Editorial March 27, 1915 Issue

Science versus Human Will

Annie M. Knott

It is simply astonishing to discover how widely prevalent among professing Christians is the belief in the power of the human will. These people believe that its exercise is not only legitimate but praiseworthy, and with strange inconsistency they insist that the exercise of will-power explains the healing work done in Christian Science, yet they condemn the practice of this Science because it departs from the beaten track of medicine and theology alike. Here it should be said that reliance upon will-power is not endorsed in Christian Science, and its exercise would be a hindrance rather than a help in the healing of the sick. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 144): "Human will-power is not Science. Human will belongs to the so-called material senses, and its use is to be condemned."

Students of Christian Science soon learn that they can grasp and apply the truth only as they turn away from materiality and cling closer each day to divine Principle. Their efforts in this direction teach them to have limitless patience with those who fail to understand the teachings of our text-book, and who consequently misrepresent them, for they know that without the apprehension of divine Principle and spiritual law as therein taught, the problem of life would seem a hopeless tangle. Christian Scientists also know that their past attempts to solve this problem by means of the human will, especially where health and strength were concerned, only complicated it and increased their discouragement, until Truth rescued them from bondage. In Science and Health (p. 185) we read: "A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by emptying his thought of the false stimulus and reaction of will-power and filling it with the divine energies of Truth."

If a professed Christian were to ask a student of Christian Science on what ground he disclaimed the aid of the human will in the healing of disease or in the overcoming of any other phase of error, it might be answered that the reasons therefore are numerous; that they can be found both inferentially and directly in the Scriptures, especially in the teachings of Christ Jesus, who said in his most crucial earthly experience, "Not my will, but thine, be done." His overcoming at that hour depended upon his ability to prove to mankind, as well as to his trembling and doubting disciples, that he was the Son of God, and this he did to the complete reassurance of his students. Nor is this all, for in the first chapter of John's gospel we read: "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." This is a tremendous arraignment of the mortal belief that the will of the flesh—the will which supposedly has its seat in the brain—has any relation to man as the child of God.

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