FREEDOM FIGHTER by Joyce Voysey

As I have been reading, I’ve been on the lookout for evidence of the synonyms  of God (see Science and Health page 465 - What is God?) developing in Mary’s thought.  We have had Love and Principle.  And page 20 gives us an account of Mary’s discernment regarding the thought of an orange being left when the orange has been destroyed.  Surely, this is evidence that at an early age she was aware that God is Mind, though no doubt she would not have voiced it in these words.

Freedom is prominent in Chapter 2.  I wonder if there is one synonym which covers freedom?  Or could every synonym be covered with that momentous idea?  Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.  An interlude here while I ponder the synonyms.  What I have come up with is rather in the relative: they are a force in our human experience. 

The Spirit’s guiding brings holiness in which we find that "All, all is well" (see (hymn 350); so, freedom from worry about which path to take; freedom from matter’s suggestions that it is a force in our lives.

“Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind,….” (S&H 60:29). Soul is blessing its expression with all its needs.  God’s supply is infinite.  Here is freedom to express those ideas which will bring us our daily bread.

Life brings with it freedom from thoughts of death, death having no life in it, and Life being eternal.

Truth brings us the freedom that comes from knowing it has no opposite, and that honesty in itself is freedom.

Principle’s gift is the freedom of God’s law in operation on our behalf.  (I like the idea that each synonym brings us a gift.)

Mind.  Opening the Concordance to S&H brought my eye to a lovely thought – 455:12 – “use the energies of Mind”.  What freedom those energies will bring when applied in a scientific way.

Love.  Divine Love declares man to be Her likeness – pure and undefiled – and free in every way.

Mrs. Eddy writes so masterfully about slavery in S&H.  The abolition of slavery in the United States is closely linked with the discovery by her of Christian Science.  April 1865 saw the end of the American Civil War and February 1866 is recorded as the time of the healing through which the discovery brought divine Science to the world.

“The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of this new crusade sounded the keynote of universal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledgment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken from the human mind and that its freedom be won, not through human warfare, not with bayonet and blood, but through Christ’s divine Science.” S&H 226:5.

Bringing this Science to the world was a herculean task.  Page 38 of our book this month touches our heart and we go on to have our hearts gladdened by what this indominitable woman accomplished for us and all mankind.

One of the remarkable things about the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is that the author had to study it herself in order to understand it.  Is there any other such book?  It seems to me that Tomlinson’s hymn A Voice from Heaven we have heard could be interpreted:

A voice from heaven Mary heard,

The call to rise from earth;
Put armor on, the sword now gird,
And for the fight go forth.

The foe in ambush claims our prize,

Then heed high heaven’s call.
Obey he voice of Truth, arise,
And let not fear enthral.

The cause requires unswerving might:

With God alone agree.
Then have no other aim than right;
End bondage, O be free.

Depart from sin, awake to love:

Your mission is to heal.
Then all of Truth you must approve,
And only know the real.

..Which she did.

I wonder if Tomlinson is echoing thoughts he heard from our beloved Leader when he put the poem together.  Can we say she was putting before us as a plan of action as Freedom Fighters in Christ?  Surely, she was a Freedom Fighter of the first magnitude.