There may be found a remarkable, an arresting, statement on page 442 of Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, which reads as follows: "Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you either when asleep or when awake." There may be some who do not see the importance of this behest, although, clothed in forceful language, it is to be looked upon as a terse and urgent command from a great Leader to her followers.
One may occasionally hear it said of people that they are a law unto themselves, or that they take the law into their own hands, but these are not to be considered as complimentary comments upon the behavior of anyone, for they are generally employed to describe one who is headstrong, self-willed, and unwilling to abide by customary laws of etiquette and procedure.
There is, however, another and a very different sense in which an individual may be said to be a law unto himself, and it is far removed from the world's concept of the forceful man, with iron will, inflexible determination, and disregard of means to his end. All the great men and women who have left their mark on history may be said to have been in some measure law makers and breakers, to have overstepped the ordinary laws, living above circumscribed modes. But the cleavage is distinct between those who on the one hand have broken established law, only to impose other worldly fetters of their own devising, and those who on the other hand shine as great spiritual leaders, who have refused to submit to material law because they have discerned a higher spiritual law that they had perforce to obey.
