Article April 9, 1932 Issue

Law and Liberty

ERNEST C. MOSES

IN these days the many discussions on personal liberty are at least bringing out views which illumine the fact that liberty is a law-sustained condition. Most of the men and women who seriously think and work for the betterment of social and economic conditions believe that liberty is maintained by impartial law; for they are assured that the orderly universe is maintained by law. Christian Science strongly emphasizes the power of divine law. It also recognizes the necessity for human laws intended to establish civil rights to maintain freedom of conscience and to protect people from evil influences. The attitude of this Science respecting true liberty is the same as the attitude of Christ Jesus and of his Christianity.

Writing of Jesus in Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 163), Mary Baker Eddy makes these statements about "his unfaltering faith in the immortality of Truth." She there writes: "Referring to this, he said, 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away!' and they have not: they still live; and are the basis of divine liberty, the medium of Mind, the hope of the race." Then these teachings are supremely important for all who would secure the right sense of "divine liberty" or of the civil liberty expressed in any modern representative democracy based on the higher sense of freedom.

One can best understand and appreciate the fundamental ideals and purposes of the United States of America if he recognizes that the civic ideals of this nation were based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. This nation has a Christian foundation and structure; it was not the haphazard outgrowth of mere personal opinion, human intellect, or temporal expediency. It developed from religious freedom sought for, struggled for, and won through faith in God and through splendid sacrifices by noble men and women of personal pleasures and of personal liberty. Later the American patriots counted no sacrifice of mere personal beliefs as too dear to give up for the common good. The founders of the federal union of the United States won a higher sense of personal liberty through letting go of the lesser sense, which is self-centered and blind.

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