We read in II Corinthians (3:17), "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." What is it then that holds us in bondage? Is it not our belief in the power of that which our physical sense perceive? Just as the dreamer believes the dreams besetting him, because he mistakenly accepts these pictures as real and substantial, so mortals, asleep in a material dream, regard as real the pictures which the enslaving material senses present of fear, sickness, loss, poverty, and death. Just as we imagine in our sleeping dream that we have fallen victim to the illusory power of the dream picture, so in our daydreams we believe material laws have power to keep us in bondage.

Yet nearly two thousand years ago Christ Jesus, who looked with deep compassion on humanity, said (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." With these words our Master called attention to our inalienable rights, to our God-bestowed dominion over the material senses and their delusions. On page 227 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy we read, "The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities,enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being."

The ineffectualness and uselessness of material methods, the ephemeral character of material pleasures, the emptiness they leave, cause us to look around for that which is imbued with power, which is effectual, lasting, inalienable, and imperishable. Spiritual sense begins to awaken and to glimpse the spiritual and eternal, harmony and life. Then there dawns in the consciousness of the individual a perception of higher joys.

Spiritual individuality, which is free and happy, must be recognized as our only individuality. Not until the limiting, entangling claims of the material senses are denied do we find the joys of Soul, our inalienable rights. The uplifted consciousness, which has risen somewhat above earthly suffering and the pleasures of the material senses, is filled with the joys of spiritual good, sublime purity, sonship with God, and is able to find freedom from the imprisonment of the enslaving senses, the belief in material laws, in suffering and sin, and to lead captivity captive.

Our Master understood so well the liberty of the children of God that even death and the grave could not fetter him. Conscious of man's glorious freedom and dominion, he said to his disciples during the last Passover he shared with them (John 14:27), "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you," and (15:11), "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." Joy and peace in the midst of impending betrayal, suffering, and death! What gave him this sublime peace and harmony?

"Truth brings the elements of liberty," our Leader says on page 224 of Science and Health. So it was Jesus' grasp of Truth and his identification with it which gave him his freedom. He understood that in God's ever-presence, the ever-presence of Spirit, there is no room for anything unlike Him. He knew that God's being, the being of all-inclusive Love, fills all space and that consequently hate is a nonentity, is in reality nonexistent—a phenomenon appearing in an illusion. He knew that the individual thought of men can rise with complete freedom to grasp spiritual truth and acknowledge it; that thought is not obliged to admit anything that is unlike Truth. Thus he utilized this God-given freedom, emanating from the clear understanding of his divine sonship, which has dominion over the material beliefs of suffering and death.

Jesus dwelt in the consciousness of harmony and of everlasting joys which constitute spiritual reality. Because of his complete understanding of reality, the dream of the material senses could not enslave him, for he recognized its unreality.

We can, each one of us, claim spiritual freedom. It is our birthright. Christian Science points the way to this freedom by showing us the illusory nature of all the beliefs of mortal existence, including fear and dismay, sin, sickness, and death. We learn in this Science that nothing can compel us to look upon illusion as reality and that no one can hinder us from recognizing as reality the eternal, harmonious facts of spiritual being, our only being. We learn that we have God's authority to do this, for, as Paul said (Eph. 4:7), "Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ."

If in daily life we reject the temptations of the material senses as illusions and refuse to give credence to the illusions of sickness, sin, and death, but constantly lift our thought to the indestructibility of true being, abiding forever unchanged in God, then we gradually and naturally free ourselves from the claim of material bondage. We begin to see that the liberty of the children of God is a fact. If we accustom ourselves under all circumstances to acknowledge God's presence as the only reality and His law as the only one operating for us, we shall be equal to any demand and face any danger with the assurance that we can demonstrate man's God-given freedom.