Article March 15, 1919 Issue

The Liberty to Be the Sons of God

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

The world has been passing through the nightmare of an Armageddon. Millions of men have gathered to the defense of human freedom in order that the right of self-government "shall not perish from the earth." But self-government means more than the right of a people to make their own laws; it means that those laws shall be right. Mrs. Eddy reveals the essential of free government when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" on page 106, "Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love."

The unceasing demand of Principle that righteousness and equity shall be the rule among men, too feebly heeded in the past, has become more articulate and insistent, until the so-called forces of evil have been pushed into final conflict. The gospel of selfishness, that might is right, is standing its trial by the ordeal of fire, and in that seven times heated furnace the bands which have bound the human family in hatred and fear of each other are being burned, and men are beginning to see a form "like the Son of God."

While the liberty enjoyed under a system of democracy is well worth fighting for, it should not be forgotten that the only real liberty is the liberty to be truly the sons of God. And when all is said that can be said about human rights, it must be confessed that the only right which mortals can justly claim, or which is safe to exercise, is the right to be good. Liberty implies that all men shall have the opportunity to do right, but that none shall have the freedom to do wrong. This view is practically recognized as the fundamental basis of human law, since men are entitled to its protection only as they deal honestly and righteously with each other, and this protection is known to be forfeited to the extent that one becomes an evildoer. The weakness, however, of human law, as at present constituted, lies in its inability to detect the distinction between truth and error, and, its utter lack of restriction or prohibition of mental offenses. As far as the law is concerned, mortals are permitted to hate one another with the utmost freedom, although they are forbidden to translate their hatred into physical acts, all of which serves to show how far the human sense of personal liberty is from the true ideal.

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