Article May 11, 1918 Issue

The human mind, having no knowledge of Principle, has...

"Liberty and License"—The Christian Science Monitor

The human mind, having no knowledge of Principle, has no positive criterion by means of which it can scientifically separate good from evil. It is, in other words, ignorant of law, and so is incapable of judging righteous judgment. Thus it separates the tares from the wheat by human decisions which it terms moral or state laws, but which are proved not to be law by the exceedingly simple fact that they change or vary from decade to decade, or as frontiers are crossed. Three and a half centuries ago men and women were being burned as heretics in England; a couple of centuries ago witches were being hanged in Salem. To-day polygamy is legal and customary in the East, but in the West indulgence in it makes a man a criminal. What is it then that separates the reign of "Bloody" Mary from that of George V, or the Massachusetts of William of Orange from that of Woodrow Wilson? Principle has not changed, law cannot change, God remains God. The difference, then, is simple but subtle. It is that men have learned in a measure that liberty is not license, and are learning, however unwillingly, the further lesson that where there is license there is no liberty. In a word, that license is slavery.

In the twilight of history, when Romulus and Remus were supposed to have been suckled by a wolf, and when the human being was actually little better than the brute, license was practically regarded as a synonym for liberty. What separated Cæsar, in his great palace on the Palatine, from the coppersmiths and cobblers, hammering and sewing in the dark little shops round the Forum, was the ability of the one to do as he pleased, and the necessity of the others to do as they were bidden. The gulf between Herod, building his great pleasure house at Capernaum, and the fishermen, straining at their oars out on the great lake, or the shepherds watching their sheep under the stars on the hills of Judah, was the opportunity of the first to gratify without restriction his sensual appetites, and the compulsion of the others to eat the bread and drink the water of poverty and toil. Pilate put the whole position, in all its naked selfishness and brutality, to Jesus, when he demanded, with half angry, half surprised curiosity, "Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?" and was rendered speechless by Jesus' reply, which he could not confute, and yet did not in the least understand, "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above."

Behind those words, so mystical to the sensual tyrant, lay the simple statement of scientific Christianity, of Truth, the statement that real power and consequently liberty, was summed up in the laying down of license, and in the consequent realization of the liberty of the sons of God. "The likeness of God," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 315 of Science and Health, "we lose sight of through sin, which beclouds the spiritual sense of Truth; and we realize this likeness only when we subdue sin and prove man's heritage, the liberty of the sons of God" This realization was first achieved no matter in how slight a degree, and this proof, no matter how feebly, was first given, by the patriarch Abraham. And for the purpose of the Bible, the purpose of illustration, it matters nothing at all whether Abraham was merely the type of the friend of God, or whether he was the first human being who made himself the friend of God, or obedient to Principle, in a degree sufficient to enable him to walk so far, at any rate, with God, as to put aside, in a measure, his self-will or love of license, and so gain that freedom from the flesh which is the only true liberty.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

The human mind, having no knowledge of Principle, has...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access