Article September 18, 1926 Issue

Failure Impossible to Omnipotence

TULLY A. NETTLETON

It is inconceivable that omnipotence should fail in any undertaking in which it might engage. The prophet Isaiah speaks of the Lord as saying of His Word, "It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." No one would question the authority of Deity to make that statement, or the power of Deity to carry it out. And yet, although one is sometimes inclined to forget it amid the stress of human circumstances, individual spiritual man is as truly the expression of God as is the Word of which Isaiah wrote. It is therefore equally certain that the one who goes forth to work out only the purposes of God shall not return empty-handed, but shall accomplish that which God wills, and shall prosper in the task to which God directs him.

Through this concept of man as the idea or expression of God, Christian Science gives humanity the divinely mental antidote for the belief of discouragement or disappointment in any line. In it the business-man finds dominion over the disheartening fear of lack or failure, or proves the inability of the seeming experience of so-called failure to crush him. Similarly, the Christian Science practitioner finds in the true idea of man as God's image the key to the victory over the seemingly stubborn and unyielding beliefs of disease. In he finds, too, the assurance that there is no occasion for delay in healing or for yielding to any false claim as impossible of solution. "If the student adheres strictly to the teachings of Christian Science and ventures not to break its rules, he cannot fail of success in healing," declares Mrs. Eddy on page 448 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

To meet and destroy a thought of failure, one should first realize that God creates only that which is good, and makes all that is made; that He never made discouragement; that He never created failure or the fear of it. Then one should analyze human thought to determine just what it is he wishes to succeed in, and what his motives are for wishing success. It must be remembered that to fail in evil is better than to succeed in it. God blesses only the good purpose. The divine assurance of success exists only where the human will is in subjection to the will of God, which, after all, is broad enough to embrace all good to all mankind.

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