WAGES are the payment every man receives for whatever he may accomplish. It is, as it were, his requital. Metaphysically there is no escaping them, whether they are the wages of sin, which Paul told the Romans is death, or the wages of Principle, which is eternal life. To the world this is something of an enigma, yet it takes very little metaphysical knowledge to understand its inevitability. Sin is grounded in materiality, and the very fact of material existence predicates death. Human life has been the subject of a thousand similes, but there is no avoiding the appropriateness of the simile that it is a straight line drawn between the two points of birth and death. Birth is the requital or wage of the belief in material generation, and death is the ultimate penalty or wage of that belief. Scholasticism has represented death as the gateway to eternal life, whether in heaven or in hell. The idea is, of course, hopelessly illogical. "Death," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 203 of Science and Health, "is not a stepping-stone to Life, immortality, and bliss. The so-called sinner is a suicide. Sin kills the sinner and will continue to kill him so long as he sins. The foam and fury of illegitimate living and of fearful and doleful dying should disappear on the shore of time; then the waves of sin, sorrow, and death beat in vain."

The belief in materiality is sin. The sin of omission, possibly, to the man educated into a belief in the reality of matter, rather than the sin of commission, but nevertheless sin. If to this sin of omission he adds the sin of commission, that is to say if he indulges in some expression of animality which society has agreed upon describing as sin, he may hurry the ultimate penalty, but the requital will come in any case. To avoid this requital is quite impossible, by any means save those which Jesus preached, namely, the gaining of that knowledge of Truth which is itself the wages of spiritual well-doing. "This is life eternal," Jesus said to his disciples, on the road to Gethsemane, "that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Tradition has pictured him standing before the great golden vine, in the temple, and making aloud his great prayer. Whether tradition is accurate or not is entirely immaterial, there is in any case no mistaking what he intended by the true vine. The lesson he was engaged in teaching was the lesson he was always engaged in teaching, namely, that the knowledge of Principle, that is to say of the allness of Spirit and the consequent nothingness of matter, was in itself eternal life. It is no wonder, then, that Mrs. Eddy has made this the cardinal point in her metaphysical system, and has expressed it in that passage, on pages 9 and 10 of "Unity of Good," where she writes: "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system from all others. The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because they are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the sole cause. It would be difficult to name any previous teachers, save Jesus and his apostles, who have thus taught."

What, then, the whole matter comes to is this, that as a man sows so shall he reap. His wages are simply the crop he rears, and his seed is simply his thoughts. The guarding of his thoughts, then, must constitute his daily work, and his success in keeping his thoughts pure sums up the measure of protection which he affords himself. As surely as his thoughts stray into the pleasant fields of matter, so surely is he earning the wages of sin. As steadfastly as he passes them under the rod into the spiritual sheepfold must he attain that security which is protection upon earth, and ultimately acquire that fuller knowledge of Principle, the wages of which are eternal life. The whole battle of physical existence is seen, then, to be an individual battle. Temptation to go astray in myriads of ways may seem to come from without, but if the individual is steadfastly guarding his thoughts, his protection against this temptation is secure. The temptation may come in untold ways, but it will come in its most deadly form in proportion to the pleasure which it offers. No human being wishes to believe in sorrow or sickness. He may yield to them out of ignorance, but never with satisfaction. In the case of pleasure this is perfectly different. Here he goes out to meet sin halfway, or a good deal more than halfway, and yields to it with satisfaction. The ultimate wages of death he may know are inevitable, but he forgets this in the pleasant orgy of temporary sensuous enjoyment.