Article July 23, 1927 Issue

Freedom

MAUD ROSS SCANLAN

Men turn to their highest concept of God for the satisfaction of their desires. It is as natural to feel that one's good comes from a source outside one's self, as it is for a child to turn to his parents for love, protection, and supply.

The object of human desires seems with most mortals to be material—better physical health, a larger income, more of what are called the pleasures of life. But that which should really be desired may be expressed more correctly and exactly when it is realized that mankind is in reality longing for freedom, freedom from a false sense of limitation, which is the result of a mistaken sense of health, of supply, of happiness. When one recognizes that one's desires should be for freedom from a limited sense of good rather than for the acquisition of material possessions, he has taken big step towards spiritual understanding. His method of thinking begins to be altered. Since he is definitely seeking a freedom which is spiritual, and his consciousness is no longer pinned down to material sense evidence, he perceives that to acquire freedom he must come into accord with fixed spiritual law. Such a one no longer turns to Christian Science or seeks the aid of a practitioner merely to bring about some material circumstance or condition. He has learned that humanity's method of trying to use spiritual fact to further the designs of human will has not been, and never will be, successful. Christian Science frees consciousness from human will with its mistaken outlining of its material sense of good, and restores the joy of freedom from bondage to the desires of material sense.

Our great Master taught that flesh and blood (materiality) cannot enter the kingdom of heaven; and one who is intelligently striving to enter the straight and narrow way leading to that kingdom studies to bring into his consciousness the recognition of the nature of God and of His creation, realizing that a consciousness filled with spiritual reality is inevitably freed from beliefs contrary to and denying that reality. Mrs. Eddy has made plain the nature of reality. On page 331 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes: "The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas." An idea, being entirely mental, is not cognizable by the physical sense, so called; and to become aware of an idea is a mental process wholly independent of sense-evidence.

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