Article December 10, 1927 Issue

True Self-Possession

ETHEL MUNRO GOSS

One hears a great deal in these modern days of the need for self-expression. It is claimed by some that one of the chief factors in success is the cultivation of a forceful personality, and that one of the causes of human failure is lack of self-development along this line. Such a theory is based on the belief of a human self with an existence separate from God,—a belief in a material existence,—the center of which is the so-called human "I". The same tendency in human thought is apt to dwell on the spiritual life as colorless and insipid, and as being one of continual self-repression.

For thousands of years men believed that the earth was the center of the universe; but through scientific observation and study it was finally discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, and that the sun is the center of the solar system. While the wrong belief did not alter the facts of the true relation of the earth and sun, yet as long as the world was ignorant of these facts, it did not make the progress which depended on a true knowledge of them.

Self-possession which is based on the belief of a human self existing apart from God will never heal the sick or do the works our Master commanded his followers to do. The tendency to make the human self the center of happiness and success is based on a wrong valuation of life. For a time such a belief may seem to inspire confidence and to meet with a certain measure of success, but before long the bubble breaks at the touch of sorrow or disease, and then the much-vaunted self-reliance is helpless. Sooner or later the test comes, and the confidence which is based on self-arrogance crumbles in the grip of circumstances.

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