But labor is work mixed with false thoughts and feelings, and therefore its fruits are not happiness and freedom. It is unspiritual living and ignorance of his divine origin that brings man to the place where he must labor in the sweat of his face, become a slave to others, be imposed upon, and have cruelty and injustice heaped upon him. To escape the misery and degradation of undesirable and brutish labor man must get knowledge about himself and his fellow beings, and above all he must know the true God and the reason of Jesus Christ’s coming and the way to live the Christ life.
SOLVING THE LABOR QUESTION
Men may change their environment and their master, may seek new work and make new laws, but as long as they are content to sit in spiritual darkness and ignore the God within them the problem of labor will go unsolved. Social and economic systems grow out of men’s views of life and the passions that dominate them. If these are radically wrong the systems are false, and only as Christ ideals are held uppermost in the mind, and human passions are turned from earthly power and money—the passions of the poor as well as the rich—can new systems arise, true laws be enacted, and the curse of the old order pass away.
There is for everyone a congenial work; it is
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