Obedience to divine law ennobles human character, because obedience expresses the nature of man in God's image. One realizes how important obedience is when he sees that man's true individuality has appeared only as God's law has been revealed and obeyed. In the progressive unfoldment of real manhood, the Ten Commandments with their purifying moral demand appeared first to humanity as rules of human conduct. Many centuries later came the "new commandment" of Christ Jesus with its spiritually quickening requisite that men love as he loved and thus fulfill the law in righteousness. Finally, Christian Science, the actual law of scientific being, appeared, with its universal application to humanity. These three great dispensations of law gradually unfolded to mankind the sinless forces of Spirit, which are individualized in spiritual man. The real man, God's image, is obedient to his Maker because in him are embodied the invariable laws of Spirit that can never become insubordinate to their source.
Mary Baker Eddy voices the consummation of centuries of spiritual striving where she says in "No and Yes" (p. 11), "Man has perpetual individuality; and God's laws, and their intelligent and harmonious action, constitute his individuality in the Science of Soul." It has been toward this unveiling of a truth which exists eternally that mankind's spiritual development, has intuitively tended. But now, through Christian Science, the goal of spiritual effort is unmistakable: knowingly to demonstrate spiritual individuality by bringing to light the divine laws that constitute it.
Divine law is the invariable mode of action of God's will. It is the force of righteousness that brings into expression Love's nature and ideas. It is the creative energy of Spirit that not only produces but sustains right effect. Divine law makes man infinite in goodness, immortal in continuity of individuality; makes his love of God supreme and his love of neighbor absolute. And man cannot depart from this order, because God's will is done. His law enforced. Every activity of man's conscious being emanates from and is controlled by the source of that being—his divine Principle. And because man's mental energies of wisdom and love manifest the impetus of the Father's will, they are the forces, or divine laws, which constitute his individuality—laws which are invariable in intelligent purpose, ceaseless in action, unbreakable.
