When Christ Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane with his disciples he prayed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me," adding, "nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 22:42). The Master's acquiescence in the will of God was not submission to a power beyond his comprehension. It was, rather, the acknowledgment of the all-powerful divine Mind and of his identity as its representative. It was the truth of his being to which he submitted.

He was aware that God's man, His spiritual idea, reflecting intelligence, dignity, and self-respect, is always obedient to the will of God. He knew that man expresses the spontaneity of the forces of Love and lives by the law of Truth, which sustains him, and that his own strength lay in obedience to the divine Principle, Mind. Accepting the unalterable basis of the Supreme Being's eternal perfection and of man as His eternal, perfect image and likeness, he sought God's perfect plan that would reveal the supremacy of God's will over human outlining and preconceived planning. He permitted no suggestions of mortal mind either to obscure the Christ-consciousness or to prevent divine Mind's control from being demonstrated.

Man has the will to do right because he is allegiant to his Maker, who is always right. He is in submission to good only and loyal to the divine commands, because he reflects good, God. To pray, "Let that Mind be in me, 'which was also in Christ Jesus,'" shows one's desire and willingness to be led by the will of Spirit instead of relying upon any so-called personal will.

To realize that as an idea of Spirit, Mind, one has no being or supposed human selfhood of his own to rely upon is to refuse to indulge in the dictates of mortal mind or in any self-imposed idiosyncrasies. Such a one does not give in to mental suggestions or use stereotyped, borrowed formulas calling themselves will power, which only retard his spiritual growth. Man has the God-given capacity to express good at all times, and it is when one accepts and expresses the divine good, rejecting mortal mind counterfeits of God's will, such as impurities, aggressiveness, unrighteousness, and faithlessness, that one is actually carrying out the will of the Father.

Man lives, moves, and rests in the consciousness of divine Mind; therefore he cannot become inert or apathetic. Recognizing Mind to be Life, one can exchange inertia for activity and apathy for alertness. The divine will is not passive, but is always in operation for the maintenance of peace and harmony. Unfortunately mortals seek that peace and harmony through human will power, through blind belief in the force of mental suggestion, but human will power fails to heal when the hour of need is at hand. It is unreliable because it does not stem from infinite divine Principle, Mind, the source of all power.

Before he understood the power of divine Mind as taught in Christian Science, the writer tried to use human so-called will power to break the smoking habit. Like many smokers, he believed that he could give up the habit any time he wished, but when he tried to stop smoking, human will power was not effectual.

Such will power is not a remedial agent. In fact, it is the very agent that produces and prolongs the habit. For instance, there was a time when smokers did not smoke; that is, sometime in their human experience they started the habit; but what started them? Self-hypnosis! They actually used will power to convince themselves that what they were doing was in accord with social custom, hence right, but "human will-power may infringe the rights of man," says Mary Baker Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 144). And she concludes this paragraph on will power with the following words: "It produces evil continually, and is not a factor in the realism of being. Truth, and not corporeal will, is the divine power which says to disease, 'Peace, be still.'"

Evil declared that it would open the eyes of mortals to pleasant worldliness and make them as gods; instead, it closed their eyes to the health-giving spirituality of divine Love. Mortal mind apportions to itself tasks impossible to accomplish. Evil tempts with alluring promises, and when men acquiesce in its temptations they fail to obey the will of the Father. It is inconceivable that our Father, divine Love, would or could beguile His image and likeness and lead him astray. Christ Jesus could not be tempted by any enticing suggestions of the so-called carnal mind, because he recognized the nothingness of human will and obeyed implicitly the will of divine Principle, which governs the real man's every action.

Conscious of his spiritual relationship to his Father as reflection, one cannot be drawn away from good, for he images forth fortitude, stability, and purity. Acknowledging the will of infinite divine Mind as supreme, one is fortified to resist whatever is found to be unlike that Mind.

When the writer awakened to the fact that he was mocking real manhood by using will power to gratify mortal sense, he found that Christian Science demonstrates the spiritual, incorporeal man, who is the spontaneous expression of infinite Mind. The revelation of this truth came to him direct from God, nullifying all desire for smoking, and healing him.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 162), "Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies." And farther on in the same paragraph she says, "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind." Yes, a change of base is all that is required for true reasoning.

Christian Science gives mankind moral coinage based, not on human reason, but on spiritual understanding. With this courage we can disprove the illusion of error's clamor for pleasure in dissipation. As we understandingly rely upon God as the infinite source of all good, we rest in the confident expectation that His infinite goodness will be abundantly manifest in our daily experience.

The Christ, Truth, reveals man as pure, uncontaminated, satisfied, rejoicing in spirituality. Man reflect all that God knows, and since God is good, man, as His likeness, knows only good. A belief in evil, therefore, can find no lodgment in a consciousness filled with spiritual ideas. God is individualized in the man and the universe that He created, and He saw "every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

Man being "very good," he does not have to give up anything that is good. He can never be separated from health, holiness, happiness, or harmony, for God Himself can never be separated from His own all-inclusive perfection. Since God cannot experience evil, neither can man.

When we claim our priceless heritage of divine sonship, we are claiming the Christ-blessings of sinless joy, unshakable trust in good, and everlasting satisfaction in the understanding of man's spiritual and perfect selfhood. By knowing that we are subject to the will of God, we prove so-called will power powerless and express more of man's God-given dominion and freedom. Thus we utilize the power of divine Mind and prove this Mind to be the only Mind and its will the only will.