In the 1840s Mary Baker Eddy saw slavery firsthand. Moving from New Hampshire to her husband's home in South Carolina, she found that her new household included slaves. She knew that slavery was wrong. When her husband passed away within the first year of their marriage, she let the slaves go free. ^{See Mary Baker Eddy, Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 15, and Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, originally published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 75.}

Then in 1866, less than a year after the Civil War marked the end of the slave era in the United States, Mrs. Eddy discovered that there are laws of God which bring freedom from a more universal and insidious form of slavery—slavery to the body. She later wrote a book that explains these laws of God. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures she states: The enslavement of man is not legitimate. It will cease when man enters into his heritage of freedom, his God-given dominion over the material senses. Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God. Then they will control their own bodies through the understanding of divine Science." The following paragraph continues, "If we follow the command of our Master, 'Take no thought for your life,' we shall never depend on bodily conditions, structure, or economy, but we shall be masters of the body, dictate its terms, and form and control it with Truth" (p. 228).

"Masters of the body"? "Form and control it"? If we judge from the flood of television advertisements about indigestion, heartburn, vitamins, weight-loss programs, diet shakes, appetite suppressants, and exercise machines, the public wants and needs to gain mastery over the body. In one way or another, all of these products are related to food. Many people feel that food is the very thing that prevents them from having control of their bodies—causing illness or obesity, for example. Others consider food a tool to be used in the fight to gain control of their bodies—through the type and quantity eaten.

Science and Health describes a man who had suffered from severe indigestion (at that time called dyspepsia) since childhood (see pp. 221–222). Believing that what he ate caused his suffering, he spent years having only water and one piece of bread each day, which left him perpetually weak and hungry.

Then he was completely healed when he learned, through Christian Science, that his being was wholly spiritual and sustained by God, divine Mind, not by food. He realized that his suffering had been unnecessary, the result of his belief that his substance and life were material. Understanding something of what it means to be the image of God and to possess dominion over all the earth, he saw that God had never created either indigestion or a man who could have any such condition.

The man's spiritual understanding that he wasn't material brought relief, and he was able to eat freely. He found, though, that he wasn't carried away by the taste of food as he'd imagined he would be during all those hungry years. Science and Health states, "This new-born understanding, that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of mortal mind, can make one suffer, brings with it another lesson,—that gluttony is a sensual illusion, and that this phantasm of mortal mind disappears as we better apprehend our spiritual existence and ascend the ladder of life" (ibid.).

While in this case the man starved himself because he believed it would improve his health, in other cases people drastically limit their food intake because they believe it will improve their appearance. For many years, the fashion world has promoted ultra-thin models as the image of beauty. A few years ago the phrase "waif look" was used to describe this image, and more recently the term "heroin chic" has been coined to refer to models so gaunt they look like heroin addicts. Many people, but especially young women seeking acceptance and admiration, have tried to control their bodies by eating as little as possible in an effort to match this fashionable image.

Some girls may find themselves constantly hungry and tired and always thinking about food and their weight. And sadly, for a certain number, the self-imposed starvation leads to serious eating disorders and severe health challenges. Added to these can be guilt over the behavior but a fear of being unable to change it. What may have started out as an effort at self-control has, in these cases, spun dangerously out of control. But both the behavior and any problems associated with it can be healed.

The Bible and the writings of Mrs. Eddy bring out an essential point about gaining true control over the body. They point out the distinction between self-denial and self-will. True self-denial is not merely refusing to allow oneself something. Real self-denial is denying a material selfhood altogether. Self-will, on the other hand, insists on a material selfhood that can exercise power of its own.

What does it mean to deny a material selfhood? Jesus consistently taught that man is the child of God, Spirit. He indicated, for example, that the true selfhood of man is spiritual when he said, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). He explained that man is created to manifest Spirit, God, but he also challenged us to demonstrate this.

Jesus showed us how to do this. He openly identified himself as one with God. He readily admitted that he couldn't do anything by himself or of his own power. He didn't even claim to have a will separate from God but instead said he always did what pleased his Father. And what was the result of his repudiating any selfhood apart from God, any earthly selfhood at all? He was able to heal multitudes of all kinds of illness, limitation, and fear. It was his very self-denial that enabled him to express such control over the body. Then he demonstrated the ultimate mastery by raising his own body from apparent death, and in the ascension, he rose above any vestige of a material selfhood and no longer even appeared in a material form.

Jesus didn't demand that we all ascend immediately. But he did call on us to follow his example of total victory over the flesh. A good place to start, he taught, was to stop focusing on and worrying about the body and instead to focus on understanding and expressing God. In his famous Sermon on the Mount, he urged us: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on ...But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 6:25, 33).

Turning to God—acknowledging Him as the one Mind and the All-in-all—and refusing to claim or accept any mind, life, or substance apart from God are the sure way to freedom from slavery to a material body. In fact, in the long run, this is the only way to govern the body successfully.

It seems like a paradox: turn thought away from the body in order to best care for the body; deny reality or power to any material substance in order to bring healing to what appears to be material substance. The answer to the riddle lies in a vital fact of being that Science reveals: our experience is the outgrowth of our thought. To the degree we believe that we live in a material body, to that degree we experience the excesses or deficiencies, the discords and appetites, inevitably associated with matter. On the other hand, to the degree we have the Mind of Christ, knowing and accepting the truth of man's harmonious, spiritual being as God's expression, we experience harmony, health, and express greater poise and loveliness.

Whereas true self-denial is inspiring and health-giving, willpower is ultimately demoralizing and destructive. In order to exercise willpower, a person must think that he or she has a mind of his or her own. This state of thought denies that God is the only Mind, substance, and power. It is a mesmeric state of thought that causes one to feel cut off from "the kingdom of God, and his righteousness."

Because this sense of things is not the truth of being, however, there is always hope, there is always a way out—the Way, Christ, Truth. In proportion as one claims the Mind of Christ as his only Mind and yields to this Mind, he discovers and demonstrates "his heritage of freedom." Fear of rejection or illness, willful obsession, and guilt have no place in the one, infinite, divine Mind. Therefore they have never been one's true consciousness. Man's true consciousness, as the expression of God, has never ceased being pure and healthy, beautiful and free.

Our beliefs do govern our bodies. Science and Health states: "God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience. Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love" (p. 106). Guided and governed by God—this is how we become "masters of the body."