Editorial April 10, 1954 Issue

THE MASTER'S MOTIVE

Helen Wood Bauman

One can scarcely read the Gospels without realizing that the motive of Christ Jesus in his earthly mission was to demonstrate the Father's will and in this way to show all men that their motive in life should be like his. He said (John 6:38, 40): "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. ... And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life."

Because of his consummate meekness, the Master was able to work out God's will in practical evidence of its justice and tenderness and immortal design. He proved that God's will is the supreme law of the universe, but that mankind must obey it if they would fully experience its control. By making divine law clear to human thought as God's will for the spiritual perfection of His creation, Christian Science makes the motive of Jesus' mission clear. And it shows its students how to conform their motive in life to the Master's in order to do the works he did. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 208): "Mortals have only to submit to the law of God, come into sympathy with it, and to let His will be done. This unbroken motion of the law of divine Love gives, to the weary and heavy-laden, rest. But who is willing to do His will or to let it be done? Mortals obey their own wills, and so disobey the divine order."

Until Christian Science comes to him, one little understands the action of human will or how to rid himself of its wrong impulsions. Human will is more than stubborn determination to have one's own way in personal matters. It is the impelling force of the material senses, the conscious and unconscious mesmeric action of the carnal mind, which claims to produce and maintain the illusion of matter and to govern its conditions. To deny the existence of matter, then, is to part with human will; it is to undermine the self-deception that constitutes mortal existence. The understanding of God as the only Mind corrects the whole mortally mental structure and stops insubordinate action, whether conscious or unconscious.

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