One meaning of the word birth is "beginning." How stimulating is the thought of a new beginning, a fresh start! Each morning is a reminder of God's great gift of eternal freshness and newness. Each returning spring hints the fulfillment of these words in the book of Revelation (21: 5): "Behold, I make all things new."
Is not the urge on the part of nations and individuals to rise above discouragement, frustration, despair, or defeat evidence that men and nations are destined to experience "a new birth of freedom"? The great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, recognized this when he said in his Gettysburg Address, "We here highly resolve . . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." Mary Baker Eddy realized the full import of individual rebirth, for she devoted several pages of the first chapter of "Miscellaneous Writings" to "The New Birth." Thus we find re-echoing through the ages the command of Christ Jesus (John 3:7), "Ye must be born again."
Let us note well the little word "must"! Mrs. Eddy employed it in the following passage of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 191): "The human thought must free itself from self-imposed materiality and bondage." When we are humbly willing to acknowledge that materiality and bondage are self-imposed and that thought must and therefore can free itself therefrom, we begin to make vigorous efforts in this direction. These efforts bring success in proportion as we work from the standpoint of the truth as taught by Christ Jesus and elucidated in this age by Christian Science, which teaches that man is not a mortal person bound by beliefs of sin, disease, heredity, disposition, environment, or association, but that he is, as the Bible declares, the image and likeness of God. Man is bound, therefore, to express his true heritage of freedom and dominion, bound to reflect the living, loving, lovable, healthy, holy qualities of God, his only Parent, and bound to all other ideas of God by the perfect relationship of reflected Love. In this relationship is no bondage, but only perfect freedom of living, moving, and having being in God, divine Love.
