Editorial October 13, 1928 Issue

Prohibition and Liberty

Ella W. Hoag

Men have for the most part looked upon prohibition of any sort as that which limits, hinders, prevents. They have called prohibitory laws restriction, and have imagined that because such laws have held men's acts in subjection in certain directions men were thereby being deprived of liberty. On the contray, right prohibition—that which prohibits evil in any way—insures and protects all that tends to true freedom.

When Christian Science emphasizes the fact of God's allness, it opens the door to the perception that all real liberty is reached through obedience to His laws, which are always good. As Paul declares, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." In "No and Yes" (p. 30) Mrs. Eddy writes, "God's law reaches and destroys evil by virtue of the allness of God;" and she accentuates this when she goes on to say, "God's law is in three words, 'I am All.'" This law is therefore the eternally prohibitive mandate to everything that is evil; hence laws of prohibition against evil never limit good, but are, instead, always against wrong and protective of good.

Jesus epitomized all right prohibition when he made the tremendous pronouncement on which he said "hang all the law and the prophets." When he declared, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," and, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," he certainly stated that which includes every demand for allegiance to all that is true and right, and which necessarily prohibits every inclination towards, all submission to, and all indulgence in evil of every name and nature. The "Thou shalt nots" of the Mosaic Decalogue are not more insistently or completely restrictive of all wrong than are the "Thou shalts" of our Master's commandments.

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