duty

• summary of mortal duty › attainment of perfection

1:0.4This mag­nif­i­cent and uni­ver­sal in­junc­tion to strive for the at­tain­ment of the per­fec­tion of di­vin­ity is the first duty, and should be the high­est am­bi­tion, of all the strug­gling crea­ture cre­ation of the God of per­fec­tion. This pos­si­bil­ity of the at­tain­ment of di­vine per­fec­tion is the fi­nal and cer­tain des­tiny of all man’s eter­nal spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• moral intuition is realization of d.; cosmic mind response

16:6.72. Duty—the re­al­ity do­main of morals in the philo­sophic realm, the arena of rea­son, the rec­og­ni­tion of rel­a­tive right and wrong. This is the ju­di­cial form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

• moral intuition is realization of d.; cosmic mind response

16:7.1In­tel­li­gence alone can­not ex­plain the moral na­ture. Moral­ity, virtue, is in­dige­nous to hu­man per­son­al­ity. Moral in­tu­ition, the re­al­iza­tion of duty, is a com­po­nent of hu­man mind en­dow­ment and is as­so­ci­ated with the other in­alien­ables of hu­man na­ture: sci­en­tific cu­rios­ity and spir­i­tual in­sight. Man’s men­tal­ity far tran­scends that of his an­i­mal cousins, but it is his moral and re­li­gious na­tures that es­pe­cially dis­tin­guish him from the an­i­mal world.

• eclipsing emotion of spiritual beings is joy of
• faithfully performed precludes sorrow

25:1.6The Ha­vona Servi­tals and the Grad­u­ate Guides man­i­fest a tran­scen­dent de­vo­tion to their work and a touch­ing af­fec­tion for one an­other, an af­fec­tion which, while spir­i­tual, you could only un­der­stand by com­par­i­son with the phe­nom­e­non of hu­man love. There is di­vine pathos in the sep­a­ra­tion of the servi­tals from the guides, as so of­ten oc­curs when the servi­tals are dis­patched on mis­sions be­yond the lim­its of the cen­tral uni­verse; but they go with joy and not with sor­row. The sat­is­fy­ing joy of high duty is the eclips­ing emo­tion of spir­i­tual be­ings. Sor­row can­not ex­ist in the face of the con­scious­ness of di­vine duty faith­fully per­formed. And when man’s as­cend­ing soul stands be­fore the Su­preme Judge, the de­ci­sion of eter­nal im­port will not be de­ter­mined by ma­te­rial suc­cesses or quan­ti­ta­tive achieve­ments; the ver­dict re­ver­ber­at­ing through the high courts de­clares: “Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant; you have been faith­ful over a few es­sen­tials; you shall be made ruler over uni­verse re­al­i­ties.”

• performing earthly assignments in human faithfulness

34:6.13The con­scious­ness of the spirit dom­i­na­tion of a hu­man life is pres­ently at­tended by an in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Spirit in the life re­ac­tions of such a spirit-led mor­tal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suf­fer­ing, gen­tle­ness, good­ness, faith, meek­ness, and tem­per­ance.” Such spirit-guided and di­vinely il­lu­mi­nated mor­tals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in hu­man faith­ful­ness per­form the du­ties of their earthly as­sign­ments, have al­ready be­gun to dis­cern the lights of eter­nal life as they glim­mer on the far­away shores of an­other world; al­ready have they be­gun to com­pre­hend the re­al­ity of that in­spir­ing and com­fort­ing truth, “The king­dom of God is not meat and drink but righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And through­out ev­ery trial and in the pres­ence of ev­ery hard­ship, spirit-born souls are sus­tained by that hope which tran­scends all fear be­cause the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit.

• summary of mortal duty › to avail ourselves of advantages so freely provided for survival

40:10.14As mor­tals you can now rec­og­nize your place in the fam­ily of di­vine son­ship and be­gin to sense the obli­ga­tion to avail your­selves of the ad­van­tages so freely pro­vided in and by the Par­a­dise plan for mor­tal sur­vival, which plan has been so en­hanced and il­lu­mi­nated by the life ex­pe­ri­ence of a be­stowal Son. Ev­ery fa­cil­ity and all power have been pro­vided for in­sur­ing your ul­ti­mate at­tain­ment of the Par­a­dise goal of di­vine per­fec­tion.

• in morontia, time no longer available to circumvent disagreeable obligations

48:5.8One of the pur­poses of the mor­ontia ca­reer is to ef­fect the per­ma­nent erad­i­ca­tion from the mor­tal sur­vivors of such an­i­mal ves­ti­gial traits as pro­cras­ti­na­tion, equiv­o­ca­tion, in­sin­cer­ity, prob­lem avoid­ance, un­fair­ness, and ease seek­ing. The man­so­nia life early teaches the young mor­ontia pupils that post­pone­ment is in no sense avoid­ance. Af­ter the life in the flesh, time is no longer avail­able as a tech­nique of dodg­ing sit­u­a­tions or of cir­cum­vent­ing dis­agree­able obli­ga­tions.

• perform d. faithfully, then accept one’s lot

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.

• summary of mortal duty › bringing children into the world is supreme d.

84:7.25The olden ideas of fam­ily dis­ci­pline were bi­o­logic, grow­ing out of the re­al­iza­tion that par­ents were cre­ators of the child’s be­ing. The ad­vanc­ing ide­als of fam­ily life are lead­ing to the con­cept that bring­ing a child into the world, in­stead of con­fer­ring cer­tain pa­ren­tal rights, en­tails the su­preme re­spon­si­bil­ity of hu­man ex­is­tence.

84:7.26Civ­i­liza­tion re­gards the par­ents as as­sum­ing all du­ties, the child as hav­ing all the rights. Re­spect of the child for his par­ents arises, not in knowl­edge of the obli­ga­tion im­plied in pa­ren­tal pro­cre­ation, but nat­u­rally grows as a re­sult of the care, train­ing, and af­fec­tion which are lov­ingly dis­played in as­sist­ing the child to win the bat­tle of life. The true par­ent is en­gaged in a con­tin­u­ous ser­vice-min­istry which the wise child comes to rec­og­nize and ap­pre­ci­ate.

• for ghost cultists, what must be done to keep spirits favorably disposed

87:5.111. Duty—those things which must be done to keep the spir­its fa­vor­ably dis­posed, at least neu­tral.

• devotion to commonplace social obligations

91:7.94. More com­pletely to spir­i­tu­al­ize his day-by-day liv­ing while faith­fully dis­charg­ing the com­mon­place du­ties of rou­tine mor­tal ex­is­tence.

• summary of mortal duty › deal justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God

97:5.6Ever the bur­den of Micah’s mes­sage was: “Shall I come be­fore God with burnt of­fer­ings? Will the Lord be pleased with a thou­sand rams or with ten thou­sand rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my trans­gres­sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown me, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord re­quire of you but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?” And it was a great age; these were in­deed stir­ring times when mor­tal man heard, and some even be­lieved, such eman­ci­pat­ing mes­sages more than two and a half mil­len­ni­ums ago. And but for the stub­born re­sis­tance of the priests, these teach­ers would have over­thrown the whole bloody cer­e­mo­nial of the He­brew rit­ual of wor­ship.

• devotion to commonplace social obligations

100:6.5But true re­li­gion is a liv­ing love, a life of ser­vice. The re­li­gion­ist’s de­tach­ment from much that is purely tem­po­ral and triv­ial never leads to so­cial iso­la­tion, and it should not de­stroy the sense of hu­mor. Gen­uine re­li­gion takes noth­ing away from hu­man ex­is­tence, but it does add new mean­ings to all of life; it gen­er­ates new types of en­thu­si­asm, zeal, and cour­age. It may even en­gen­der the spirit of the cru­sader, which is more than dan­ger­ous if not con­trolled by spir­i­tual in­sight and loyal de­vo­tion to the com­mon­place so­cial obli­ga­tions of hu­man loy­al­ties.

• teaches man has no right not to believe in God

101:1.7Thus it may be seen that re­li­gious long­ings and spir­i­tual urges are not of such a na­ture as would merely lead men to want to be­lieve in God, but rather are they of such na­ture and power that men are pro­foundly im­pressed with the con­vic­tion that they ought to be­lieve in God. The sense of evo­lu­tion­ary duty and the obli­ga­tions con­se­quent upon the il­lu­mi­na­tion of rev­e­la­tion make such a pro­found im­pres­sion upon man’s moral na­ture that he fi­nally reaches that po­si­tion of mind and that at­ti­tude of soul where he con­cludes that he has no right not to be­lieve in God. The higher and super­phil­o­sophic wis­dom of such en­light­ened and dis­ci­plined in­di­vid­u­als ul­ti­mately in­structs them that to doubt God or dis­trust his good­ness would be to prove un­true to the realest and deep­est thing within the hu­man mind and soul—the di­vine Ad­juster.

• Adjuster translates d. into faith in revelation

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

• summary of mortal duty › recognition of progressive obligation to the Supreme

110:3.104. Joy­ful ac­cep­tance of cos­mic citizen­ship—hon­est rec­og­ni­tion of your pro­gres­sive obli­ga­tions to the Su­preme Be­ing, aware­ness of the in­ter­de­pen­dence of evo­lu­tion­ary man and evolv­ing De­ity. This is the birth of cos­mic moral­ity and the dawn­ing re­al­iza­tion of uni­ver­sal duty.

• man’s understanding of d. only relatively true

115:1.2Con­cep­tual frames of the uni­verse are only rel­a­tively true; they are ser­vice­able scaf­fold­ing which must even­tu­ally give way be­fore the ex­pan­sions of en­larg­ing cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion. The un­der­stand­ings of truth, beauty, and good­ness, moral­ity, ethics, duty, love, di­vin­ity, ori­gin, ex­is­tence, pur­pose, des­tiny, time, space, even De­ity, are only rel­a­tively true. God is much, much more than a Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther is man’s high­est con­cept of God; nonethe­less, the Fa­ther-Son por­trayal of Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship will be aug­mented by those super­mor­tal con­cep­tions of De­ity which will be at­tained in Or­von­ton, in Ha­vona, and on Par­a­dise. Man must think in a mor­tal uni­verse frame, but that does not mean that he can­not en­vi­sion other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

• summary of mortal duty › recognition of progressive obligation to the Supreme

117:4.8The tem­po­ral re­la­tion of man to the Su­preme is the foun­da­tion for cos­mic moral­ity, the uni­ver­sal sen­si­tiv­ity to, and ac­cep­tance of, duty. This is a moral­ity which tran­scends the tem­po­ral sense of rel­a­tive right and wrong; it is a moral­ity di­rectly pred­i­cated on the self-con­scious crea­ture’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial obli­ga­tion to ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­ity. Mor­tal man and all other fi­nite crea­tures are cre­ated out of the liv­ing po­ten­tial of en­ergy, mind, and spirit ex­is­tent in the Su­preme. It is upon the Su­preme that the Ad­juster-mor­tal as­cender draws for the cre­ation of the im­mor­tal and di­vine char­ac­ter of a fi­nal­i­ter. It is out of the very re­al­ity of the Su­preme that the Ad­juster, with the con­sent of the hu­man will, weaves the pat­terns of the eter­nal na­ture of an as­cend­ing son of God.

• summary of mortal duty › highest d. is to one’s family

126:3.5This year Je­sus was much trou­bled with con­fused think­ing. Fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity had quite ef­fec­tively re­moved all thought of im­me­di­ately car­ry­ing out any plan for re­spond­ing to the Je­ru­sa­lem vis­i­ta­tion di­rect­ing him to “be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” Je­sus rightly rea­soned that the watch­care of his earthly fa­ther’s fam­ily must take prece­dence of all du­ties; that the sup­port of his fam­ily must be­come his first obli­ga­tion.

• summary of mortal duty › deal justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God

126:4.5“Where­with shall I come be­fore the Lord, to bow my­self be­fore the Lord of all the earth? Shall I come be­fore him with burnt of­fer­ings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou­sands of rams, ten thou­sands of sheep, or with rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my trans­gres­sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No! for the Lord has showed us, O men, what is good. And what does the Lord re­quire of you but to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

• devotion to commonplace social obligations

126:5.4Ap­par­ently all Je­sus’ plans for a ca­reer were thwarted. The fu­ture did not look bright as mat­ters now de­vel­oped. But he did not fal­ter; he was not dis­cour­aged. He lived on, day by day, do­ing well the pres­ent duty and faith­fully dis­charg­ing the im­me­di­ate re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his sta­tion in life. Je­sus’ life is the ev­er­last­ing com­fort of all dis­ap­pointed ide­al­ists.

• summary of mortal duty › highest d. is to one’s family

127:5.3Je­sus lis­tened at­ten­tively and sym­pa­thet­i­cally to the recital of these things, first by the fa­ther, then by Re­becca her­self. He made kindly re­ply to the ef­fect that no amount of money could take the place of his obli­ga­tion per­son­ally to rear his fa­ther’s fam­ily, to “ful­fill the most sa­cred of all hu­man trusts—loy­alty to one’s own flesh and blood.” Re­becca’s fa­ther was deeply touched by Je­sus’ words of fam­ily de­vo­tion and re­tired from the con­fer­ence. His only re­mark to Mary, his wife, was: “We can’t have him for a son; he is too no­ble for us.”

• folly of running away from d. for far-off enticements

130:1.2One day af­ter the evening meal Je­sus and the young Phil­is­tine strolled down by the sea, and Ga­diah, not know­ing that this “scribe of Da­mas­cus” was so well versed in the He­brew tra­di­tions, pointed out to Je­sus the ship land­ing from which it was re­puted that Jonah had em­barked on his ill-fated voy­age to Tarshish. And when he had con­cluded his re­marks, he asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “But do you sup­pose the big fish re­ally did swal­low Jonah?” Je­sus per­ceived that this young man’s life had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by this tra­di­tion, and that its con­tem­pla­tion had im­pressed upon him the folly of try­ing to run away from duty; Je­sus there­fore said noth­ing that would sud­denly de­stroy the foun­da­tions of Ga­diah’s pres­ent mo­ti­va­tion for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My friend, we are all Jon­ahs with lives to live in ac­cor­dance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to es­cape the pres­ent duty of liv­ing by run­ning away to far-off en­tice­ments, we thereby put our­selves in the im­me­di­ate con­trol of those in­flu­ences which are not di­rected by the pow­ers of truth and the forces of righ­teous­ness. The flight from duty is the sac­ri­fice of truth. The es­cape from the ser­vice of light and life can only re­sult in those dis­tress­ing con­flicts with the dif­fi­cult whales of self­ish­ness which lead even­tu­ally to dark­ness and death un­less such God-for­sak­ing Jon­ahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of de­spair, to seek af­ter God and his good­ness. And when such dis­heart­ened souls sin­cerely seek for God—hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—there is noth­ing that can hold them in fur­ther cap­tiv­ity. No mat­ter into what great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will de­liver them from their cap­tiv­ity; the evil cir­cum­stances of life will spew them out upon the dry land of fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­newed ser­vice and wiser liv­ing.”

• summary of mortal duty › fear God and keep his commandments

131:2.9“The Lord is near all who call upon him in sin­cer­ity and in truth. Weep­ing may en­dure for a night, but joy comes in the morn­ing. A merry heart does good like a med­i­cine. No good thing will God with­hold from those who walk up­rightly. Fear God and keep his com­mand­ments, for this is the whole duty of man. Thus says the Lord who cre­ated the heav­ens and who formed the earth: ‘There is no God be­side me, a just God and a sav­ior. Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. If you seek me, you shall find me if you search for me with all your heart.’ The meek shall in­herit the earth and shall de­light them­selves in the abun­dance of peace. Who­ever sows in­iq­uity shall reap calamity; they who sow the wind shall reap the whirl­wind.

• according to Hinduism

131:4.6“The spirit of the Uni­verse Keeper en­ters the soul of the sim­ple crea­ture. That man is wise who wor­ships the One God. Those who strive for per­fec­tion must in­deed know the Lord Su­preme. He never fears who knows the bliss­ful se­cu­rity of the Su­preme, for the Su­preme says to those who serve him, ‘Fear not, for I am with you.’ The God of prov­i­dence is our Fa­ther. God is truth. And it is the de­sire of God that his crea­tures should un­der­stand him—come fully to know the truth. Truth is eter­nal; it sus­tains the uni­verse. Our su­preme de­sire shall be union with the Su­preme. The Great Con­trol­ler is the gen­er­a­tor of all things—all evolves from him. And this is the sum of duty: Let no man do to an­other what would be re­pug­nant to him­self; cher­ish no mal­ice, smite not him who smites you, con­quer anger with mercy, and van­quish hate by benev­o­lence. And all this we should do be­cause God is a kind friend and a gra­cious fa­ther who re­mits all our earthly of­fenses.

• summary of mortal duty › highest d. is to one’s family

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

• summary of mortal duty › whole d. is love for God and man

142:3.22“And then will you re­mem­ber that once again—in the greater spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment of Isa­iah’s day—these ten neg­a­tive com­mand­ments were changed into the great and pos­i­tive law of love, the in­junc­tion to love God su­premely and your neigh­bor as your­self. And it is this su­preme law of love for God and for man that I also de­clare to you as con­sti­tut­ing the whole duty of man.”

• promises should be kept

157:1.2Now Pe­ter had spo­ken hastily. Ju­das car­ried their funds, and he was across the lake. Nei­ther he, his brother, nor Je­sus had brought along any money. And know­ing that the Phar­isees were look­ing for them, they could not well go to Beth­saida to ob­tain money. When Pe­ter told Je­sus about the col­lec­tor and that he had prom­ised him the money, Je­sus said: “If you have prom­ised, then should you pay. But where­with will you re­deem your prom­ise? Will you again be­come a fish­er­man that you may honor your word? Nev­er­the­less, Pe­ter, it is well in the cir­cum­stances that we pay the tax. Let us give these men no oc­ca­sion for of­fense at our at­ti­tude. We will wait here while you go with the boat and cast for the fish, and when you have sold them at yon­der mar­ket, pay the col­lec­tor for all three of us.”

• take up responsibilities daily and follow Jesus

158:7.5Af­ter they had re­cov­ered from the first shock of Je­sus’ sting­ing re­buke, and be­fore they re­sumed their jour­ney, the Mas­ter spoke fur­ther: “If any man would come af­ter me, let him dis­re­gard him­self, take up his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily, and fol­low me. For whoso­ever would save his life self­ishly, shall lose it, but whoso­ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What would a man give in ex­change for eter­nal life? Be not ashamed of me and my words in this sin­ful and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion, even as I will not be ashamed to ac­knowl­edge you when in glory I ap­pear be­fore my Fa­ther in the pres­ence of all the ce­les­tial hosts. Nev­er­the­less, many of you now stand­ing be­fore me shall not taste death till you see this king­dom of God come with power.”

• summary of mortal duty › live up to responsibilities with energy and enthusiasm

159:5.10Je­sus did not ad­vo­cate the prac­tice of neg­a­tive sub­mis­sion to the in­dig­ni­ties of those who might pur­posely seek to im­pose upon the prac­ti­tion­ers of non­re­sis­tance to evil, but rather that his fol­low­ers should be wise and alert in the quick and pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of good to evil to the end that they might ef­fec­tively over­come evil with good. For­get not, the truly good is in­vari­ably more pow­er­ful than the most ma­lig­nant evil. The Mas­ter taught a pos­i­tive stan­dard of righ­teous­ness: “Whoso­ever wishes to be my dis­ci­ple, let him dis­re­gard him­self and take up the full mea­sure of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily to fol­low me.” And he so lived him­self in that “he went about do­ing good.” And this as­pect of the gospel was well il­lus­trated by many para­bles which he later spoke to his fol­low­ers. He never ex­horted his fol­low­ers pa­tiently to bear their obli­ga­tions but rather with en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to live up to the full mea­sure of their hu­man re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­vine priv­i­leges in the king­dom of God.

• summary of mortal duty › whole d. is love for God and man

163:4.87. Teach that man’s whole duty is summed up in this one com­mand­ment: Love the Lord your God with all your mind and soul and your neigh­bor as your­self. (This they were to teach as man’s whole duty in place of the 613 rules of liv­ing ex­pounded by the Phar­isees.)

• go forth to do

163:6.7“You have en­tered upon this great work of teach­ing mor­tal man that he is a son of God. I have shown you the way; go forth to do your duty and be not weary in well do­ing. To you and to all who shall fol­low in your steps down through the ages, let me say: I al­ways stand near, and my in­vi­ta­tion-call is, and ever shall be, Come to me all you who la­bor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am true and loyal, and you shall find spir­i­tual rest for your souls.”

• summary of mortal duty › believers’ d. is to man, God, and fellowship; to preach gospel

178:1.5As mor­tal and ma­te­rial men, you are in­deed cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms, and you should be good cit­i­zens, all the bet­ter for hav­ing be­come re­born spirit sons of the heav­enly king­dom. As faith-en­light­ened and spirit-lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom of heaven, you face a dou­ble re­spon­si­bil­ity of duty to man and duty to God while you vol­un­tar­ily as­sume a third and sa­cred obli­ga­tion: ser­vice to the broth­er­hood of God-know­ing be­liev­ers.

• devotion to commonplace social obligations

178:1.8You should be made all the bet­ter cit­i­zens of the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment as a re­sult of be­com­ing en­light­ened sons of the king­dom; so should the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments be­come all the bet­ter rulers in civil af­fairs as a re­sult of be­liev­ing this gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. The at­ti­tude of un­selfish ser­vice of man and in­tel­li­gent wor­ship of God should make all king­dom be­liev­ers bet­ter world cit­i­zens, while the at­ti­tude of hon­est cit­i­zen­ship and sin­cere de­vo­tion to one’s tem­po­ral duty should help to make such a cit­i­zen the more eas­ily reached by the spirit call to son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom.

• summary of mortal duty › believers’ d. is to man, God, and fellowship; to preach gospel

178:1.11Re­mem­ber that you are com­mis­sioned to preach this gospel of the king­dom—the su­preme de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will cou­pled with the su­preme joy of the faith re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God—and you must not al­low any­thing to di­vert your de­vo­tion to this one duty. Let all man­kind ben­e­fit from the over­flow of your lov­ing spir­i­tual min­istry, en­light­en­ing in­tel­lec­tual com­mu­nion, and up­lift­ing so­cial ser­vice; but none of these hu­man­i­tar­ian labors, nor all of them, should be per­mit­ted to take the place of pro­claim­ing the gospel. These mighty min­is­tra­tions are the so­cial by-prod­ucts of the still more mighty and sub­lime min­is­tra­tions and trans­for­ma­tions wrought in the heart of the king­dom be­liever by the liv­ing Spirit of Truth and by the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion that the faith of a spirit-born man con­fers the as­sur­ance of liv­ing fel­low­ship with the eter­nal God.

• idea signifies servant-mindedness

180:1.6Keep in mind: It is loy­alty, not sac­ri­fice, that Je­sus de­mands. The con­scious­ness of sac­ri­fice im­plies the ab­sence of that whole­hearted af­fec­tion which would have made such a lov­ing ser­vice a su­preme joy. The idea of duty sig­ni­fies that you are ser­vant-minded and hence are miss­ing the mighty thrill of do­ing your ser­vice as a friend and for a friend. The im­pulse of friend­ship tran­scends all con­vic­tions of duty, and the ser­vice of a friend for a friend can never be called a sac­ri­fice. The Mas­ter has taught the apos­tles that they are the sons of God. He has called them breth­ren, and now, be­fore he leaves, he calls them his friends.

• evading duty by failing in high and holy obligations

185:0.4Al­though these Jews were not at all both­ered in con­science as they in­trigued to ef­fect the ju­di­cial mur­der of Je­sus, they were nonethe­less scrupu­lous re­gard­ing all these mat­ters of cer­e­mo­nial clean­ness and tra­di­tional reg­u­lar­ity. And these Jews have not been the only ones to fail in the rec­og­ni­tion of high and holy obli­ga­tions of a di­vine na­ture while giv­ing metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to things of tri­fling im­por­tance to hu­man wel­fare in both time and eter­nity.