Article April 25, 1953 Issue

THE NEED OF INDIVIDUAL DEMONSTRATION

[Of Special Interest to Young People. Original article in German.]

ALFRED SCHNEIDER

Mary Baker Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 26), "While we adore Jesus, and the heart overflows with gratitude for what he did for mortals,— treading alone his loving pathway up to the throne of glory, in speechless agony exploring the way for us, —yet Jesus spares us not one individual experience, if we follow his commands faithfully." The Master himself required that his followers do their work faithfully, for he said (Matt. 10:38), "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." These words are a call to the slumbering thought to awaken, an unmistakable summons to self-reliant thinking. Christian Science reveals God, the one Mind, as the Principle of all true thought activity. Through the application of this divine Principle of all true being the Christian Scientist demonstrates the ever-presence of God, Truth, as well as his individual coexistence with the one Mind. Christian Science requires of each of its adherents that he work out his own salvation in the way that Jesus did.

Arithmetic gives us a clear illustration of the importance of demonstrating one's individuality. We need only picture what would happen to the science of numbers if the numeral 3 were suddenly to say: "I am not good for anything. I shall give my individual rights to number 4; it will act for me in the future." Of course it is clear that number 4 cannot take over the functions of 3, or vice versa. Nor could anyone say: "I need only the even numbers to solve my problems; I do not need the odd." Each number fulfills its own proper task and is indispensable to the harmony of the whole. In her definition of the term "I, or Ego," Mrs. Eddy writes in part in Science and Health (p. 588), "There is but one I, or Us, but one divine Principle, or Mind, governing all existence; man and woman unchanged forever in their individual characters, even as numbers which never blend with each other, though they are governed by one Principle."

Christian Science teaches that God and man are one as Principle and idea. Through our understanding of this relationship of God and man, qualities such as trustworthiness, freedom, spiritual independence, goodness, completeness, abundance, moral courage, are brought into human experience, for it is not enough that we hear and read about the oneness of God and man. We must understand and bring to light this unity in our lives. We must understand the laws inherent in this oneness, or unity, and keep them before our gaze continually. In this way we succeed in demonstrating that our individual spiritual consciousness is "a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," as Paul said (II Cor. 5:1).

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