Nicol C. Campbell
My Path of Truth
The School of Truth
Johannesburg, 2nd ed., 1954.
[31] Of the hundreds of people I have met, I think I can say, in all sincerity, that very, very few can pray with complete conviction and abandonment, "Thy will be done". They say 'Thy will be done' knowing that they have certain reservations in their minds, that their thoughts run something like this: "I know that God IS and that He is good," but they do not understand that He is All-power; they know that He is very powerful, that He must have a great deal of knowledge and that His Spirit must be in every corner in the universe; then they look into their own lives in which there is perhaps a certain amount of poverty and maybe a great deal of unhappiness, where chronic disease is rife and prevails, if not for them, then for their loved ones, or for their friends, or many others whom they only see or hear about, and their confidence in this 'loving Father' is sorely shaken.
It is in desperation that they ask, "Can I say to You, God, 'Thy will be done, but let it be only good for me'?" fearing, as they do, that it may be His will that all these discordant conditions in the world, that they may have been expressly sent by Him to strengthen character, to test their faith, so that perhaps, as a result of these [32] many unhappy problems, a greater consciousness of Himself may be awakened in them.
They are not at all sure of what God may have in store for them. Most people are consciously or subconsciously afraid of the negation they see around them, many even imagining that it must be His will for them and thus represent, in some incomprehensible way, their highest good.
But they do not want it! so--to be on the safe side--they pray 'Thy will be done' with many reservations, such as: 'But I do not want that adverse condition', or, 'I cannot endure that particular disease', or 'I cannot cope with that degree of poverty and lack'.
Let us now think about God and try to come to some conclusion as to His Nature and what His will must be for His beloved children.
In the first place, what kind of God would send, not merely the smaller trials that beset mortals, but those major conditions that appear capable of actually destroying us, mentally, emotionally and physically?
I see a great deal of the negative side of life: persistent disease, dipsomania, broken homes, squalor, lack of every conceivable kind; and what is for me so distressing is that the vast majority of human beings suffer from some of these unhappy conditions, from which I, thank God, am free. What is the lesson here? Why should God single me out to have all good? I certainly dare not imagine that He wishes me to be happy, successful, and prosperous while my neighbour lives in poverty, disease, misery, and lack. Why should this be so? Could God's will for me be different from [33] what it is for you, who are just as much His child?
What sort of man would I be if my son were bringing a great deal of trouble into my life, and I, wishing him to build up a stronger character, or thinking to awaken in him a greater consciousness of God, were to hit him over the head with a chopper saying, "That will teach you!", and were thereupon to consign him to filthiness and squalor, driving him by my harshness first to drink and then to suicide?
What would you think of me? Would you start wondering if these experiences had been necessary for his development or would you be shaken with revulsion? I do not need to tell you that you would be horrified, yet, this is the treatment that the world accepts for God's expressions, you and me and mankind in general, believing that it is meted out by Him. Can you wonder that the average man shrinks from praying, 'Thy will be done', while he holds such fantastic views?
I know that problems--solved--build up faith and that trials--overcome--strengthen character, but are these the only means of achieving this? Is it by God's choice that we travel the hard road? How can we ever find out what is actually His will?
Let me investigate.
Suppose I start praying from tonight: "God, let Your will be done, in and through my life. You are All-presence, All-intelligence and All-power, take this my body and do with it what You please", and if, after a few days, a week or a month, I find disease invading my body, unhappiness coming into my life, my substance and security slipping out of my hands, [34] must I attribute all this to God's will saying: 'He does not want me to learn by and through love, but by means of suffering and bitter experience, this is His way of purifying me for some particular purpose'?
As these trials continue, I begin to doubt the wisdom of my prayer so I change it from asking that 'His will be done' to petitioning that He cancel the working of this negative will in my life and inaugurate the operation of His positive will for good, and I begin, at once, enthusiastically to expect this good, and I find that it, too, comes into my life.
Now I do not know where I am. Were both these manifestations, the positive and the negative, God's will for me? If that is so, I still do not know whether His will is constructive or destructive. Is it possible for God to be both good and evil? Suppose I want an increase in salary of 30 or 40 pounds a month, and I pray in this connection, "Your will be done, God!" and instead of receiving more money my receipts are reduced? Since I am praying, 'Your will be done', surely this must be His will.
The whole thing is too confusing. I can never know what God's will is because, no matter what becomes manifest, it seems that I must attribute it to Him, but is this the Truth of the matter? Is it not perhaps that I fail to take into consideration the possibility that I lack the requisite quality of faith, the consciousness of the Presence of God in me and my affairs, and that it is not due to God, but because of something in me that lack appears, disease crops up, and unhappiness persists.
[35] When you start to work with God you must have a firm foundation from which to proceed; you must recognise that not only is He Almighty, but that He is a Father and is Love, so that you can never attribute both good and evil to Him.
All who worship Him must do so in the Spirit of Love and of Truth. If you believe that today He is kind, showering blessings upon you which tomorrow He will withdraw in punishment, if you think that now He bestows happiness and anon misery, if you imagine that at one moment He is your health and in the next your infirmity, you are investing Him with mankind's frailties, but we cannot judge God according to human standards for He is not finite as we are, but Infinite. And even this word does not sum up God, it is but an attribute of Him Who is All-life, All-power, All-knowledge and All-love.
Since He is forever Love He acts in all things from the standpoint of love, and we must follow His example.
If my child errs, far from leaving him to suffer for his mistakes, I try to teach him in love; I point out to him the type of problems that his present course of action is not only anticipating for him, but literally guaranteeing in his life. I do not seek to coerce him, for I know, from my own nature, that any application of force will but arouse his resistance. Just as I will not be bullied by others, so do I not expect him to react constructively to such treatment from me, but, in remembering how a show of love always disarms me, I know that by resorting to this I shall compel him to repay me in kind, so that his one desire will [36] be to please me and he will walk willingly in the way that I am indicating.
If I, an earthly father, can display so much consideration, how much greater is not the goodwill that God has toward each and all of us? If you have only a faint inkling of what this must be, you can have no hesitation in praying, "Your will be done", for you know that you are appealing, not to some measurable quality of love but to Love Infinite, which means that, if you took all the love in the universe and concentrated it at one spot, you would have only a pin point of the Love that is God, and in this lies your security.
As you pray to this divine Essence, you are saying: "I know nothing about Truth, or Love, or Power. I know, however, that I have made many mistakes, but I am not afraid to throw myself upon Your love for me. I know that You will lead me gently to the solution of my every problem, so I ask in trust--and in the expectancy of all good--that Your will be done."
It is so important for you to have as clear a conception as possible of what the Love of God is, that I will try to illustrate it in another way.
Imagine that you are dealing with one large family called "Smith", each member of which has, of course, his own individual first name so that whether you refer to Mary, James, John, George, or Jane, you will still be alluding to our family, Smith.
None of these 5 is identical one with the other, and none contains within himself all the characteristics appertaining to Smith, nor does anyone possess a single [37] trait that is not of Smith. Each is a particular aspect of the genus Smith and all together constitute the whole of Smith. Now, consider God along these lines. Run over in your minds all the constructive qualities you know of, such as: human affection, health, happiness, kindness, beauty, affluence, generosity, etc., etc., and you will be itemizing the constituents of good which is God, but, just as each individual Smith, taken separately, does not represent the whole clan, if these qualities of the father, considered severally, do not make up the Totality of Deity which is complete perfection--something that you, with your finite minds, cannot possibly comprehend, but what you can understand, is that His will must coincide with the attributes that constitute Him--there can be no contradiction between God's nature and that which He desires to bring about.
A being, made up entirely of evil, could not in any circumstances cherish benevolent intentions, and in like manner God, Who is the sum total of good, cannot will discord of any kind for any of His creations. This being so, you can rest assured that, wherever His will holds sway, either on this plane of consciousness, or the next, or the ultimate one, it must be good and constitute your personal weal, so that you can invoke it confidently--without any hesitation whatsoever--in the prayer, "Thy will be done."
The story of the 'Prodigal Son' is a perfect illustration of the love of God for one of His children. All that the Father asks is that you say, "I will arise. I will ascend out of these negations, where the senses [38] rule, I will cease identifying that which is negative with God, I will climb up and leave this error behind me, I will raise my eyes and behold my Father's home, the consciousness of all-good, and I will say, 'I am returning, I am coming back to the place of security and peace that I left long ago'", and, at these your words, the Father will welcome you back, will re-instate you, and surround you with His love.
I realise that, universally speaking, there is a cold, impersonal Law; it functions in the world about you, where a typhoon may destroy hundreds of people, a tidal wave, thousands, and a volcanic eruption, tens of thousands. These are mighty forces operating in nature, but there is Something infinitely greater than these, the power of Love, of the Light 'that lighteth every man that cometh into the world', it destroys all that is negative, all that is dark. It is to this Power which Christ, Buddha, and all the other great leaders of humanity found within themselves, that you must pray, "Thy will be done." In so doing, you are approaching God, a tremendous auditorium of Light. Come then to Him freely and confidently; have no reservations in your minds, speak to Him intimately, present your problems of doubt and darkness and they will be dissolved in His resplendent effulgence. Think you that there will be some colossal clash, the powers of good and evil contending with one another? Not so, for the problem that you brought with you will have become the solution, as disease gives way to health, discord changes into harmony, lack becomes abundance, faith takes the place of fear, and ignorance [39] blossoms into knowledge. Such is the Power in Whom I believe; to Whom I would lead you; not some anthropomorphic being outside myself, nor some impersonal Law operating only within the realm of cause and effect, but the Quintessence of Love that wipes all tears from our eyes.
As science advances, the scientist, who has verified some particular law, finds another law within it, and says, "We have now discovered everything," only to find a few months or years later that a colleague has gone still further disclosing yet another law within the last one, and so it continues ad infinitum.
These people are uncovering only that which was always fact, but as man evolves he absorbs ever more and more of God as Intelligence, though, no matter how far he goes, he will never fathom the infinite, he will never be able to say, "I have discovered all there is to know about the universe."
In the application of Truth, the individual starts out like a little child, he makes mistakes, tumbles down, gets up again and goes on and on, and one fine day he finds that he can run with God. He has made enough spiritual progress to know of problems that present themselves, that they have no power to persist in the Presence of Love. He recognises, at last, that, when he identifies himself with God, ALL-GOOD IS HIS, and that he is moreover Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence and that perfect Love that casteth out all fear.
It is much the same where the establishment in consciousness of faith is concerned.
[40] When one is learning to play the piano, one practices and practices all day long, one studies the laws of harmony--all the theoretical side of music--in order, at long last, to become a professional. Such a one does not let up even when he has become a front-ranking pianist. Paderewski once said: "If I don't practice for a day, I notice it; and if I don't practice for two days, my manager notices it; but, if I don't practice for three days, the public notices it!"
With faith it is the same. The moment you stop using it, it does not disappear, but it becomes static, and in order to awaken it again some problem or some difficult situation has to be presented to you, so that you have, once more, to put it to the test. As you start to use it, your various trials take on less the aspect of bitter battles and assume the character of adventures with God. You begin to feel that though, being but a human being, you will certainly make mistakes, you nevertheless have, driving and directing you, a living, vital Partner within you, Who will not permit you to be hurt or lost. As you are about to put your hand upon the stove and burn it, He removes it for you, and when you would enter the wrong door, He prevents you, by shutting it in your face, and gradually you will begin to recognise these leads from Him.
Let us all, therefore, seek to realise that God is perfect Love and Good, so that, no matter what issues we may be called upon to face, we can with full confidence say: "Thy will be done", understanding that, far from having to compromise with 'ifs' and 'buts', we can turn everything over, in trust, to the Spirit of God--of Love, Joy and Happiness--that it may bring forth His Perfection in our lives.
Such is the quality of faith that Christ enjoined upon us when He said: "Unless ye have the faith of a little child, ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of God": not that the Father would debar us, but the Open Sesame to all that we desire is FAITH, which is the only key that will unlock our hearts and release the Spirit within us Which is for each and every individual His particular Kingdom of Heaven, with riches spilling out upon him, with happiness, security, and peace encompassing him, and all the good he craves heaped upon him, to have and to hold, to share and to spare.
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