Christian Science & Liberation
June 25, 1998
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
The word liberation carries, within its Indo-European roots, a hint of the divine Fact underlying the human concept. The basic meaning is "to grow, to mount up". Its two derivative meanings are "people in the sense of a mass or multitude" and " free".
Each person, place and thing is, in Truth, an idea of the Mind that is God. Each is infinite, eternal, individual and includes all other ideas. We all interpenetrate and coexist harmoniously. When the Science of freedom or liberty is lived as the All of all, the Facts will increasingly be reflected in the human "look".
The liberation of Science is freedom from enslavement to dualistic concepts; but it does not wipe them out. It uplifts and heals them until finally they are seen as the divine ideas they really are.
Mary Baker Eddy's revelation of Science awaited the end of unpaid servitude in the United States and partook of the momentum and imagery of that struggle as our readings richly show. But she went much further: "Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: 'Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death!'" (Science and Health, pg. 227:21-23)
In the work of liberation she proclaims, "Love is the liberator." (Science and Health, pg. 225:21) One might ask, "How do I gain freedom for myself and others?" She's quoted as saying that to heal, "Just live love — be it — love, love, love, love. Do not know anything but love. Be all love. There is nothing else. That will do the work. It will heal everything; it will raise the dead. Be nothing but love". (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Second Series, pgs. 49-50)
The Love of Science is beyond personal sense or possession, beyond agape or brotherly love, even beyond the half-way impertinence of the dependence/independence dichotomy. It is God, the all-present, all-powerful Being of which we are all the reflection. "Is not a man metaphysically and mathematically number one, a unit, and therefore whole number, governed and protected by his divine Principle, God? You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with your divine source, and daily demonstrate this. Then you will find that one is as important a factor as duodecillions in being and doing right, and thus demonstrating deific Principle. A dewdrop reflects the sun. Each of Christ's little ones reflects the infinite One, and therefore is the seer's declaration true, that 'one on God's side is a majority.'" (Pulpit and Press, Mary Baker Eddy, pg. 4:7)
Healings:
One member had a severe pain in his side for some time and it was not yielding to his own treatment. In spite of the discomfort, he continually thanked God — not for the pain, but for the reality of his perfect being in God. It was also important to curtail speculation as to what might be causing this — in fact God is the only Cause and effect. Our friend is not sure when the pain faded out, so complete was his involvement with perfection.
One member was inspired by two non-Christian Scientist friends who discussed how they had gotten out of themselves and pressing problems into new ways of seeing with attendant solutions. He felt emboldened to redouble his own efforts in Science using what he called "out of the box" thinking — in other words not droning along with stale truisms from the past.
A few of us became aware during the week of the death of a mutual friend by suicide. There was a tendency to feel guilty that we had perhaps failed to reach out to him, although he did not make us aware of such dire possibilities. There was some speculation as to why he did it and how, but since we're all students of Science we righted ourselves pretty quickly from this mortal funk and were able to see him as he is and has always been — in and of Love. Whatever suicide might represent to us — be it relief or satisfaction, we have already, in full measure in heaven. Whatever our friend was seeking through the mortal act of suicide he has, and always has had this item in his divine nature. Since we're students of Christian Science, enlisted to lessen evil, why would we waste a moment trying to outline even well-meaning results, such as his having to come back to face the music or some such. We rest in the facts of being as does he.
One participant, in looking back over his life to date, was able to say that he saw no evil as having occurred in it at all. Certainly at the time, certain painful events unfolded — e.g. death of loved ones or failed love affairs — there was pain but in every circumstance. But basically because of Christian Science he was able to get the nugget of gold out of each event.
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?
The powers of this world will fight, and will command their sentinels not to let truth pass the guard until it subscribes to their systems; but Science, heeding not the pointed bayonet, marches on. There is always some tumult, but there is a rallying to truth's standard.
The history of our country, like all history, illustrates the might of Mind, and shows human power to be proportionate to its embodiment of right thinking. A few immortal sentences, breathing the omnipotence of divine justice, have been potent to break despotic fetters and abolish the whipping-post and slave market; but oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the breath of freedom come from the cannon's mouth. Love is the liberator.
Legally to abolish unpaid servitude in the United States was hard; but the abolition of mental slavery is a more difficult task. The despotic tendencies, inherent in mortal mind and always germinating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out through the action of the divine Mind.
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.
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.
God has built a higher platform of human rights, and He has built it on diviner claims. These claims are not made through code or creed, but in demonstration of "on earth peace, good-will toward men." Human codes, scholastic theology, material medicine and hygiene, fetter faith and spiritual understanding. Divine Science rends asunder these fetters, and man's birthright of sole allegiance to his Maker asserts itself.
I saw before me the sick, wearing out years of servitude to an unreal master in the belief that the body governed them, rather than Mind.
The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of their own beliefs and from the educational systems of the Pharaohs, who to-day, as of yore, hold the children of Israel in bondage. I saw before me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilderness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged.
I saw that the law of mortal belief included all error, and that, even as oppressive laws are disputed and mortals are taught their right to freedom, so the claims of the enslaving senses must be denied and superseded. The law of the divine Mind must end human bondage, or mortals will continue unaware of man's inalienable rights and in subjection to hopeless slavery, because some public teachers permit an ignorance of divine power,—an ignorance that is the foundation of continued bondage and of human suffering.
Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to foresee the doom of all oppression. Slavery is not the legitimate state of man. God made man free. Paul said, "I was free born." All men should be free. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Love and Truth make free, but evil and error lead into captivity.
Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: "Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death!" Jesus marked out the way. Citizens of the world, accept the "glori-ous liberty of the children of God," and be free! This is your divine right. 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.
If God had instituted material laws to govern man, disobedience to which would have made man ill, Jesus would not have disregarded those laws by healing in direct opposition to them and in defiance of all material conditions.
The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncrasies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact of being were learned,—namely, that nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God. Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly ills will disappear.
The enslavement of man is not legitimate. It will cease when man enters into his heritage of freedom, his God-given dominion over the material senses. Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God. Then they will control their own bodies through the understanding of divine Science. Dropping their present beliefs, they will recognize harmony as the spiritual reality and discord as the material unreality.
If we follow the command of our Master, "Take no thought for your life," we shall never depend on bodily conditions, structure, or economy, but we shall be masters of the body, dictate its terms, and form and control it with Truth.
There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence has all-power, and to acknowledge any other power is to dishonor God. The humble Nazarene overthrew the supposition that sin, sickness, and death have power. He proved them powerless. It should have humbled the pride of the priests, when they saw the demonstration of Christianity excel the influence of their dead faith and ceremonies.
REFORMERS
The olden opinion that hell is fire and brimstone, has yielded somewhat to the metaphysical fact that suffering is a thing of mortal mind instead of body: so, in place of material flames and odor, mental anguish is generally accepted as the penalty for sin. This changed belief has wrought a change in the actions of men. Not a few individuals serve God (or try to) from fear; but remove that fear, and the worst of human passions belch forth their latent fires. Some people never repent until earth gives them such a cup of gall that conscience strikes home; then they are brought to realize how impossible it is to sin and not suffer. All the different phases of error in human nature the reformer must encounter and help to eradicate.
This period is not essentially one of conscience: few feel and live now as when this nation began, and our forefathers' prayers blended with the murmuring winds of their forest home. This is a period of doubt, inquiry, speculation, selfishness; of divided interests, marvellous good, and mysterious evil. But sin can only work out its own destruction; and reform does and must push on the growth of mankind.
Honor to faithful merit is delayed, and always has been; but it is sure to follow. The very streets through which Garrison was dragged were draped in honor of the dead hero who did the hard work, the immortal work, of loosing the fetters of one form of human slavery. I remember, when a girl, and he visited my father, how a childish fear clustered round his coming. I had heard the awful story that "he helped 'niggers' kill the white folks!" Even the loving children are sometimes made to believe a lie, and to hate reformers. It is pleasant, now, to contrast with that childhood's wrong the reverence of my riper years for all who dare to be true, honest to their convictions, and strong of purpose.
The reformer has no time to give in defense of his own life's incentive, since no sacrifice is too great for the silent endurance of his love. What has not unselfed love achieved for the race? All that ever was accomplished, and more than history has yet recorded. The reformer works on unmentioned, save when he is abused or his work is utilized in the interest of somebody. He may labor for the establishment of a cause which is fraught with infinite blessings,—health, virtue, and heaven; but what of all that? Who should care for everybody? It is enough, say they, to care for a few. Yet the good done, and the love that foresees more to do, stimulate philanthropy and are an ever-present reward. Let one's life answer well these questions, and it already hath a benediction:
Have you renounced self? Are you faithful? Do you love?