Editorial June 12, 1948 Issue

THE WILL OF GOD

L. Ivimy Gwalter

One of the most joyous aspects of Christian Science is that it reveals to humanity the beauty, tenderness, might, grandeur, and lovableness of God's will. Mankind has long misinterpreted the will of God as a thing to fear and from which to flee. It is related of a ship in distress at sea that the passengers were finally told that there was nothing to do but to submit themselves to the will of God, whereupon one of them said, "Is it as bad as that?" The belief that God inflicts the dictates of His will in death and disaster is at the root of much disease and despair and has led men to resort to material means for relief rather than to Spirit, God.

Repeatedly in the Old and New Testaments the goodness and love of God's will are extolled. The Master, Christ Jesus, said (Matt. 18:14), "It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish," and he proved this through his works. Again he affirmed it was God's will that of all which the Father had given him nothing should be lost (see John 6:39). His world-wide prayer envisions God's will being done in earth as in heaven. In the light of his previous utterances may we not see in the experience on the eve of his crucifixion, when he resigned himself to God's will, not helpless submission to an unpropitious situation, but rather the deep, sacred conviction that no matter what the senses might testify, all that could come from the experience was that God's will should be glorified in sublime triumph.

Mary Baker Eddy says much in her writings about the will of God and its fictitious inversion, the so-called human, mortal, or corporeal will. In a Bible lesson which begins on page 180 of her "Miscellaneous Writings" and which is worthy of profound study, she says (p. 185), "The will of God, or power of Spirit, is made manifest as Truth, and through righteousness,—not as or through matter,—and it strips matter of all claims, abilities or disabilities, pains or pleasures." Here she defines the will of God as the power of Spirit, alias the power of divine Love, the power which is omnipotence itself, and which is omnipresent and omniscient. This power reveals matter not as a thing existing outside of Spirit on which or through which Spirit acts, nor as a condition of being over which Spirit has little or no control, but as merely a supposititious inversion or misstatement of Mind, God. Thus matter is proved utterly impossible, false, and nonexistent, having no power to limit, fetter, or condition man, God's image, or to constitute his being.

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