Article July 10, 1920 Issue

Individual Responsibility

LELA M. DARLINGTON

The realization of his individual responsibility to Principle is vital to the personal progress of every Christian Scientist and will very largely determine the value of his service to humanity. Because this is true, it is profitable to examine the human mind to find what it is that would hinder a man from facing his responsibility, testing his relationship to Truth at every step of the way, and working out his own salvation.

Mental laziness is perhaps the most common of these hindrances. It usually comes disguised as lack of time, for it prefers the comparatively easy tasks imposed by the beliefs of the flesh to the mental discipline of seeking and finding the will of God. It very easily persuades the human being to leave serious study and close reasoning either for some future time or to some other person or group of persons. This inactive condition is more or less prevalent in the thought of every mortal, and he seldom makes any decided effort to correct it until forced to do so by some phase of human suffering. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 240) Mrs. Eddy says: "If at present content with idleness, we must become dissatisfied with it. Remember that mankind must sooner or later, either by suffering or by Science, be convinced of the error that is to be overcome."

A false sense of humility is a favorite device of the human mind for preventing the student of Christian Science from putting his faith to the test. In every crisis, small or great, this false belief sends its victim to a practitioner or his teacher, when he has done little if any work for himself for the reason, he will say, that the practitioner has so much more understanding or has been in Science so much longer. If this student will turn to the Bible, however, he will find that the same apostle who declared his willingness to prove his faith by his works, gave this counsel to all Christians, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." The parable of the laborers in the vineyard teaches plainly that time does not of itself help a man to understand God. Even the human mind admits that it knows what it learned yesterday just as surely as though it had been learned a hundred years ago.

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