Editorial September 2, 1933 Issue

The Dignity and Desirability of Labor

W. Stuart Booth

Due to false education, theological and otherwise, mankind has accepted as if it were authentic the allegory about Adam and Eve stated in the second and succeeding chapters of Genesis. Hence there has been evolved the belief that, although man was made in the image and likeness of God, he fell from his high and holy estate and became subject to sin and sorrow, disease and death. Closely associated with the false belief that men are material and animal in origin and nature is the erroneous deduction that God pronounced a curse on men whereby they were condemned to labor: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground." From this has sprung, with all too many men, a wrong sense of labor, a belief that labor is not dignified and desirable.

Inasmuch as Christian Science is the Science of Truth, it furnishes the corrective to these and to all other false beliefs in its inspired and demonstrable teachings about God and man, and in its application of these spiritual teachings to the problems and conditions confronting mankind. For Christian Science is nothing other or less than the restatement of the law of God, the law of Love, enunciated by Christ Jesus, and the reinstatement of the healing works which accompanied and verified the Master's teachings. He it was who said, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free;" and Christian Science reveals this liberating truth about God and man.

The basis of Christian Science teaching and healing is the great spiritual fact that God, the Father and Mother of all that is real and true, is the one infinite, all-knowing Mind; that divine Love is the all-governing Principle of man and the universe. From this premise of Spirit as the perfect creator Christian Science deduces the correlative fact that individual man, the image and likeness or reflection of God, is not material, but is an individual spiritual consciousness whose inherent characteristics and qualities are derived from and are governed by divine Mind. Thus in part of her comprehensive definition of man, beginning on page 475 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy says that man is "the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker."

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