Primarily, that person is considered valuable who has a proper sense of responsibility. The shiftless, unreliable person, upon whose promise and demonstration one can never depend, must be kept under tutelage; and it is often harder work to oversee the irresponsible than to do the task involved. In its true sense, responsibility is response to the demands of divine Principle, and should be accompanied by strength and peace. It is acceptance of the fact of duty and recognition of obedience; it is the acknowledgment of the necessity for following the example of Christ Jesus. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 18): "His mission was both individual and collective. He did life's work aright not only in justice to himself, but in mercy to mortals,—to show them how to do theirs, but not to do it for them nor to relieve them of a single responsibility." Erroneous and evil suggestion, however, attempts to reverse everything good; consequently, men are tempted to make responsibility personal, and to bind heavy burdens upon themselves. Nowhere is this false sense better expressed than in the words, "My mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept."
Every observer of human life has noticed many instances of men who have acquired great wealth passing away from their acquisitions in what should be the prime of life. In order to gain their object in life, they condemned themselves to hard labor and servitude,—a life sentence, indeed. A prison sentence is hard, not simply because of the labor, for all men labor, but because the one sentenced suffers the deprivation of fields and trees, brooks and flowers and birds. Curiously enough, the seeker for self-interest shuts out all these, also leisure, culture, rest, interest in humanity; and for what? Figures in a ledger! Here is a sense of responsibility that kills.
Furthermore, the selfish and ambitious person binds heavy burdens upon others, judging his employees on the basis of their ministry to his acquisition. If he have poor workers, he puts them under greater exactions of time and labor, so that they shall become profitable workers; and if he have those who are loyal and useful, already helping on his prosperity, they, too, are sentenced to more exacting labor and given less leisure, that the profits already shown may amount to an even greater percentage. This material sense of desire and demand upon one's self and others is evidently limiting; for such false responsibility detracts from life and joy and all things real and good. False theories and selfish ideals, and the fears which they initiate, are spoken of by Mrs. Eddy, in "The People's Idea of God" (p. 11), as "the modern Pharaohs that hold the children of Israel still in bondage." She continues: "Mortals, alias mortal minds, make the laws that govern their bodies, as directly as men pass legislative acts and enact penal codes; while the body, obedient to the legislation of mind, but ignorant of the law of belief, calls its own enactments 'laws of matter.' The legislators who are greatly responsible for all the woes of mankind are those leaders of public thought who are mistaken in their methods of humanity."
