Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1916-09-26

long time has been asserting and
submitting to them.
It is just as if the people of a
nation for years had permitted
themselves to be governed by an
enactment which they supposed tc
be a law, but which finally tested
in their higher courts has been dis
cerned to be not law, but an un-
warranted assumption of power and
authority. There's never had been
real occasion for any one to yield
obedience to it's terms, and those who
were influenced to do so, in follow
ing the line of common consent, and
who suffered inconvenience and loss
thereby, were at no time suffering
from the workings of the law; they
suffered only from their erroneous
submission to that which was not a
law at all, but the absence of law, a
lnegation. Had these people been
better informed, they would have
been disposed to resist rather than to
submit. Resistance would have
been of little avail, however, unless
conducted on intelligent and we'll
defined lines. Thus, if those who
first discerned the falsity of the al
legged law were to have undertaken
merely to defy it, without establish
ing their right to do SO in accor-
dance with the orderly processes for
testing the validity of an enactment,
they doubtless would have invited
more trouble than they were for
time being capable of meeting. The
citizen who is even half wise will
not dispute points Of law with the
policeman who UNDERSTANDS to enforce
against the liberty of that citizen a
rule or regulation that the citizen
knows to be unlawful. There is a
proper and adequate way for him to
obtain his rights, and the more he
resists the policeman the less stand
ing he may have in the court to
which he must finally appeal.
Orderly Resistance to False Law.
Christian Science discloses to its
students that the accumulated be-
liefs of the human mind commonly
known as laws of health, but which
might be termed more appropriately
laws of disease, are not really laws,
being directly at variance with the
divine and true law, and therefore
in their final analysis utterly impo-
! tent and void. The Christian Scien-
fist therefore knows he has right
to resist, but he knows also that
fighting in the street with the po-
liceman, figuratively speaking, is
not the way to make his resistance
effective. In becoming a Christian
Scientist, therefore, it is not neces-
sary for one to assume an attitude
of strutting about with chip on
ones shoulder, challenging cold
drafts, germs, accidents, neighbor-
hood opinions and other unpleasant
things, to do their worst.
The genuine Christian Scientist is
not a queer or spectacular person
He does not seek trouble, though
when trouble arrives he usually finds
he can meet it with less fear than
before, and with better demonstra-
ton of the dominion over evil that
| is a natural attribute of mans real
self. The method he employs for
annulment of unjust enactments
with regard to health is an orderly
method, IN which the beginning, is
not mistaken for the ending, nothing
is assumed or taken for granted, nor
| is step number two attempted until
| step number one has been mastered
The factors which cause the human
body to respond with a; percentage
of similar symptoms under similar
circumstances, and which because
of this tendency have been mistaken
| ly supposed to be the result of ply
steal law, but which Christian Sci
ence shows to be primarily mental
| factors, the fruit of perhaps centur-
les of wrong thinking, may not
because of that be dismissed
as with a wave of the
hand, nor does Christian Science I'M
dertake to do anything of the sort
There must be systematic and
Thorough undoing of the false mental
processes by which these conditions
have come about. And this is what
Christian Science does undertake to
do.
One may overpower or evade the
policeman, as it were, by drugging
the pain or patching up the bodily
effects of sick. thoughts, and thus
for the day or the week or the year
obtain kind of immunity, but such
a course can be of but temporary ad-
vantage at best, and for ones self
alone; whereas he who proceeds in
an orderly and effective manner to-
ward the ultimate annulment of op-
procoiyo opd ,Ipircf apactmoDts with