Close to the heart of mankind is a yearning for progress, yet one often feels cumbered and hindered in every direction. On page 256 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Progress takes off human shackles." In Christian Science we learn that progress is normal and inevitable, for man is spiritual and eternally progressive.
This does not mean that man goes through any process or change from his original perfection, but that in order to cast off human shackles one must awaken to his real selfhood. Why does this awakening— this laying aside of shackles—seem to be such a struggle? Why is it put off? Why is it resisted? Is it not because the effect of these self-imposed bonds is considered the natural state of human experience? Truly, our enslavement to such characteristics as pride, selfishness, hate, envy, self-will, and fear is the only bond that shackles us.
In Christian Science we learn that these foes of progress can be removed if we replace them with such practical and liberating Christlike qualities as purity, affection, meekness, faith, honesty, and love. The first step is to accept the fact that true progress is spiritual, and then honestly to desire this progress. We must become willing to let go of our flimsy concepts of God and man and turn unreservedly to Principle, letting divine Science interpret the creator and His creation. Mind is intelligent, and man expresses this intelligence. One understanding this is able to comprehend and apply spiritual truths. Materiality cannot clog human consciousness when these facts are accepted and cherished. Christian Science has a vitalizing, regenerating effect on human thinking. It gives us patterns for right human action which release us from the shackles of false education, worldly customs, and material-mindedness.
Mrs. Eddy writes (ibid., p. 353). "When we learn that error is not real, we shall be ready for progress, 'forgetting those things which are behind.'" If our acts stem from fear and anxiety concerning the future, we must learn to turn our thought quickly to the omnipresence of God, good. By maintaining a sense of the omnipresence of good we are able to resist the suggestion that things must wait for the distant future to become better. This subtle claim is illegitimate in Christian Science, which teaches the presence, stability, and permanence of good. Upheld by divine law, good is not a future possibility, but a present fact, ever present because God is ever present.
The divine energy of Spirit is ever active in individual consciousness. This energy is unfolded through spiritual sense and is maintained by divine intelligence. Therefore if apathy would stupefy thought, we can resist and overcome it with joy. In Nehemiah we read (8:10), "The joy of the Lord is your strength."
If ambition, rivalry, and pride claim to enter either directly or indirectly into our experience, we can go straight to the fundamental teachings of Christian Science, that all things come from God, all things belong to God, and His blessings are bestowed impartially. Then we rejoice in individual and universal good. Love is mankind's greatest need, and we may begin our search for the understanding of divine Love by doing lovingly every task we are called upon to do, consciously taking time even on trivial occasions to be loving. Then will unfold a glimpse of the great power of God as Love and man as reflecting Love, and we shall find ourselves expressing in all things our real, spiritually loving and lovable nature.
In reality man loves good only, and good alone is real and true. If sin appears rampant, instead of fearing it and its consequences and struggling with it, we can quickly meet its temptations by a conscious effort to love good and good only. This tends to lift us above the temptations and turn us to divine Mind. In Christian Science we learn that there is one Mind, and we must believe in no other.
Our human experience is always the product of our thinking. When ill will toward our fellow men seems justified, or when we are tempted to whine over our plight and indulge in self-pity and discouragement, we must quickly reject such thinking. The carnal mind is composed of strife, contentions, self-indulgences, and self-will. Now these claims do not have intelligence, location, or embodiment in the ever-presence of divine Mind any more than a mathematical mistake has location or embodiment in the principle of mathematics. In I Thessalonians (4:7, 9) we read: "God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. . . . But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another."
If the old question of who is first and who is greatest casts its shadow and tries to worm its way into our experience, let the words of Christ Jesus (Luke 22:26, 27), "He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. . . . I am among you as he that serveth," be our measuring rod. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 239 of Science and Health: "To ascertain our progress, we must learn where our affections are placed and whom we acknowledge and obey as God. If divine Love is becoming nearer, dearer, and more real to us, matter is then submitting to Spirit. The objects we pursue and the spirit we manifest reveal our standpoint, and show what we are winning." Every student of Christian Science has many opportunities to choose whom he will acknowledge and obey as God.
Let me tell you the experience of one student. Earnestly desiring to have class instruction, she made plans to take this step. When the time was at hand her husband, who was not a Christian Scientist, forbade such a course, declaring it was needless, useless, and extravagant. This student did not use self-will and insist on her way, nor did she give up in defeat; but she proved that "progress takes off human shackles." She prayed daily to know how to express more of the Christ-consciousness, to learn to love more according to the pattern of our Way-shower, to recognize that man individually and collectively expresses Love, Mind; that there is only one Mind and it is the Mind of everyone. When the step was again attempted, great was her joy to find human resistance had become human assistance. And in the years following, this sense of cooperation has continued.
Progress comes in proportion to one's humility and spiritual might. We measure this progress by the quality of our healing work, by our devotion to our Cause, and by our awakening to universal good. What a blessing this awakening can be! Think of the freedom that comes from laying aside anxiety for security, the suffering we are spared by knowing that God sustains our existence intact in its original perfect state. Today human shackles are being dissolved by Christlike thinking, a pattern used by both Christ Jesus and Mrs. Eddy. Burdens, fears, and restrictions are proved to be unreal, for we are finding all in God, good, and are proving that truly progress does take off human shackles.
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.—Isaiah 55:7—9.
