Article August 28, 1943 Issue

True Employment

EDNA WELBORN RUSSELL

Differences arising between capital and labor have produced in all countries labor problems which, in greater or less degree, affect every individual in these countries, and the right solution of which is a demand affecting the progress of the nations as a whole. Some nations have tried to work out these problems by depriving their subjects of individual initiative and independence, so that they become as automata, under the dominant control of one or more ruling persons. Democratic countries have striven to work it out by permitting freedom of action for both employer and employee; yet injustices, dishonesty politics, and greed have not been successfully eliminated. This seeming lack of reconciliation between capital and labor reveals the need for divine Mind to be demonstrated in everyday life. Christian Science offers a practical solution to this problem.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 211), "Animal magnetism fosters suspicious distrust where honor is due." Evil engenders impositions and unfair advantages among men to promote selfish ends, and because this impersonal evil is not recognized as the common enemy of both capital and labor, and promptly dealt with as such, it would separate employer and employee. Unselfish consideration of each situation from the basis of divine Mind as the Principle of each and all, corrects, heals, adjusts differences, and promotes unanimity of thought against this common impersonal enemy, and reveals in ever-increasing degree the brotherhood of man. Was not this what Paul meant when, in his first letter to them, he warned the Corinthians against strife and division, and said, "For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building"?

An appreciation of Mrs. Eddy's words in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 60) "Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul," turns our thought in the right direction. We find that true business is the active individual expression of the qualities of God. Such qualities are manifested humanly as intelligence, honesty, justice, goodness, and so on. A Christian Scientist learns that Soul is God, and that man, as the reflection or manifestation of divine Mind, is eternally expressing the resources of Soul, for he is actively employed, productively, progressively, and selflessly.

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