Individuality

ELEANOR ROYCE INGRAHAM

In learning anew the Lord's Prayer, as it is interpreted in Christian Science, we perceive in the words, "Thy will be done," a new significance. We are bidden to turn away from personal sense to divine Principle; to deny mortal selfhood apart from God and to trust all to God. But this does not mean that we are to renounce our true individuality or forfeit our immortal selfhood. Such an interpretation would savor of an apathetic shifting of all responsibility for untoward events and conditions to an inscrutable power, incapable of reason or compassion, and would deaden human aspiration and endeavor.

Submitting supinely to misfortune, illness, injustice, poverty, or the domination of human will does not imply that we are obeying God's will. We learn in Christian Science that it is not God's will that any one of His children should suffer wrong. But until we begin to gain a scientific sense of being, forsake our material models, and cease combating obstacles on a material plane, we get little light on the true method of gaining spiritual freedom.

Having suffered much from a great sense of discouragement and from the mistaken dictation of kindly and well-intentioned relatives who seemed bent upon thwarting the development of the one talent of which she felt herself possessed, a young student of Science read with joy these words of Mrs. Eddy on page 265 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace." And on page 258 of the same book are the heartening words, "The human capacities are enlarged and perfected in proportion as humanity gains the true conception of man and God."

By radical reliance on Truth we are guided into right environment and are enabled to cultivate whatever talent we possess. Paul had a clear realization of the human need of individual reflection and expression of Truth when he wrote to the Corinthians: "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." Here is authority for declining to pattern our lives after any specific human model which may be mistakenly urged upon us by others, however praiseworthy such a model may be.

It may require much sacrifice of the mortal sense of self, much overcoming of personal sense, to bring to light the true individuality which reflects God. It must be constantly borne in thought that man reflects wisdom, never originates it, and that perfection will not be reached until the dross of material belief is purged away. Lost in the contemplation of material falsities, the idler, the sinner, or the victim of discouragement has abandoned the quest of his true individuality, and must needs sometime, somewhere, awaken to a realization of the fact that no one but himself can demonstrate his own spiritual individuality. As is said in Revelation, "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."

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