Article September 10, 1927 Issue

Thy Will

EVERETT EDGAR KING

To will presupposes a mind to make a choice or decision. The belief of many wills is based on the belief of many minds, a condition that prevails among mortals. Christian Science teaches that in reality there is only one Mind, and therefore only one will. To ask that God's will be done is to set aside human wishes and plans, in order to permit the divine Mind to operate in human affairs. It requires earnest, studious effort to put off the "old man" and to show forth the real. The spiritual man is already expressing God's purposes, and his status cannot change. As Mind, God, knows only good and is the only power, nothing but right can result where His will is unreservedly permitted to govern. Good will follow as a natural result, and wrong will be cast aside as chaff from the wheat.

To one beginning the study of Christian Science, the question might arise, How can God operate in human affairs if He exists only in the spiritual realm and knows nothing of such affairs? At the present stage of understanding it seems necessary to take human footsteps and make human decisions in transacting the affairs of daily life. This should be done with the childlike confidence and assurance that if such steps are right, God will cause them to prosper; but if not, He will modify the situation in such a way that the best will accrue to all concerned. Under God's righteous government sometimes a new plan is evolved out of an undertaking, something that could not have been apparent at the beginning, but which meets the requirements in a much better way than the original plan could ever have done.

Many a failure can be traced to a want of confidence in God, to an unwillingness to leave all with Him, to impatience and a lack of perseverance in sticking to the task until the demonstration is finished. If Moses at the Red Sea had willed some other way than God's to provide safety for those in his care, or if he had not had the courage to stand still and wait on God, but had given up before God's plan was effected, the history of the children of Israel might have been different. When the strong east wind began to blow, error may have tried to argue that here was a thing that might become their undoing; but it proved to be the very means of deliverance in providing a pathway of escape through the sea.

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