Article September 19, 1914 Issue

God's Perfect Will

MARY HORNIBROOK CUMMINS

A full recognition of the fallibility and unreliability of all human will is something which comes to the student of Christian Science only by degrees and through a growing knowledge of God. In the past he has been so accustomed to following the dictates of this will, has become so imbued with the belief that it is a wise guide, that he cannot readily free himself from its thraldom. Indeed, such is the glamour enveloping anything upon which the human will fastens, that until it is laid down, and God's will is earnestly sought, the situation cannot be viewed with any degree of clearness.

Every young student has probably had the experience of allowing human will to outline something as very desirable, and then seeking to bring the law of God to bear upon conditions in order to procure the wished-for result. If he has failed, he has felt baffled and discouraged. If he has seemed to succeed, he has undoubtedly found that the thing turned out to be not at all what he expected. Frequently the anticipated sweet morsel turns to bitterness in his mouth. In either case, if he be wise, he has gone apart alone with God and sought to know wherein the trouble lay, and divine Love and wisdom has revealed to him when and how he surrendered the helm of his life to the pilot of self-will and thus left the safe, deep waters of God's plan for the shallows and breakers of mortal sense. Such a course is fittingly characterized by Mrs. Eddy when she speaks of erring mortal thought as "theoffspring of will and not of wisdom, of the mortal mind and not of the immortal" (Science and Health, p. 192).

But let not one who is passing through such an experience be cast down, for it is by these lessons that we begin to apprehend something of what Paul meant when he spoke of "that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." The Christian Scientist who has glimpsed the "beauty, grandeur, order" of God's will, can henceforth have but one supreme desire, one oft-breathed prayer, "Not my will, but thine, be done." He earnestly seeks to get the mortal sense out of the way of the divine, so that God's law "may have free course, and be glorified."

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