The promotion of universal equality and freedom through material systems of regimentation is doomed to failure because such methods do not take into account the spiritual facts of being. Instead of freeing men to express their God-bestowed capabilities, these methods stultify individual initiative; instead of unifying men and nations in brotherhood, they estrange them.
Regarding the rights of man, Mary Baker Eddy has this to say in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 225, 226): "Men and women of all climes and races are still in bondage to material sense, ignorant how to obtain their freedom. The rights of man were vindicated in a single section and on the lowest plane of human life, when African slavery was abolished in our land. That was only prophetic of further steps towards the banishment of a world-wide slavery, found on higher planes of existence and under more subtle and depraving forms." And in the next paragraph she continues, "The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of this new crusade sounded the keynote of universal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledgment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken from the human mind and that its freedom be won, not through human warfare, not with bayonet and blood, but through Christ's divine Science."
Very evidently Mrs. Eddy knew that the vindication of man's rights restored to each individual the opportunity to strive for and express spiritual perfection, which alone ensures equality. It is significant, also, that she foresaw the disappearance of even more subtle forms of slavery which would tempt and deceive men.
