Article February 22, 1900 Issue

The Joy of Work in Christian Science

BY ALBERT HORTSMEIER

The keynote of Christian Science is joy. Jesus said to the sick of the palsy, "Son, be of good cheer." The first effect of Christian Science on us is to cheer us up; we feel an irresistible inclination to look on the bright side of things; things do not look so hard as they did, and at last we find that our faith, our understanding, does make us whole.

Thinking of how hard things are never helps, but on the contrary is the very circumstance that makes it impossible to accomplish what we would and should; whereas every one knows by experience that looking on the bright side has helped us to overcome seemingly insurmountable difficulties. And here is where Christian Science is of such great assistance, because it shows us that there is in reality only one side to every question, and that is the bright side, because God is Light and He is everywhere, and how then can there be a dark side? How can there be shadow when Light is all about us? So in healing disease, ailments which seemed so difficult, so impossible to cure, which impressed us so forcibly with their seeming reality, vanish into nothingness before the joyful realization that there is only the one side, that man is perfect because he is the child of God. Every achievement that seems difficult to human sense at once becomes easier when we learn that Jesus' words, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light," are proven true in Christian Science, which has come to take away the hard yoke of men and put in place an easy one, and to remove the heavy burden from men's shoulders and substitute a light one.

But, says some one, "If the yoke in Christian Science is easy and the burden light, why do Christian Scientists usually work so hard?" The fact that Christian Scientists see so clearly how far from the reality this seeming condition of the world is, and know how these errors can be eliminated through Christian Science, impels them to the most earnest, serious, persistent, joyful work,—joyful because they know that spiritual activity means work with God and not the toilsome labor of man-made methods. They are taught in their text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, that "God rests in action" (page 513), and that all that is really done is perfect, and that the chief work to be done is to get the material, the unreal, self out of the way and so let God do the healing; but all the work they have to do to arrive at this point is light compared with the wearisome labor men are accustomed and compelled to do while still groping blindly in the darkness of mortal belief, before Christian Science came to call them into "His marvelous light," emphasizing the Biblical statement that "with God all things are possible;" and as they have the light of Christian Science to work by, they consider the work necessary to heal as a sacred privilege rather than a laborious duty. Christian Scientists are workers, but they are not a laborious people; really the great fact is that the object of Christian Science is to do away with the laborious methods of men, and show man how to work intelligently with God. It should be a joy to work when we have been shown how. Cheerful, unselfish work cannot hurt anybody; it is the toilsome labor without knowing where the end will be, "without hope and without God in the world," that wears out men. As Christ came to his disciples on the shores of Galilee after their night of unavailing toil in the dark, so Christian Science comes to us and tells us to cast our net "on the right side" and we shall find how easily God does what all the most strenuous human labour cannot accomplish.