Article January 10, 1959 Issue

UNHAMPERED INDIVIDUALITY

STELLA DENISE COUSINS

To a world in which standardization, controls, and restrictions seem to be threatening to subdue men's individuality, Christian Science brings a message of reassurance. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 116), "If the term personality, as applied to God, means infinite personality, then God is infinite Person,—in the sense of infinite personality, but not in the lower sense." Man is the individual expression of this infinite Person.

True personality, then, is not something which is developed by the subtle use of doubtful characteristics. It is not some facade which covers up our shortcomings and smooths over a sense of inferiority and inability. It is the increasing reflection of the nature of God in one's experience: the development of one's true nature as a son of God. How do we turn from the cultivation of a false sense of personality to the establishment of true personality or individuality in our experience, and how do we identify the true individuality of those around us? Discernment of individual worth is seeing someone as he really is — the idea of God. This seeing of the true man is done through spiritual sense, "the spirit which is of God," that, Paul said, we have received (I Cor. 2:11). Thus we see our fellow men as ideas of God, reflecting the Father.

The prophets, spiritual seers, discerned this truth of man; Christ Jesus taught it and healed by its application. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says of Christ Jesus (pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"YIELD TO REASON AND REVELATION"