There is a provision of law under which if one who has no right to land occupies it, adversely to the true owner, for twenty years, this gives him a better title to it than the true owner. But if the owner be under age during this period of occupation, a higher law comes in, annuls this law, and restores to the child his rightful estate.

Suppose a case in which the true owner is a child during the time of adverse occupancy, and when he claims his inheritance the occupant asserts his right because he has been in possession for the required length of time, and points to the law which sustains him in his position. Unless the child asserts his childhood, and relies on the higher law, the decision of the court would be given according to the lower law, because only those facts to which it applies have been brought out. The child would, therefore, lose his inheritance, though there existed a law under which he would be able to regain it, simply because he did not assert and maintain the facts which call into operation the higher law. This may illustrate what we must do to come into our inheritance as children of God.

Impostors, false beliefs, claim to be in possession under authority of material law. The heirs are deceived as to their origin and birth in the first place, and as to the law in the second. They do not realize that they are sons of God, and because sons, "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." In the second place, they have been deceived as to the spiritual law under which they are entitled now to the possession of their inheritance. Ignorant of the spiritual facts of being, ignorant of the inheritance to which this entitles them, and of the way of coming into it, men remain inactive while impostors, false beliefs, continue to deprive them of their inheritance.

Jesus Christ taught that all men may become sons of God, also what their inheritance as sons of God is, and he demonstrated how they may come into it. He calls upon them to follow him, not only in conduct but into the kingdom of God. Many devout Christians, touched by his word, that we are sons of God, may question and fear lest they detract from his divinity by overestimating the significance of this word respecting themselves. Those who obey his call, and do in his name the works he did, as he commanded, are best able to say what relation he bears to them. Any questioning is apt to prevent the response to his call, if it does not make us doubt the fact of our being sons of God.

At Jesus' baptism, it is written, there was a voice from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." And again he saith to him, "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: .... Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

Not once, but more than once, the temptation to doubt his sonship assailed Christ Jesus, and how, therefore, can we expect to escape the temptation to doubt our sonship?

We have St. John's statement for the fact that we are sons of God, and his revelation of the inheritance to which this spiritual fact entitles us. In order that we may come into this inheritance, we must assert the fact most vigorously when the greatest cry of material sense is raised against it. Otherwise, though sons of God, and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus, the enemies which he overcame, and which he will enable us to overcome if we follow his commandments, will continue to keep us out of our inheritance, and we will be held under the material law of sickness, sin, and death, instead of the spiritual law of health, holiness, and life in God. Though entitled to say with St. Paul, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death," we will continue to submit to the law of sin and death until we realize that, having once had a revelation of this truth, we must claim our inheritance, and continually prove that we are sons of God, and entitled to dominion over every material sense.

In our case against material sense, which claims a perpetual right according to the material law, we have a cloud of witnesses. The son of Abraham was born contrary to material law. The holy men of God, through many ages, lived contrary to material law, having come into a large part of their inheritance as sons of God. In the fulness of time Jesus Christ rose above every material law, declared the spiritual law and demonstrated the allness of Life according to it, so that no man need remain in doubt as to his ability to enter into his rightful inheritance. There is, moreover, a great cloud of witnesses about us, each of whom has come into some part of his inheritance as a son of God, thereby proving our right to come into ours, and also disclosing to us the way to gain the mastery over the temptations which would keep us out, contrary to the command of God. These witnesses can only strengthen us in our faith in the justice of our claim. We remain out of our inheritance until we lay claim to it, and win the verdict, even as others have done, against one error, and then another, until we shall have risen to the height of spiritual understanding, with all sense of error destroyed. The winning of the victory over one false sense will increase our confidence, and be the prelude to an unremitting war against everything that is unlike God and unworthy of His son.

Having been much hindered by an unwillingness to declare a truth not at the moment plain to me, I have been helped by a knowledge of these two provisions of our law, one of which nullifies the other, and I have been enabled thereby to stand for my inheritance, asserting the fact and the law which entitles me to it, even when false suggestion would make me doubt both. I have learned in Christian Science that the words and works of Christ Jesus as recorded in the Bible are worthy of acceptance, and that it is not only my right but my duty to finish the work he has given me to do. The joy set before those who faithfully follow Christ, cannot be taken away, but it can be enlarged by the gratitude of those delivered from the bonds of sin and material sense by the mighty working of the power of God. And as we become more faithful and are delivered from other phases of error we shall be more grateful to God our Father, to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to our Leader for her faithfulness to God which abounds to our help.

The enemies against whom we must fight, resort to deception in this contest. They falsely allege that we are not sons of God, that there is no spiritual law which entitles us as sons of God to superiority over every material condition, that we are material and that there is a material law which cannot be broken, which binds us during this life at least. The fact is that we are not material, that there is no material law except as believed by us, when deceived by the falsehood of material-sense advocates. And when in truth, belief in the reality of the material law has vanished from our consciousness, and an understanding of spiritual law has dawned, the victory is won. The advocates of sin, disease, and death cannot bring their case to trial. Their only chance is to keep the false sense dominant in mortal mind; and as soon as we have gained an understanding respecting a given point in our spiritual birthright, they are forced to abandon that case and concentrate deception on some other point, just as the tempter shifted from bread to falling from high places, and from that to worldly power and glory. Surely, with Jesus Christ as our "advocate with the Father," with all the prophets and apostles, and men of God, in former times, and with the cloud of witnesses by whom we are now encompassed about, we can win our inheritance, casting aside the sin that doth so easily beset us, and running with patience the race that is set before us.