Editorial May 13, 1905 Issue

Law gives Freedom

Annie M. Knott

Students of Christian Science are often asked if they believe that law can be set aside, as, for instance, in the healing of those diseases which, in medical opinion, are invariably fatal, according to ordinary human experience. Before this question can be satisfactorily answered, it is necessary to consider what is the meaning of the term law. It is very generally defined in the dictionaries as "a rule of being, or operation, so certain and constant that it is conceived of as imposed by the will of God or by some controlling authority." While this definition would probably be accepted as correct by the majority of thinkers, the widest possible differences of opinion exist as to the "operations" which should properly be classified as laws. The most advanced thinkers along the lines of physical science are agreed that so-called material laws are only processes, not powers; and one writer says, "That they have any absolute existence even, is far from certain."

No one would deny that during the last thirty or forty years many of the limitations imposed by the belief in supposed physical laws have been set aside by the wonderful discoveries which tell of the liberation of human thought and mark the pathway of progress. Really, law stands for freedom, not restriction, and, rightly understood, makes ever for good, not evil. The materialistic concept of law, however, is a concept of something which is certainly no less actively manifested in evil than in good; as a destructive, no less than a constructive, mode of operation.

Christian Science wholly sets aside this concept, in its teaching that law is inseparable from the lawgiver, God, who is at once Love and intelligence. (See page 258. Miscellaneous Writings by Mrs. Eddy.) The nature of the human concept of law, in its relation to health, makes it clear that the ever-presence of the Divine lawgiver is not taken into account, for the so-called health laws are really disease laws,—beliefs which impose no less severe penalties for doing good than are those meted out to criminals. In Christian Science we learn that the attributes of God—justice, wisdom, mercy, and goodness—are inseparable from His laws, and that there is but one lawgiver. In the light of this teaching we understand how the false, material sense of law was annulled by Christ Jesus in his wonderful healing works, and through this understanding we may join in St. Paul's triumphant declaration, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." That which expresses Life, and which gives life, is law: that which is expressed in disease or other evils is not law, though it may, up to a certain point, counterfeit the order and continuity of law. Of this false concept we may well say, "I am dead to the law, that I might live unto God."

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