Emerson, in his essay on "Worship," writes: "The only path of escape in all the worlds of God is performance. You must do your work before you shall be released." He, like many another noble thinker, longed to help mankind to see that there is a work which each one must perform; that no one need imagine he can slip along through the years, accomplishing nothing himself, or supposing that if any work fall to his share some one else can do it for him.
Many earnest men and women have glimpsed the truth that performance is required of every one; but just what was the nature of each one's work, or how mankind was to be awakened to the necessity of meeting this demand, seemed to be something quite beyond their ken. The most they seemed able to do was to state the mere fact, and plead that others might see and accept it. That there is surely work to be done, almost every one finally has acknowledged. That the responsibility has rested with each individual to do his share has been something from which humanity has cried out to be delivered. Since the human sense is inherently lazy, and is always longing for ease and rest, it argues for freedom from effort. It does not realize that there is no such unhappiness and dissatisfaction as results from an attempted do-nothing existence.—from sloth and its resultant stupidity and mental squalor. It has become proverbial that to be idle is to be correspondingly miserable and wretched.
In this, as in all else, Christian Science comes with its illuminating explanation. It not only explains what man's work is, but also the manner in which it is to be accomplished; and it too, emphasizes the necessity of every man performing his own part. It unites with Paul in declaring that each one must work out his own salvation; and it also agrees that it is God which worketh in us "both to will and to do of his good pleasure." Many Christians have failed to understand how to reconcile these statements, and as a consequence have swung to one of two extremes: either they have attempted to make themselves good, or they have cast aside all responsibility and decided that, if God was to work in them, He would have to do it without any effort on their part. This view they have felt was supported by such statements as we find in the Psalms: "I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me; " and as the Apostle Paul, in writing to the saints in Philippi, says, "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."
