Article March 17, 1906 Issue

The Divine Sovereignty

CLARENCE W. CHADWICK.

A CERTAIN writer has said that "the great secret of living is never to be in the way of others." This sentiment voices a wholesome truth, but it is doubtful whether it can be made practically operative until humanity learns that all-important lesson of never obstructing the way to Truth. This lesson cannot be learned until the individual is awakened sufficiently to look into the mental realm for all cause and effect, and to safeguard his own thinking against the intrusion of every thought which would deny the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, good. In other words, absolute obedience to the Golden Rule involves a scientific understanding of the Principle of right thinking as explained in Christian Science. All wrong thinking interferes with our recognition of the ideal, harmonious government of God, and it is the mission of Christian Science to eliminate all such thinking, and thereby establish in individual consciousness the true spiritual relationship between God and man.

The failure to admit that Mind has the right-of-way is perhaps nowhere more noticeable than in the futile attempt to help God out in the government of the body. It is usually only after repeated failures to realize normal and healthful conditions by the use of nearly every known human agency, that the mortal turns as a last resort to God, willing for the first time to trust Him. He claims to love God, and is taught to believe that He is all-powerful, but how to surrender unconditionally the selfish inclinations of the human will seems a most difficult problem, and "few there be" who are inclined to shoulder this cross until they have been driven by suffering to do so. This is not strange, however, since the inherent disposition of the mortal is to have his own way about everything. He has been brought up to think that this was right, and has been encouraged to cultivate rather than to subjugate the human will.

The moment the subject of spiritual healing in Christian Science is touched upon, many people, even those who profess to believe in God's omnipotence, are too prone to assert that it is simply the exercise of human will-power. This assertion clearly betrays the mainspring of all human interference. Until the influence of a false education is corrected, egotism and self-will arrogate to themselves the ability of omnipotence, even essaying to dictate to divine Principle, and to prescribe the time and manner in which Deity shall do His own work. Such unwarrantable presumption is wholly the result of false teaching, wherein the creature and not the creator is "worshiped and served."

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