritual idea of divine Mind, has infinite freedom of expression. This freedom is the liberty to express the qualities of Mind, divine Love. There is no suppression of these qualities; there is no law curtailing this liberty.
