"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). This truth to which the Master, Christ Jesus, referred is the truth which Christian Science teaches. In its original purity, beauty, and divine metaphysics it is as present and available as God Himself for us to know and demonstrate. It is the basic truth of the one Principle, Mind, or cause; of man in God's image and likeness, endowed with limitless spiritual power and dominion.
When Jesus gave this precise command with its promise of sure liberation, he was addressing the receptive and expectant of thought then and now. His significant works of instant healing and powerful teaching were endowed with universal and timeless import. He might have said, "Ye shall apply the truth, and it shall make you free," for to know indicates something for us to do, not inactively to wait for. It means to affirm, to insist upon, that which is true until it is realized or becomes apparent. Mary Baker Eddy gives a clear illustration of active knowing when she writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 414): "Christian Science declares that Mind is substance, also that matter neither feels, suffers, nor enjoys. Hold these points strongly in view. Keep in mind the verity of being,—that man is the image and likeness of God, in whom all being is painless and permanent. Remember that man's perfection is real and unimpeachable, whereas imperfection is blame-worthy unreal, and is not brought about by divine Love."
Knowing God to be divine Principle, the all-governing, law-creating, law-enforcing Mind, not only gives us a clear sense of the eternal security in which the real man dwells, but makes it possible for us here and now to live under the divine law of harmony and protection. As we understand the omnipotence of this law of Principle, we lose all fear and apprehension of any so-called law of mortal mind calling itself heredity, materia medica, chemical reaction, elemental force, and so on, for whatever is not sanctioned by infinite Principle, or divine Love, is not law, but an imposition upon human thought, and so it has not a vestige of truth.
