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Labor—Its Import

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 9, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 2.

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Labor—Its Import

By E. C. Jaeger

When God saw the awful condition into which man had plunged himself by eating of the forbidden fruit, of which he commanded him, saying, “Thou shalt not eat of it,” he immediately pronounced a curse upon the ground. This curse was not a penalty or judgment meted out for man’s sin, but was for his good. Notice that the record says “for thy sake.” Satan always finds mischief for idle hands; and now that man had fallen, God would not leave undone one thing that would help man to regain what he had lost. It was according to the divine plan, then, that labor was enjoined, for labor is ennobling, and brings man nearer to the image of his Maker.
But even before Adam fell, he had his appointed tasks to perform. “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden . . . to keep it.” Besides this, he was given dominion over every living thing.
Says the psalmist: “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea.”
The dressing of the garden was not a wearisome task, but was a source of pleasure, and brought strength to the body and vigor to the mind. Not only man, but God and his angels are assiduous workers, ministering to the needs of the children of men. Christ said to the Jews, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” In all the universe God has prepared no place for the idle and indolent. Even one of the tiniest of God’s creative works, the ant, stands as an object-lesson to the sluggish man. “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”
The duty of labor is reiterated in the ten words of the decalogue. As long as health and strength are given, the Lord expects his children to occupy their hands in useful employment. The scripture, in both Old and New Testaments, declares the idle man as out of harmony with the purpose of God. “If any provide not to his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
Since the fall, work is hard and exhausting. This is because of the dying process which is constantly going on in our bodies, and also because of the mental attitude we hold toward our work. Many look upon work as drudgery. This idea is the product of heathen minds, and not of Inspiration. Almost all peoples of ancient times regarded the toiler as an inferior creature, and work as degrading. For this reason every man who wished to be looked upon as honorable maintained a number of slaves. The philosophers, almost without exception, despised work, and looked upon the slave institution as a necessity. Aristotle says: “It follows that in the best-governed states, where the citizens are really men of intrinsic and not relative goodness, none of them should be permitted to exercise any low or mechanical employment or traffic, as being ignoble and destructive to virtue; neither should they who are destined for office be husbandmen; for leisure is necessary in order to improve virtue, and to perform the duty which they owe the state.” Thus we find in Athens at one time 400,000 male slaves and only 20,000 citizens; in Sparta 244,000 slaves and only 36,000 freemen. It is estimated that in Rome, from 146 B. C. to 220 A. D., there were three slaves in the city to every freeman. Though the horrors of the system are beyond our conception, few condemned it. “Plato regarded it as one of the marks of an educated man that he despised his slaves.”
How different and how sublime an ideal is that presented by Christianity! “Christ and his apostles were working men whom Aristotle would have deemed unworthy of citizenship.” Christianity asserts the honorableness of toil, which is the exact opposite of what the Greeks and other ancients taught. The ideas of Christ concerning labor come in so illogically in the order of evolution of the economic science that some have seen therein a proof of the divine origin of Christianity. His ideas were exact opposites of those entertained by all others of those times. Wherever nations have adopted the sentiments of Christ and lived up to them, prosperity prevailed; where they rejected them, they were slow to advance in the scale of progress.
E. C. JAEGER.
(To be concluded)