Jesus of Nazareth was the master-workman, and in this,...
The Christian Science Monitor
Jesus of Nazareth was the master-workman, and in this, as in everything else, he is the way. If the world would remember this, and would pay more actual heed to the example of his daily life, as he went about Jerusalem and Galilee intent upon his Father's business, it would be better for it. Unfortunately the claim of orthodox theology that he was God has almost stifled the world's effort to obey his command to walk in his way, and to repeat his works. Yet as Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 46), "Jesus was 'the way;' that is, he marked the way for all men."
Can any person imagine Jesus taking a holiday? The gospel historians answer the question in one of those inspired flashes with which they illuminate an entire situation, or reveal a man's character: "And in the day time he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives. And all the people came early in the morning to him in the temple, for to hear him." There the reader of the Bible story has recorded the day of Jesus the Christ, a day exemplified exactly in a sentence of Mrs. Eddy's, beginning on page 519 of Science and Health, "The highest and sweetest rest, even from a human standpoint, is in holy work." This must necessarily be so to anyone who has grasped the fundamental fact in Christian Science that causation is spiritual. For if this be admitted, it follows that there can be no exhaustion in the divine Mind or the "great First Cause," whereas the human mind, material in its essence, is, even on the showing of the medical faculty, not only liable to exhaustion, but ultimately doomed to decay. This accounts for the feverish excitement so frequently produced by amusement, and the restlessness generated by chronic indulgence in it; and explains the sardonic jest of a master of epigram, that "life might be tolerable if it were not for its diversions."
Every true worker knows the joy of work, as well as the joy of that rest, indistinguishable from the work, of the contemplation of and preparation for further work. This joy, in George Herbert's famous saying, is true of the sweeping of a room; it is the taking advantage of opportunity, and so paving the way to further opportunity. Carlyle has expressed this joy of work, whether of the broom or of the pen, whether of the spade or of the pencil, in the very perfection of words, "Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness." Yet it is a beatitude from which a goodly portion of the world is forever taking, or asking for, a holiday. No doubt Carlyle would have replied to such an objection, that your holiday maker was of the great family of the fleeing hireling, and could not leave his work because he had never found it. The true worker spends his days, because he cannot help it, in the temple, and his nights, because he cannot escape it, on the mount which is called the mount of Olives.
Every one knows that the olive, all the world over, is the symbol of peace; and it is impossible to read the Bible or Mrs. Eddy's writings without discovering the metaphysical meaning of the mountain of holiness, of revelation, or of endeavor. At night, under the stars, Jesus climbed the hill of endeavor, to find on its summit the holiness and the revelation necessary to his work in the temple on the morrow. Herod was giving himself up to the lust of the gorgeous palace at Capernaum. From Rome to Athens, from Athens to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Alexandria, the civilized world was delivering itself over to the pleasures and passions of the night, or giving itself up to the sensuous oblivion of sleep. Real joy, true peace, genuine rest, the great world knew nothing of; they were the fruits of the work of the master-workman, the sentinel of Principle on the summit of Olivet. Labor there would come to the world with the dawn, the labor from which it was always striving to escape. But the master-workman would come with the sunrise, down the slopes of the mount, to minister to a sick world in the temple courts.
Was this sick world grateful to him? It simply could not be, for it did not understand the meaning of work. It called him a winebibber and a glutton, a blasphemer and a Sabbath breaker, out of its sensuous opposition to Truth. He answered it in the unknown tongue of work, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The negative, "Thou shalt not do any work," was clearly not a command to cease from the true work, inspired by the real gospel. The traditional observance of the Jewish Sabbath with its ceremonial inactivity, must give place to the spiritual activity of divine service, as expressed in healing the sick and the rescuing of the sheep from the pit. In his answer the Jewish hierarchy saw the doom of their pretensions, and redoubled their efforts to kill him. Yet the very next words of Jesus disposed of the argument that he was a Sabbath breaker or a blasphemer. "The Son," he said, "can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do." The power, in other words, to accomplish his works lay not in the human Jesus but in the Mind of Christ. "The Apostle Paul," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 79 of Science and Health, "bade men have the Mind that was in the Christ. Jesus did his own work by the one Spirit. He said: 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' He never described disease, so far as can be learned from the Gospels, but he healed disease." In the night hours, then, when the world was given over to sleep or worse, the master-worker sat on Olivet, in silent communion with Principle, finding in his work, not exhaustion, but strength for the coming day. And when that day was come, he descended into the temple courts to preach the gospel, as he had realized it, to the people, and to demonstrate its truth and efficacy by healing sickness and sin and overcoming death.
Thus Jesus the Christ preached to humanity the gospel of work; yet there are few things in his teaching which humanity has shown a stronger inclination to disobey. Not only will a man find every excuse for his own idleness, but he will place every temptation in the path of his neighbor to lead him to the same end. Still, as the centuries go by, the eternal truth of the gospel message remains unchanged. Jesus said, "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work." On page 2 of her Message to The Mother Church for 1900, Mrs. Eddy says, "The song of Christian Science is, 'Work—work—work—watch and pray.'"
