If all the longings of the human race could be summed up in one word, surely that word would be "freedom." Mankind longs for release from the whole range of mortal laws which have claimed through the centuries to govern every aspect of human existence. Yet slowly but surely one by one individuals find the road of escape by turning away from the blind alley of external searching to the unobstructed way of spiritual discernment.
The changing views of physical research regarding matter include necessarily a changing concept of law. As the dawn, with its irresistible appearing, dispels first a shadow here and then a shadow there, so Truth is unfolding its omnipotence in individual experience.
Christian Science teaches that there is one infinite entity, one divine intelligence or Mind, one God who is the only lawgiver, power, and presence. Because divine consciousness is the Mind and Life of all, the innate nature of freedom will inevitably unfold at some time as the conscious knowing of everyone. There remain, then, for all the weary wanderers who seek asylum from the slavery of material sense the releasing presence and power of spiritual thought.
The goodness of God cannot fail to appear humanly as the experience of one whose thought abides in the ever-presence of good and partakes of its divine nature. In the words of James (1:25), "Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." The expression, "the perfect law of liberty," may be said to be synonymous with the omnipresence of Mind, which constitutes law and which unfolds its own beneficent enforcement, even in what appears to be the realm of mortality.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 269): "The testimony of the material senses is neither absolute nor divine. I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teachings of Jesus, of his apostles, of the prophets, and on the testimony of the Science of Mind. Other foundations there are none."
The subjective nature of freedom was epitomized in the resurrection and ascension of Christ Jesus. The pure thought of the Master, evidencing the coexistence of God and man, dispelled the binding beliefs of the cross and the tomb. His realization of the omnipresence of true being evidenced itself in his reappearance to his students at Emmaus. His final disappearance to material sense was proof of the exaltation of his ascending thought.
The inspired Word of the Bible teaches that freedom from hopeless enslavement came to men who are the beacons of religious history, as the spontaneous evidence of their undeviating fidelity to Truth. Through the study of Christian Science, one learns that this saving effect was not a mysterious answer to faith but the demonstration of divine law. That which is real, when understood, is a law of unfailing annulment to whatever falsely claims to rule.
When Paul and Silas, held in the inner confines of a Philippian prison with their feet in the stocks, prayed and sang praises to God at midnight, “the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed” (Acts 16:26). In his second great epistle to the church at Corinth, Paul taught his listeners that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (3:17); in other words, that liberty is a state of consciousness. Paul knew the carnal mind, which is no mind at all, to be a false and afflictive condition of human consciousness. So he told men (Phil. 2:5), "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."
It is the Mind which was in Christ Jesus that is divine. It was this Mind which healed the sick and the sinning, proved the law of death to be spurious, and brought to pass the ascension. Also, the imprisoning inventions of mortal sense had no power at the darkest hour to withstand the presence of this perfect Mind, as Paul and Silas proved when they prayed and sang in acknowledgment of its allness.
That the Christ-consciousness canceled a false pretense of law proves the enslaving limitations suffered today by humanity to be equally fabulous; and because they have no basis in Truth, they cannot be legitimately enforced. It is necessary to understand that the only effectual way to be freed from bondage is the way set forth in the inspired Word of the Bible.
Nearly one hundred years ago Mrs. Eddy discovered that the truth of being is good and free. She perceived that the Mind which was in Christ Jesus constitutes eternal Life and is equal to the destruction of any of the so-called laws of lack, sin, disease, and death. She searched the Scriptures and wrote Science and Health, which sheds its luminous rays of revelation upon the Bible. These two books are based upon the premise that the law of God is a law of release to fettered mortals and that bondage is a false belief, which disappears under the light of Christ.
The verity of Mrs. Eddy's discovery, supported by proof, will continue to dawn on the consciousness of humanity as this Science, with its message of Christian salvation, proves itself to be the master of affliction, according to Principle and rule. Science and Health states (p. 307): "The divine Mind is the Soul of man, and gives man dominion over all things. Man was not created from a material basis, nor bidden to obey material laws which Spirit never made; his province is in spiritual statutes, in the higher law of Mind."
Divine Mind first gave Mrs. Eddy dominion over a sense of personal inadequacy. The aggregate of worldly thought constituted a man-made law of impossibility that a woman of her age, limited strength, experience, and means could successfully present to mankind the Science of Christianity. Had she not identified herself with the perfection of Mind and refused to entertain finite, personal sense, she would not have demonstrated the intelligence and power of Mind to guide and establish her inestimable work in founding the Church of Christ, Scientist.
Fear of lack is the foe of freedom. Everyone is educated to be afraid until he comes into the comprehension of that which will cast out fear. The shackles of trepidation, born of a misestimate of existence, are mediocrity, hopelessness, and hate. Fear of lack is the opposite of all that means capacity, courage, and dominion.
In order that one may be saved from this wrong sense, there must come into his comprehension that which will cast out fear. In other words, a conscious sense of divinity and power on the part of each individual will annul an equivalent of fear and its havoc. In the proportion that Christian Scientists entertain in regard to their neighbors, far and near, the sense of love which reflects reality, then fearing, worldly thought will give place to Truth.
Freedom means transformation of thought. Humanity will eventually learn that what is needed is not contention against something seemingly powerful, but against false belief, which will disappear to the extent that it is opposed by truth. Christian Science teaches that the coexistence of good causation and bad causation is impossible; therefore, it declares, mankind is independent of every theory which would involve God in any form of evil and consequently of every fear that such theories have engendered. By means of a rule of practice which is accurate and scientific, mankind is being told not merely that a material concept of existence is false and mistaken, but that such a concept can be simply and surely corrected. Humanity is on its way to happier days because Christian Science is encouraging men individually to find by means of proof that all evil exists only by way of suggestion and that its law is spurious because divine Mind is the real lawgiver, ever present and available.
As, one by one, searchers for freedom are turned by their perception of Truth from the bondage of unreality to an understanding of omniscient Mind, there will come to each the serene assurance of the Scriptural promise (Ps. 119:165), "Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them."
The fulfillment of this promise will be experienced by us individually and inevitably through our unqualified acceptance of the perfect law of man's eternal liberty.
