Labor Is Not a Curse

QUESTION: What fact shows that labor itself is not a curse?

ANSWER: In Eden man was commanded. to "subdue the earth," to dress and to keep the garden, and to till the ground. These commands accord with his constitution of body and mind, for health, happiness and moral character suffer from idleness. Convicts in prison deprived of work for a long time beg for regular daily labor. The tribes of men who do not labor are savages. Excessive labor is a curse; and child labor in factories is cruel. Pres. Eliot of Harvard University declares that "labor is the greatest civiliz­ing force in the world." I should except Christianity.

— Steele's Answers p. 149, 150.

God Has Begun to Save Everyone

God has begun to save every human soul.

He has already saved the entire race from the extinction threatened in the instantaneous execution of the death penalty upon Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden in the moment of their first transgression.

The remedial dispensation began with the promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. The children of the pair banished from Eden, and fallen from their high estate, are born in the likeness of their sinful parents, with tremendous proclivities toward sin in the strength of their passions and the bent of their wills. Yet they come into being under the dispensation of mercy. They have a gracious ability to repent. They are saved from that complete moral inability which paralyses the will of the fallen angels in the direction of obedience to the moral law. This ability to resist the downward tendency of their nature, and to turn from sin, is, through the influences of the Holy Spirit, procured by Jesus Christ for all the race. "He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement."