MAN'S individual being is spiritual. By individual is meant that which cannot be divided into component parts. The senses can no more conceive of such a condition than they can conceive of infinity. Mrs. Eddy says of St. Paul that "when the evidence before the material senses yielded to spiritual sense, the apostle declared that nothing could alienate him from God, from the sweet sense and presence of Life and Truth" (Science and Health, p. 303)In other words, he realized his individuality. Responsibility is the measure of our obligation to yield to the ever-present divine influence which seeks expression through us continuously and which we have so often resisted. Some reconciliation with this inward voice is continually immanent in our consciousness, and the responsibility, the readiness to answer, lies with us.
Individual responsibility fully realized is therefore the fullexpression of God by His ideas; e.g., the star in giving light, the flower in its beauty, are fulfilling exactly their individual responsibilities. According to the Bible, "the whole duty of man" is to fear God and keep His commandments. Individual responsibility could not be summed up more thoroughly or more briefly than this, but the actual relationship between God and man must be understood before one can see how to do one's own duty; and, after all, this is the first thing to look to.
It is precisely on the question of this relationship that the divergence between the teachings of Judaism and Jesus, scholasticism and Mrs. Eddy, becomes marked. Materialistic religions have always emphasized the abnormalities and imperfections of men, in the hope of encouraging humanity to purify itself, or at least to go on with the unequal contest with sin and disease, in order that some time hereafter they may become worthy to be called sons of God. Jesus Christ stood for man's perfection and his oneness with God now—lived it and proved it. Instead of saying, "Go, and try by means of prayer and ritual to be less of a sinner than you are," he said, "Go, and sin no more."
