Scenario: A uniformed officer comes to your door. He says he has orders for your arrest in connection with a crime that occurred in your neighborhood last night. Persons in the vicinity believe they saw you fleeing the premises. The officer indicates you may be charged with armed robbery

"This is ridiculous!" you tell him. "I'm innocent and I can prove it!" Calmly you ask permission to call your attorney, realizing that you have reliable witnesses to prove your actual whereabouts, and undeniable proof that you have broken no law, committed no crime. There is no question in your mind that this is simply a mistake, and that the truth, the law, and all the evidence are on your side.

Shortly this is seen to be the fact, and subsequently you are released, free from all suspicion and accusation. Needless to say, you will not be punished for a crime you never committed.

A ludicrous scene perhaps. But even trying to imagine yourself in such a circumstance would illustrate an obvious point: You aren't about to go along with an untrue accusation. Instead of sitting idly or even sadly by, you're going to spring into vigorous steps to prove your innocence! Any innocent person would naturally take wise and energetic steps to protect his personal freedom in this way.

In the case of confronting sickness, however, people are far more inclined to resign themselves to "serving a sentence" for supposedly transgressing some so-called physiological or hereditary law. But how fair is that, really? Where is the justice? In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, makes this thought-provoking statement: "The moral man has no fear that he will commit a murder, and he should be as fearless on the question of disease." ^{Science and Health, p. 406.}

The reason we can be fearless as to the supposed claims of disease is that God didn't make disease, and it is not according to His law. The Bible is the book of divine law. The law of God supersedes all other claims to law; it supersedes and cancels unjust "laws" of heredity or disease. Any law that would dictate the necessity or inevitability of human suffering (any, that is, except the law that sin brings its own punishment) is overruled by the law of God.

The Scriptures clearly reveal the nature of God as omnipotent, ever-present good—universal Love, incapable of creating or permitting evil or disease. "Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes." The Psalmist had many insights into the true nature of God's laws or statutes and shared them. He also said of God, "Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth." ^{Ps. 119:68, 142.}

We may look around us, in our own lives and the lives of others, and see heartbreaking incidents, "unfair sentences"— suffering that doesn't seem just or fair at all. Everything within us may tell us the victim is innocent. No amount of rationalizing will provide us with peace or a sense of justice.

When our hearts rebel at senseless suffering, our native spiritual sense is demanding that good and justice be recognized as the right. Educated by the healing truth of the Bible and taught to practice spiritual law, our spiritual understanding of justice prevails—in the form of a restoration of individual God-given rights, including the healing of physical disease.

Many who treasure the Scriptures accept the power of God to convert or save the individual from sin and its terrible effects. This saving from sin is a widely accepted doctrine. But what about the wholeness and completeness of God's saving grace in its power to free from sickness? These are really united aspects of the same law of salvation. Christ Jesus' ministry shows the complete range of God's salvation. As well as rescuing individuals from the moral problems of thievery, adultery, and violence, he healed people of leprosy, blindness, deafness, paralysis, fevers, deformity, insanity, seizures, and other difficulties. He taught his followers to heal, and the book of Acts records the tide of impressive healings by which the early Church grew.

Christianity's heritage of healing through spiritual law continues today, and Christian Science makes this heritage available to any sincere individual who wants to understand and practice this law.

Christian Science encourages us to question the legitimacy of what appears to be physical "law." Science and Health asks: "Because man-made systems insist that man becomes sick and useless, suffers and dies, all in consonance with the laws of God, are we to believe it? Are we to believe an authority which denies God's spiritual command relating to perfection,—an authority which Jesus proved to be false? He did the will of the Father. He healed sickness in defiance of what is called material law, but in accordance with God's law, the law of Mind." ^{Science and Health, p. 168.}

The practice of Christian Science, or the Science of Christianity, is the practice of spiritual law. When you apply the law of God, the law of perfect, divine Mind, the law of divine Love —to your case, or the case of another—you are acting, in a sense, as an attorney would act in defense of an innocent client. You present the spiritual facts. You put on record man's identity as the perfect child of God, governed only by God's unchallengeable laws of justice and mercy You expose the unjust accusations against man as having no real jurisdiction and no real power.

Science and Health shows how to do this effectively In the chapter "Christian Science Practice" there is an allegorical trial of a man who is charged with committing liver complaint. With insight, humor, and powerful thoroughness, Mrs. Eddy explains how the law of God frees this man and releases him from the symptoms that threatened to be fatal.

In the light of this example, anyone suffering the injustice of sickness would be encouraged to rebel against being told he had committed disease and broken health laws. Studying the Bible and Science and Health strengthens one's natural and intuitive spiritual understanding. The understanding we gain shows us that truth within our consciousness is stronger than any fears or beliefs that matter could have any power over God, divine Love, or Love's beloved child. The Christian Science textbook puts it to us this way: "Let us banish sickness as an outlaw, and abide by the rule of perpetual harmony,—God's law. It is man's moral right to annul an unjust sentence, a sentence never inflicted by divine authority." ^{Ibid., p. 381.}

As we learn more about God's laws and exercise them more fully, sinful, mistaken views and habits pass away from us. Our moral right becomes more and more obvious and undeniable.

God's universal, omnipotent law is self-enforcing. There has never been a moment and will never be a moment when God's law is not in full effect. The perfect law of Life, Truth, and Love empowers us. It keeps us free.