Article July 3, 1909 Issue

LIBERTY

GEORGE W. WILSON.

This cheering word expresses a divine sentiment, and the love of it stands for the greatest human progress yet attained. It points to and is correlated with the saying of Jesus, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." While it may be true that crimes due to the greed and avarice of depraved mortals have been committed in the name of liberty, yet it nevertheless stands for a widening of the bounds of freedom. Liberty is opposed to slavery, subjection, or bondage of every nature whatsoever, and perfectly understood it means a complete independence from external causes or motives, wherein thought remains unbiased by rules and dogma.

Jesus came, in fulfilment of prophecy, to set the oppressed at liberty, and St. James refers in his epistle to "the perfect law of liberty." St. Paul admonishes his followers: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free," and he further declares that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Of old the psalmist sang, "I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts." Personal liberty, national liberty, liberty of thought, has cost and is costing a vast amount of endurance, suffering, and treasure. Contrast, if you will, the broad, permanent foundation of liberty now being established throughout the world by the true "embodiment of right thinking," which abolishes "mental slavery" (Science and Health, p. 225) and demonstrates "on earth peace, good will toward men," with the price of liberty on a much lower plane of existence, as here pictured by Henry Giles:—

"Trace it along the line of centuries; mark the prisons where captives for it pined; mark the graves to which victims for it went down despairing; mark the fields whereon its heroes battled; mark the seas whereon they fought; mark the exile to which they fled; mark the burned spots where those who would not resist evil gave up the ghost in torture to vindicate the integrity of their souls; add then open suffering to those that have found no record; imagine, if you can, the whole: then you have the price—only in part—of liberty, for liberty has cost more than all these."

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A CHILD'S FAITH
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