A DICTIONARY defines individuality as "the state or quality of being individual;" and to be individual is to have "definite and continuous existence." Spiritual individuality is of God, divine Mind, supported and maintained, not by matter or material sense, but by God alone, and always inseparable from the infinite I AM. From the great I AM the patriarch Moses gained his authority and power to guide the children of Israel out of the land of bondage; and the same God enabled Christ Jesus to perform his mighty redemptive works. Human existence, based on the belief of life in matter, has no quality of continuity or permanence; and mortals believing in such existence find no enduring satisfaction in the contemplation of its false origin and destiny; for the reason that both are of a negative nature and must be classified even as Jesus classified and rebuked that material sense of life held by those Jews who claimed to be the seed of Abraham and declared they "were never in bondage to any man." Jesus' answer was, as recorded in John's gospel, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." We shall be the servants of sin so long as we believe in any life or existence apart from God, or entertain any false beliefs about man, his origin, or his relationship to God.
The marvelous display of power by the gentle Nazarene as he went about with his disciples, humbly, patiently insisting on the acknowledgment of God as the source of all existence and reality, claiming no personal goodness for himself, for "there is none good but one, that is, God," and declaring that the power displayed in the accomplishment of his healing works was inseparable from the Father, marked him for all time as the central figure in the battle of Truth against error. His outstanding purpose was to establish the fact of man's spiritual individuality; and the works which he wrought in the Father's name were proof of his spiritual identity. He left to his followers, and to all those who should believe on him "through their word," the heritage, not only of the promise of power, but of demonstrating that power.
So-called mortal mind, believing itself a creator, classifies, specifies, and outlines material objects as separate and distinct. But remembering the definition of individual as that which has "definite and continuous existence," we realize how inconsistent it is to believe that matter can have true individuality. When we come to analyze material objects from the basis of spiritual creation, we find the reasoning to be faulty that would make them real. So we begin a process of elimination, which, if honestly carried out, will leave only spiritual ideas as real. The disciples showed Jesus the buildings of the temple and the stones with which it was constructed, presumably as a structure of permanence and endurance; and yet he said, "The days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." And do not the vast changes apparently going on in the physical universe show how insubstantial are the objects of material sense?
