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."
To the student of Christian Science it becomes evident that whatever of good has been accomplished toward the solution of the labor problem, has been due to the operation of divine Principle in the affairs of men. It is equally certain that failure to accomplish more, in short, to solve the whole problem on the basis of righteousness, has been due to a failure to understand and consequently to apply divine Principle. The determining factor in the situation has apparently been the failure to recognize that "whatever blesses one blesses all," as we are told on page 206 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and accepting a concept of substance as limited, and a belief in the possibility of selfishly gaining something of which another must be deprived.
While the battle has been waged with varying fortune for both sides, all too often the impelling motive has not been a conscious desire to do good, but rather an innate greed expressed in the desire for gain, symbolized in wealth and the power which material possessions are believed to bring. Not only has the problem not been solved, but it is perfectly safe to say it never will be until divine Mind is recognized as the true source of all action, and Spirit as the only substance, infinite and indivisible. The problem of meum et teum is as old as the effort of men to set apart something of what they conceived to be substance, something which they deemed necessary to their existence and happiness, to be exclusively and solely theirs; and only with the true understanding of God and His universe will it cease to be a problem.
The idea of mutual welfare through cooperation, which has been gaining a foothold in the relations of labor and capital, offers much of promise, since it is based manifestly on a better sense of justice. That the "doer of the work" should share bountifully in the fruits of that labor is receiving more recognition. Not only must "the ox" not be muzzled, but he must, in proportion to his understanding, become a copartner in the enterprise of treading out the corn, for the welfare of the husbandman, no less than for his own well-being. To heal the one of selfishness is no less necessary than to teach the other the true idea of labor. Only on a purely Christian basis, where both the employer and the employee seek their own good in that of the other, will the solution be made. To cooperate is to work together in the sure recognition that man's actual business is to express good. And such recognition is no less incumbent upon the wage earner than upon the employer, for both are equally subject to the laws of God.
It is repeating a truism to say that mankind's great delinquency has been the failure to recognize God as the source of all blessings. To hold that "the increase" has been due solely to one's individual effort, to one's own enterprise, or wisdom, or power, is to leave God out of His kingdom—to posit a universe apart from Him, and consequently apart from the operation of divine Love; hence mankind's egregious failure of accomplishment in arriving at permanent results. Rut the remedy is at hand. To establish one's true relation with divine Principle, to determine what is the source of all supply, and what the law, to learn man's place in the divine economy, to recognize and then to exercise man's dominion, is to find the sure remedy, the only solution of all problems, social and industrial as well.
Failure to understand that God has bestowed His blessings equally upon all and that all rightfully share His bounty has apparently divided society into classes and strata, each suspicious of and antagonistic to all others. The ethics in the admonition of Jeremiah, "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work," has found its modern messenger in the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy: and it is doing its work. The quickened sense of brotherhood manifested throughout the world, presaging the coming of the better day, directly results from the impulsion of this modern revelation of early Christianity.
The youthful Moses, shepherding Jethro's flocks at the back of the Midian desert, progressed so far along the line of spiritual understanding as to be able to demonstrate supply for the children of Israel in dire need from their wilderness wandering. Likewise the carpenter's son, although in his earlier years pursuing the round of toil common to the youth of his day, so far progressed in the understanding of substance as infinite Mind as to enable him to feed the multitude on the green hillsides of Judæa without, as Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 90), "meal or monad from which loaf or fish could come."
All mankind is faced by the same problem, the problem of supply; and all must travel the road of spiritual understanding, for in it alone is the true solution. Mrs. Eddy has summarized the situation with incomparable directness in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 266): "To my sense, the most imminent dangers confronting the coming century are: the robbing of people of life and liberty under the warrant of the Scriptures; the claims of politics and of human power, industrial slavery, and insufficient freedom of honest competition; and ritual, creed, and trusts in place of the Golden Rule, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.'"
