Editorial August 25, 1917 Issue

Work and Play

William D. McCrackan

The common saying, "All work and no paly makes Jack a dull boy," may sound too frivolous to apply to spiritual problems, but the kernel contained in this saying is strictly mataphysical and Christian. Evil desires above all else to be taken seriously, but Christian Science has uncovered evil's essentially foolish nature by showing it to be error. It is not possible logically to continue to give evil the importance which it ascribes to itself, when it is understood to be a mere mistake an illusion or delusion about the truth and not the truth itself. Hence it follows that as individuals approach nearer ot God they labor less in the overcoming of error, and their work more nearly resembles play. This may astound the conventional religionist, but then the world can never be saved by listening to the opinions of that religionist. His stagnant falsities must be rejected and the living realities of the Christ, Truth, accepted.

If sin, sickness, and death are ever to be finally overcome, they must constantly become less serious to the human consciousness, until they seem so preposterous and unnatural that they no longer impose upon their would-be victims. When all evil is uncovered as a senseless imposition, spiritual progress will be more rapid. The long faces ans sour speeches of false theology, its superstitions, its half lights and gloomy corners, are already condemned. Now comes the full radiance of spiritual freedom, which brushes away the cobwebs with the breeze of truth.

The seemingly tiring details of work may be made to serve us, when we have a joyous concept of the work itself. Turning work into play takes out the sting of seriousness and weariness. Singing at our work, we break up the material laws of work and gain the spiritual sense of resting in activity. It is possible even to take one's pleasures so seriously as to turn them into painful duties. Now the performing of duty for duty's sake is one of the most profitless and depressing of earthly occupations. It has no touch of heaven and cannot lead upward. At best it is a process of marking time until the light can penetrate, but many a valiant one snared in the net of mere duty has wasted his life in sadness, when as bold stroke of deliverance would have enabled him to perform the duty and treat it as play. Here the clock conspires with false conscientiousness, making human beings slaves of time instead of free men living in eternity. Millions of people beging and end their occupations solely as the clock dictates and become veritable timepieces. The drudgery and grind of the world are appalling, because they are wholly unnecessary when man is governed by Mind. While humanity, in subjection to the beliefs of mortal mind, labors to produce all it needs for food, clothing, and shelter, truth as revealed by Christian Science explains a state of harmony in which man and his activities are wholly mental.

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