Article March 16, 1935 Issue

Benefits of Working Rightly

JEANETTE F. SUTTON

In the tenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke, it is related that two sisters, Mary and Martha, received Jesus into their home as he sojourned in their village. Mary sat at Jesus' feet and listened to his teaching, "but Martha was cumbered about much serving." When she requested that Jesus bid Mary help her with her household tasks, he gently rebuked her, then said, "But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Here it is indicated that Jesus considered the essential thing to be receptivity to spiritual truth rather than a burdensome sense of labor, which engenders nonreceptivity. This attitude toward undue thought taking concerning material affairs was characteristic of his entire ministry; and no other ever accomplished such important work, work so far-reaching in its influence upon all humanity throughout the ages, as did the Master.

The business man and the professional, the housewife, the laborer, the teacher, and the scholar—anyone engaged in an honest occupation—can make successful application of the rules of Christian Science to his individual problems. One of the benefits which can be experienced is the overcoming of fatigue, which is not necessarily a concomitant of work, for we read in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 183), "The supposed laws which result in weariness and disease are not His laws, for the legitimate and only possible action of Truth is the production of harmony."

The student who is endeavoring to work according to God's law of harmony and order, as understood through Christian Science, becomes cognizant of the fact that physical labor, no matter how humanly necessary or important it may be, is not his real activity. His essential work is to reflect God, divine Mind, and in Christian Science he finds this to be as natural as it is for the mirror to reflect the image of one standing before it. Neither can he be fatigued by reflecting. He discovers that if he refuses to regard his duties as wearisome, but thinks of them as opportunities to apply the truth, he is not exhausted in the performance of them. We read in Science and Health (p. 218), "If it were not for what the human mind says of the body, the body, like the inanimate wheel, would never be weary."

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