With the acceptance of the belief of life apart from God,— that is to say, of the human sense of life as physical, sustained only by material means,—there arose the necessity for labor. The Adam-man's condemnation to eat his bread in the sweat of his face was the beginning of a problem that has been his deep and constant concern from that vaguely distant day to the present hour; for he has never been free from the necessity of procuring the subsistence upon which he has agreed that life itself depends. In trial and tribulation he has undertaken to serve out the sentence accepted as his inexorable lot; and apparently the need to eat of the bread of labor will continue so long as thought clings to the belief of matter-sustained life.
As the facts and meaning of Life are grasped, however, and thought is transformed from a material to a spiritual basis, labor comes to signify service in its true sense, the transaction of the Father's business; and the rewards of labor are seen not alone as the direct result of one's efforts, but as the manifestation of God's goodness to the children of men. Then, as we learn in Christian Science, labor is lifted into its rightful place, the realm of Spirit, where the only activity is Mind's expression, and Life is self-sustained as perfect and eternal. Thus only does labor become a sanctified privilege, fraught with all the beauty of holiness.
During all the ages of transition, however, the labor problem will continue to be a problem until "he come whose right it is,"—until the true brotherhood of man is established by demonstrating the unity of good, of God and His creation. The idea expressed in that homely pastoral figure from the book of Deuteronomy, of labor's right to share in its fruits, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn," has found happier phrase in the New Testament declaration, "The labourer is worthy of his hire."
