Article September 8, 1923 Issue

The Law of Liberty

GEORGENE L. MILLER

A casual acquaintance once said to a student of Christian Science, "Whenever I see you I think of you as one who does exactly as she pleases!" This surprising remark set the student thinking. Was she doing as she pleased; and if so, did this constitute real freedom? What is meant by doing as one pleases? A superficial study of the remark might make it a doubtful compliment, for the same might be said of one who defied all law and order. Doing as one pleased, in the human sense, might mean the exact opposite of freedom; it might mean bondage to such evil beliefs as fear, ignorance, egotism, selfishness, indolence. It might mean bondage to false law, or lawlessness.

No one will deny that humanity craves freedom. When, however, it is told that there is a law by which this "heart's desire" may be attained, it is inclined to be skeptical; for the so-called human mind, uninstructed in or unawakened by Christian Science, knows only the human or material sense of law, and such is negative, defective, limited, mutable, mortal. It fails to command the respect and obedience of all men, for it fails to deal justly by all men. It often "robs peter to pay Paul;" it punishes the innocent for the guilty; it condemns men for doing good; it decrees that "one man's meat is another man's poison." It attempts to govern matter, but succeeds only in partaking of matter's vagaries and variableness. If one is governed byu such so-called law, he is not free in any sense, because he is subject to the caprice of mortal opinion as to what constitutes good, as well as to what constitutes law.

Certain material codes claim to be based upon the Ten Commandments, those Commandments revealed to Moses on mount Sinai; but even the Ten Commandments, when interpreted from the material standpoint, seem impossible of enforcement and inadequate to bring order out of the chaos of human conditions and human thinking. As interpreted by Moses they did lift the thought of the Israelites to a higher sense of law; but even then they lacked the "freedom of the truth." They punished, but did not always heal. Moses' vision was but a glimpse compared to the perfect law of liberty, the law of Spirit, God, which is epitomized thus: Thou shalt love God supremely, and thy neighbor as thyself! This was the divine order which was revealed in Christ Jesus, the law which he came to fulfill. It was this true law which Jesus said we must know to make us free.

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