Article July 28, 1906 Issue

The prism of Truth

George H. Moore

When God endowed man with definite and complete individuality, He placed upon him the correlative duty of direct responsibility to his Maker. This response-ability is simply the ability to respond to God’s law. Individuality or right being, and responsibility or right doing, these two qualities make up the equation of man's scientific being, which as an equation must perforce remain in balance at every stage of the student’s demonstration. With increased understanding of one’s spiritual birthright, there must be an equal acceptance and fulfilment of responsibility, if one would further his own advancement and realize his own integrity as God’s child.

The intimate relation between God and man has been variously illustrated. Isaiah voiced it in the language of the court when he said that we are God’s “witnesses;” Paul in the phraseology of the State, “We are ambassadors for Christ;” Jesus in the terms of the home, we are God’s children. In explaining her great discovery, our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has employed the symbolism of light and its reflection. Appreciation of her message is dependent, therefore, upon our understanding as to what such reflection includes and involves.

God is light and man is His reflection, but this simple and direct statement of relation does not relegate man to the position of an unthinking medium for the transmission of waves of light, like the hypothetical ether of physical science, nor to that of an unresponsive mirror which receives and reflects into space the rays of light. In his spiritual selfhood man reflects the self-conscious, self-contained integrity of the divine nature, and he thus radiates or distributes God’s beneficence in proportion to his realization of spiritual selfhood. To measure up to the responsibility involved, it follows with scientific surety that our one individual sacrifice must be the renunciation of false material selfhood; that our true giving is simply the conscious re-dedication of God’s own to God’s uses and ends; and that we can best give God’s gifts only as we truly understand God’s ways. Through the attainment of such understanding, both our privilege and our responsibility is infinitely broadened and enriched.

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