Article July 5, 1952 Issue

FREEDOM

RACHEL M. PRATT

A Woman was waiting to get permission to take home the manuscript of a book which she had written while she had been abroad. It was a time of great tension between her native country and the one she had been visiting. As she sat looking out the window the official for whom she was waiting entered. All the evil things she had heard and read about him crowded into her thought as she addressed him. His arrogance and lack of courtesy as he took the manuscript and left the room intensified her dislike of him, and she found herself thinking how hateful he was. Her feeling was so strong that it startled her, and she realized that she had never before hated anyone and that if she allowed herself to hate now, the evil forces which he seemed to exemplify would have conquered her. This she could not allow, for she knew that she was free.

Moreover, she was convinced that good is stronger, more powerful, than evil. So she set about filling her thought with the graciousness and the peace, the strength and the dominion, of Love. They were the conquerors, because not only was she serene when she left his office, but the manuscript was still in her possession when she finally left that country. Who can say that the maintaining of her mental freedom was not the secret of her being able to take her manuscript home?

Hearing this woman tell her story made a great impression upon another. The latter, a student of Christian Science, has often thought of it as a perfect illustration of obedience to Joshua's command (24: 15), "Choose you this day whom ye will serve," and to that of Paul (Rom. 12:21), "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

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