As humanity advances in its insatiable quest for supremacy over material limitations, many are asking: "What will be the eventual outcome? Is mankind really progressing toward its goal of freedom?" Whatever the promise for the future, offered by the material sciences, it must appear insignificant in comparison with the import of the question propounded by Christ Jesus (Matt.16:26), "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
It would be tragedy indeed if mankind were to gain mastery over a world and yet remain in bondage to the false sense of self. It is from this danger of enslavement that Christian Science is pointing the way to ultimate freedom. It teaches that fetters must be broken, but they are fetters of mortal belief and not the limitations of so-called natural laws.
In Isaiah we read. (58:6), "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?" Both here and elsewhere in the Bible we find clear indications that individual salvation can be gained only as one asserts his God-given mastery over the limitations of mortal belief. Through Christian Science this salvation is being accomplished in a measure by many today. Any sincere seeker for Truth can begin demonstrating what he understands.
This Science enables one to demonstrate the harmony and perfection of all true being in meeting whatever appears to be the present human need. In Science there is no need apart from its complement— fulfillment. And we learn that the very appearance of a need in human experience is indicative of the availability of the supply to meet the demand. Whatever the lack, it is merely a suppositional absence of the ever-present good, which is God.
In working out the solution to a problem of inharmony and inadequate supply, a student of Christian Science derived much inspiration and benefit from the study of Abram's experience while dwelling in the land of Canaan, as related in the thirteenth chapter of Genesis. We read that God said to Abram, "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever."
Gazing steadfastly on the ground about one's feet, one fails to see the broad expanse stretching out to the distant horizon. One must turn thought away from the limited, material sense testimony in order to break the illusion of lack or inharmony.
The affluence of good is the nature of God. Good, being infinite, is beyond limitation. What is it, then, that prevents good from appearing in the human experience? Obviously it could only be a mistaken concept, a mortal belief or illusion. A corrected concept based on divine Science will break the illusion, thus proving that the good is always available to one who has the eyes— spiritual discernment—to see.
When Jesus said (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," he could not have had reference to freedom from a true condition. Truth could not free one from truth. On the other hand, the truth always dispels the lie when it is clearly seen. How, then, can one best seek and find the truth? Certainly not by looking into error.
No healing can be accomplished in the practice of Christian Science as long as an apparent lack of health is accepted as a true condition. Mary Baker Eddy makes this perfectly clear when she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 227), "The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being."
Mortals unwittingly make their own limitations, binding themselves with mortal beliefs. Personal sense, seeking justification for its own deficiency, will loudly proclaim that one is fettered by hereditary laws, circumstances of birth, environment, accident, or contagion. It will stoutly maintain that general business conditions are poor; so one could not reasonably expect his own personal business to be good. Also, believing he is deprived of a fair share of natural endowments, one is apt to accept defeat as inevitable.
The apprehension of man's true identity is the one method of salvation. Through Christian Science one learns that all men are, in truth, created equal, being one in Christ. One learns that nothing is impossible to the one who knows and properly applies the truth of God and man as taught in Christian Science.
The tendency to rest on past successes or to accept complacently the general beliefs regarding the cumulative effects of advancing years must be constantly guarded against. By looking away from beliefs of time, we find man's true selfhood in the ageless realm of the infinite, forever developing in eternal harmony as God's perfect expression.
The past, with all its mistakes and disappointments, is but another phase of the mortal dream, which must be broken. Looking away from the past into the eternal now, one finds an end to sorrow and vain regrets and gains renewed strength and confidence in the quest for the dominion with which God has endowed His individual reflection.
Created in God's image, man has the capacity to express God without limitation or hindrance. Students of Christian Science are awakening to the infinite opportunities afforded those who identify themselves truly as the spiritual selfhood through which God expresses Himself. In Science and Health we read (p. 258), "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis."
Theories incompatible with God's nature and undemonstrable in Science must be rejected as false, irrespective of appearances. "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen," as Paul says (II Cor. 4:18), we are inevitably led to know the specific truth essential to the overcoming of a particular mortal belief.
How important it is to realize that regardless of the aspects of a particular problem, we must never try to change circumstances, conditions, persons, or things, but only the belief about them! Beliefs held in check as mere theory are easily disposed of when the true idea is realized.
The eternal and invincible nature of Truth, which is God, is beautifully expressed in Hymn No. 338 from the Christian Science Hymnal:
Theories, which thousands cherish,
Pass like clouds that sweep the sky;
Creeds and dogmas all may perish;
Truth Herself can never die.
Thrones may totter, empires crumble,
All their glories cease to be;
While She, Christlike, crowns the humble,
And from bondage sets them free.
