In the Message to The Mother Church for 1901 (p. 20) Mrs. Eddy uses these words: "We have no moral right and no authority in Christian Science for influencing the thoughts of others, except it be to serve God and benefit mankind. Man is properly self-governed, and he should be guided by no other mind than Truth, the divine Mind." And she further states, "The Christian Scientist is alone with his own being and with the reality of things." And in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 58) we read: "There is moral freedom in Soul. Never contract the horizon of a worthy outlook by the selfish exaction of all another's time and thoughts."

Those who are at all acquainted with the Christian Science textbook have learned to curb their early zeal to "treat" right and left, without the permission of those whom they wish to benefit; but it takes a considerably greater degree of the Christ-spirit to give up the exercise of loving tyranny in the family circle. Mortal mind, always ready to seize the role of virtue if it can thereby urge its claims more convincingly, argues that the object of this solicitude would otherwise be deprived of protection and guidance necessary to his welfare. It accuses him of inefficiency, inability to take charge of the conduct of his own life; and great anxiety is felt for him by the one who has entertained this sense of personal responsibility regarding him, but who is now timorously trying to let him go. When this effort is continued, and the new mental attitude maintained, mortal mind may charge the student of Christian Science with coldness, indifference, or some phase of selfishness, although there is the most earnest wish to be truly loving, to take hands off and no longer to meddle and dictate. Sometimes these arguments are voiced; perhaps more often they are silently urged; but the battle is no less severe because fought mentally, and so unseen. All honor to those who are scientifically endeavoring to leave one another free to work out the problem of being. The results of their work will appear; and in return they, too, will experience a freedom before unknown.

Certain typical instances might be cited, in which mortal mind is limiting, stultifying, and deforming what should be a harmonious and beautiful relationship, and obtruding a very ugly element into the sanctity of home life. The error may be personal sense, self-will, stubborn ignorance of another's rights, or a jealous care which is not really loving but merely self-deceived into the belief that it is so.

Individuality is not sufficiently recognized and respected when the personal correspondence of one member of the family is habitually opened and read by another without special permission each time; or when another's desk and intimate business affairs are exposed to the meddlesome inspection of another, as the whim dictates. Such liberties not only infringe the sacred private rights of the one individual, but trespass upon those of his correspondents and all who may have confided to him certain of their own interests. It does not justify the meddler that a mutual understanding exists by which the two are to have "no secrets" from each other. Such yielding up of individuality is detrimental in the extreme, its effects being akin to that of repeated concessions to the supposed power of hypnotism. When two persons are such good friends that neither can have a sanctuary whitherto he may resort to do his own thinking, make his own decisions, conduct his own affairs as occasion and the special needs and rights of others may demand, those two require to have an improved ideal of friendship, be the relation what it may.

It is essential to individual development and progress Spiritward that every member of a household who has arrived at a thinking age should have a retiring place where he may be alone outwardly, as well as mentally free, to study and to pray, to meet his problems and to choose his course, so far as it is possible for him to do so without human aid. It is most salutary for very young children to cultivate this habit of occasionally going apart to think quietly alone, if only for a few moments; not to be imprisoned under a sense of condemnation, which may depress to the point of paralyzing right endeavor or else inflame a burning resentment, but to be separated from their companions for a little while when the play has waxed boisterous or quarrelsome, and dispassionately instructed to clear their thoughts and control their actions with truth and love, before rejoining their playmates. The mistaken method of "treating" children frequently or continuously without telling them of it, requiring their cooperation, or in any way impressing them with the value of what they are receiving may, in many cases, result in their slight interest in Sunday school, and in their turning from Christian Science entirely, as they approach maturity and find the mortal sense of life so filled with other and what appear to them to be more exciting pursuits.

Practitioners sometimes have very much of a problem presented to them by the free and easy habit, prevalent among friends, of making current gossip of the affairs of each other. Some one has an ailment; it is freely mentioned; and the healing results, or their nonappearance, are openly commented upon. The patient does not realize his need of protection; the friends, in their affectionate, talkative sympathy, do not realize that he needs protection from their meddling, perhaps more than anything else. The practitioner works overtime for a result that fails to appear or is disproportionately small. Generally speaking, it is no more profitable for a group of students of Christian Science to be discussing one's problem than for a group of non-Scientists to be doing it. All error wants, in order to be error, is a voice and an audience. Every one of us must stand on guard at all times lest the human element in him be a channel by which error finds access to whatever is occupying his thoughts.

The work of the housekeeper and homemaker, while of great importance, if properly done, is all too seldom reckoned at its real value; and it often happens that no just or adequate division of the family income is made. A sensible, equitable adjustment of this matter would be helpful in the home planning; a mutual recognition and appreciation of the relative importance of each one's labors and requirements should result in such a division of the income as would insure to each one personal freedom in the management of his department of activity. It is a humiliating thing for a wife and mother, who is conscientiously fulfilling her manifold duties in the home, to ask for each dollar needed, and perhaps be required to give a minute accounting of her plans before the request is granted.

Even in households where mutual freedom and privacy are held in high regard for members of the family, these rights are not always extended to the cook, the housemaid, or the nurse, who ministers to the comfort and well-being of all. Her scant leisure may be trespassed upon in a score of ways, so that she has no time for study or quiet thought, that mental refreshment which is essential to health. It may be that her work is outlined with respect to the family's convenience only, and that she must even forego her church privileges. This is an evident abrogation of the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and those who are so selfishly unmindful of the rights of the stranger within their gates need not be surprised or mystified if they cannot successfully demonstrate Christian Science in certain of their affairs. Where so obvious a duty is neglected, health and harmony cannot justly be looked for.

The right of house guests to the necessary amount of letting alone is not always considered. Hospitality does not demand a constant stream of conversation, continual entertainment, or even the unremitting attention of some member of the family. If we would have our guests leave us refreshed and not wearied by their visit, we shall see that some sanctuary is provided, whither they may feel free to withdraw without exciting comment, and remain at their own discretion. Even guests who are not in the habit of daily reading appreciate this privilege of a few moments alone, now and then.

It is not the purpose of this article to go beyond the more palpable errors of interference with the legitimate freedom of those we profess to love, and to take up the subject of unsolicited mental treatment; however, it is a thing to be seriously considered, whether we can exercise even a mild despotism without trespassing unpardonably upon our brother's liberty in the mental realm, since our thoughts usually reach beyond the scope of our deeds. The human parent, watching with love and fear in equal proportions, saving a child from the results of his own folly at the expense, sometimes, of his spiritual growth, cultivating his selfishness because lacking the moral courage to correct it, weakening him by making too many of his decisions for him; the domestic tyrant, man or woman, construing authority as head of the household to mean a minute supervision and dictatorship over its members; the devoted lovers, mesmerized into yielding up individuality to each other, for the time being; the brother or sister whose sense of loving responsibility for another's welfare results in a follow-up system that reduces its object to a state of feeble dependence or makes him wish to run away; the son or daughter whose overwrought filial instinct fastens the age-thought upon the parents, depriving them of occupation, and limiting their enjoyment in many ways by this and that officious pseudoaffectionate mandate for their good, instead of vigorously supporting their claim to health and usefulness through continuing years of mature and valuable activity; the young zealot, determined to push, pull, or carry everybody into the kingdom, willy-nilly, forgetting in his passionate earnestness that, as Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health (p. 25), "the divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus,"—all these, and similar, need to do much praying for grace, that heavenly quality which combines, and interprets in terms acceptable to the human need, moral courage, patience, self-control, unquenchable hope, immovable love! "Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go."

Copyright, 1922, by The Christian Science Publishing Society, Falmouth and St. Paul Streets, Boston, Massachusetts. Entered at Boston post office as second-class matter. Acceptance for mailing at a special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 11, 1913.