"TO work is to pray," ran the old Latin proverb, but it took Christianity to turn it from a precept into practice. The men who governed the world before the Christian era were commonly mighty hunters before the Lord, and though they might be first-rate fighters of men in war, they were by no means first-rate fishers of men in peace. Men like these laid no store by the Carlylean gospel of the dignity of labor. Their motto was, "Woe to the vanquished." In their theology the battle was always to the strong; to become "hewers of wood and drawers of water" was the natural destiny of the conquered. It was a personality such as this, some second Joshua or Judas Maccabeus, that the Jews pictured for the Messiah. It is true that the spiritual perception of one of their own writers had already foreshadowed in the servant of Jehovah the reception which awaited the man who should proclaim the Christ to the world, but these prophecies, however much they might at times appeal to the multitude, had little attraction to their rulers.
All, for instance, that St. John has to say of the high priest is compressed into two or three verses, but in those verses the character and policy of the Sadducee stand revealed in all their hideous cruelty and guile, so that one realizes in full his mingled fear and hatred of the man he deemed "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." Caiaphas' hatred of Jesus was rooted in the Saviour's spirituality, his fear in the danger with which that spirituality threatened the hierarchy. Like Pilate he had no ambition for a kingdom which was not of this world, and like him he was absolutely incapable of fathoming the purpose of the one who, as Mrs. Eddy has written, "did life's work aright not only in justice to himself, but in mercy to mortals" (Science and Health, p. 18).
"To labor is to pray," and if Jesus is the Wayshower, then to follow him the Christian Scientist must learn to do "life's work aright;" and just in proportion as he succeeds will his "light so shine before men," that they may see his good works, and glorify his Father which is in heaven. But to keep the way that is narrow, and to pass the gate that is straight, the Christian Scientist will have to learn to pray as Jesus prayed, — Jesus, "whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth" (Science and Health, p. 12), — then he will begin to do the works that Jesus did, and in doing these will "enter heaven with prayer."
