Article December 9, 1922 Issue

"Thy will be done"

JAMES F. FAIRLEIGH

The words, "Thy will be done," which Christ Jesus uttered in his prayer during the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount, may seem mysterious in meaning, and may even seem charged with dark forebodings, until illumined by Christian Science. Instead of being the plaintive cry of the grief-stricken, the bedridden, and the storm-tossed, they are a declaration of independence, victory, and joy. Manifestly, until one understands what the will of God is, one is unable to understand what Christ Jesus meant, and is therefore unable to pray aright.

The true meaning of the words, "Thy will be done," has often been obscured under old theological interpretation; and the repetition of them by many is but a vain utterance. There are some words from which so-called mortal mind seems to recoil, and which it dislikes to utter. They arouse a sense of fear and wonder. This was true of many of us in respect to these words in our Lord's Prayer until we learned their true meaning, as revealed in Christian Science. When, in human belief, a loved one became ill, when some apparent financial misfortune occurred, when some so-called act of nature, such as a flood, brought seeming loss to many, our usual expression was, "Thy will be done." There was never a more distressing or greater misrepresentation of God than this habit of constantly linking evil with His divine government. In the gospel of John we read that Christ Jesus said, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." Now Christ Jesus also said, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Therefore the will of God is not destructive, but constructive; it is not a rebuke, but an uplift; it is not sorrowful, but joyous.

It may be that in repeating our Lord's Prayer we hesitated or trembled when we came to the words, "Thy will be done," and with various mental reservations uttered them in the sense of Tennyson's lines:—

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