Article October 23, 1920 Issue

Human Will Power Condemned

GEOFFREY HAMLYN

It is doubtful whether any one outside the ranks of the Christian Science movement has any proper conception of what he is doing when he makes use of what is known as will power. He may fondly imagine that he is improving his mentality, but if he only knew the baneful effects of the use of human will power, he would take care to guard himself against it. What is a man doing when he makes use of human will power? He is declaring the reality, the power of a mind apart from God; he is building up the carnal mind's belief in itself, and since the carnal mind is, as Paul declared, "enmity against God," he is separating himself from God and from all that God stands for. "Error," writes Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 537), "excludes itself from harmony," and that is exactly what such a man is doing, for he is saying that some other mind than God, divine Principle, who is infinite Mind, has presence and power; he is breaking the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Mind is God; but the Mind that is God is not a mind conscious of good and evil, but Spirit, which is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," and which, if evil formed any part of its consciousness, would have therein the seeds of destruction. There is in reality only the one self-existence, the one Mind which men call God, infinite, eternal, conscious of naught besides itself or unlike itself, and recognizing no reality in matter or evil. This Mind is the Principle of existence, it is Life, Truth, and Love, and its will is the only will, its law the only law, and man is its idea, its reflection. Consequently, it is only as the so-called human will gives way to the will of divine Principle that God's law, the law of love, the law of health and harmony, comes into operation in individual experience. "The power of the human will," writes Mrs. Eddy, on page 206 of Science and Health, "should be exercised only in subordination to Truth; else it will misguide the judgment and free the lower propensities. It is the province of spiritual sense to govern man. Material, erring, human thought acts injuriously both upon the body and through it."

How often does one see men who have been in the habit of exercising the human will in accordance with the promptings of the carnal mind, full of fear and in constant suffering, even though they may be men of high ideals, and what the world would call good men. How has this come about? They have been building up their belief in the reality and power of the human mind, of the mind whose subjective state is matter, and consequently they have been building up their belief in matter, and the inevitable fear of matter and evil which goes with this belief. How are they to be healed? There is only one way in which this can be done. It is useless to deal with effects and merely to address one's self to the removal of the particular discords which this aggravated belief in mortal mind and consequently in matter has occasioned. The moment one discordant belief has disappeared another may seem ready to take its place. The only sure method is given by Mrs. Eddy, beginning on page 185 of Science and Health: "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. Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work determines health." One of the greatest services which Christian Science is rendering to mankind is in laying bare the evil effects of mortal mind methods—will power, suggestion, mesmerism, and hypnotism—and in showing the way of release from their effects through the understanding of that Mind which is Spirit, which is perfect Love, for "perfect love casteth out fear."

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