Article August 24, 1918 Issue

Almost every conceivable wrong has, at one time or another,...

The Christian Science Monitor

Almost every conceivable wrong has, at one time or another, been attributed, in mortal belief, to the will of God. The common misconception of God's will has indeed been exceeded only by the false concept of God. Human beliefs concerning God's will naturally take their character from the beliefs that are entertained as to the nature of God. Thus the belief of God as a corporeal Deity, vests Him with an arbitrary will which may or may not set aside His laws at pleasure. As a false concept of God results in a false concept of man, so the mortal misconception of God's will finds expression in erring human will power, which is capable of all evil. It is impossible to convince a man that the will of God invariably decrees harmony for man, unless you can rid him of his belief in a corporeal, incomprehensible Deity; but if a man sees that God is divine Principle, then it becomes very clear that the unalterable will of God is the direct antithesis of arbitrary human will, just as Principle is opposite to anything which material sense conceives God to be.

The will of divine Principle is therefore never to be found operating through any suffering or wrong, but is witnessed wherever the might of omnipotent good is overcoming evil. The prayer that God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven thus becomes, in Christian Science, an intelligent affirmation of the present supremacy of Spirit; and the understanding of this fact demonstrates the unreality of all that is unlike Principle. In the Glossary to Science and Health (p. 597) Mrs. Eddy defines will both as it is conceived by material sense and as it is in spiritual reality, in the words: "Will. The motive-power of error; mortal belief; animal power. The might and wisdom of God." The operation of God's will, as understood and demonstrated by Jesus the Christ, wrought the destruction of all that opposed the spiritual idea which he presented. One great secret of Jesus' power was his perfect capacity to differentiate between the erring human will and the omnipotent will of God. He said, "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me," and, referring to his practice, he declared, "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."

It was because Jesus the Christ understood the Father to be divine Principle that he was able to reflect God's will in healing the sick, in direct opposition to every supposed material law. It was out of his understanding of the divine law that he declared, "It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." He knew that evil and suffering, which are totally contrary to Principle, could be, and must be, proved unreal, and destroyed through the understanding of God's will. He proved that, as Mrs. Eddy has said on page 208 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "This is the law of Truth to error, 'Thou shalt surely die.' This law is a divine energy. Mortals cannot prevent the fulfilment of this law; it covers all sin and its effects. God is All, and by virtue of this nature and allness He is congnizant only of good." The false human will seems to be constantly battling against the true activity of divine will. If, in this seemingly incessant struggle, a man leans to the dictates of human will, he is "beaten with many stripes," and the only benefit he may gain from his experience will be found in the proportion that he assimilates the lessons which the effect of yielding to human will teaches. But if a man sincerely desires to be guided by the wisdom of God, the struggle between the false concepts and the spiritual idea becomes a winning one, and he will emerge from every battle against material will with a stronger confidence in the power of divine Principle to overrule and destroy every sense of wrong, sickness, and death.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Almost every conceivable wrong has, at one time or another,...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access