The Bible proclaims the liberty which the understanding of God's presence bestows. Paul said (II Cor. 3:17), "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." His words were not empty boasts; he had proved them by healing the sick, raising the dead, escaping from prison, surviving shipwreck, preaching Christ in a hostile, pagan world. Mary Baker Eddy asks in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 356), "When will the world waken to the privilege of knowing God, the liberty and glory of His presence, —where
'He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.'"
Christian Science is waking many to the privilege of knowing God as the Scriptures reveal Him—a loving Father whose presence brings healing and peace. Thus Science bestows a higher liberty than any political system can evolve, bringing release from the tyranny of material environment and the belief that life is confined in a prison of flesh. Such freedom comes when one finds through Science that man is not a fleshly mortal, but a spiritual idea. He is God's image, and his life in Spirit is uncircumscribed by matter.
God's man is incorporeal, and his thought ranges the vast universe of Mind, reaching the heights and depths of intelligence, truthfulness, holiness, love. No element or quality of joy or peace is denied man. No system of Spirit is unknown to him. No limit is placed upon the comprehension or the ability of the sons of God. They dwell in the "glory of His presence" eternally.
There is more freedom to be experienced than material consciousness can ever know. But in order that humanity may grasp the meaning of spiritual freedom, the limiting bounds of the belief of life in matter must be broken down. God's presence and the evidence of His perfect kingdom, invisible to the senses, must be descried. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 189), "The supposition that Soul, or Mind, is breathed into matter, is a pantheistic doctrine that presents a false sense of existence, and the quickening spirit takes it away: revealing, in place thereof, the power and perfection of a released sense of Life in God and Life as God."
Liberty is always won with a price. Bloodshed and war have often accompanied humanity's success in resisting the rule of despots. Succeeding generations have benefited by the courage and self-sacrifice of those who have fought for political freedom. But it is axiomatic that vigilance must be constant if liberty is to be retained. And so it is in Christian Science: the freedom wrested from the physical sense of life through the revelation of real life in Spirit must be guarded. One's determination to go on to greater spiritual liberty should never lapse into indifference or be weakened by a foolish satisfaction with the degree of freedom already attained.
Christ Jesus' life illustrated "the power and perfection of a released sense of Life in God" which his followers must attain. His own experience was unconfined by flesh, unfettered by the seeming laws of matter. He walked the wave, quieted the storm, multiplied the loaves and fishes, destroyed sin and disease, overcame death. The material senses had no power over him because he had a true estimate of these senses as spurious consciousness, claiming to substitute itself for the one Mind, which man reflects. He knew the presentments and sensations of mortal mind to be nothing more than illusions in which there is no truth.
The world has not been vigilant in guarding its heritage of Jesus' example. It has accepted as part of man the corporeal senses, which the Master conquered with a price. But Christian Science is rousing many to grasp the full meaning of the Master's struggle and triumph. It is showing that the material senses are no part of man, for man's senses are spiritual and take in only the eternal and real. Science also shows that matter is not the source of material consciousness, but is rather a subjective condition of that false consciousness, a state of mind, a way of thinking.
Hence, if one would rid himself, as Jesus did, of the limitations supposedly imposed by matter, he must understand what he is dealing with. He must recognize the mental nature of mortal existence and must stop believing that the material senses are part of his individual being. This revolutionary struggle will no longer seem to be with persons and conditions, but with the false senses, which claim to be one's own and which seem to reduce all things to finite material proportions. Every individual must some day awaken to the liberty of real life in the kingdom of heaven and move in the infinite range of the consciousness of God's presence.
Mrs. Eddy states plainly where the world's struggle for higher liberty lies. She says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 101): "Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is a revolutionary struggle. We already have had two in this nation; and they began and ended in a contest for the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometh a third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, and the attainment of heaven."
We cannot attain heaven while we permit the physical senses to interpret life to us or allow their sensations to govern us. The price of attaining heaven is the price of denying consistently the reality of the mortal sense of life. God's government and the higher liberty His presence bestows are tangible to those who distinguish between the consciousness of Spirit and the consciousness of matter, who demonstrate the former and realize the unreality of the latter. The spiritually free are those who subordinate the material senses and thus rule out their insistent demand for sensation, either pleasant or unpleasant.
The excitement of the senses, the stimulation of sensualism and selfishness, would lure mankind into extreme states of subjection to matter and its seeming laws. The widespread use of alcohol and tobacco is evidence of the intent of mortal mind to hold the race in a state of bondage to the physical senses. But the consciousness of a selfhood which possesses only spiritual senses is the means which Science utilizes in freeing mankind from the slavery to sense excitement.
The revolution which Christian Science has inaugurated against the tyranny of the physical senses is an inward one. It takes place in the heart and conscience of individuals. There it transforms experience by transforming thought. Those who realize the presence of God realize also something of their spiritual sonship with God. They attain the liberty of man's sinless, obedient life as God's expression. They enjoy the freedom of real being, because they are conscious of the presence of "the Spirit of the Lord."
