Editorial December 16, 1916 Issue

"We shall all be changed"

Annie M. Knott

St. Paul's words here quoted have many times been the subject of discussion among Christian people; nor is this to be wondered at, for he himself introduces the statement by saying, "Behold, I show you a mystery." In considering this text most people have related it mainly to the change which supposedly comes with death, and they have wondered just what it would mean. But Paul says plainly that "we shall not all sleep;" therefore the change of which he speaks is one which begins when the belief in flesh and blood—that is to say, the belief in material existence—begins to give place to the true idea of man in the divine likeness.

There is perhaps nothing in the realm of nature which has taught such a wonderful lesson to thinkers as the chrysalis state of the butterfly. Many have argued that this state typified the period following the experience called death, when the mortal body was laid in the grave, afterward to rise in a new and higher form; but in Christian Science a much higher lesson is learned, for there is nothing in the Bible to show that when we have finally laid aside the flesh and blood which the apostle says "cannot inherit the kingdom of God," we shall ever take it up again.

As we come to understand man's spiritual existence, we learn that this dream of life in matter in a certain sense does correspond with the chrysalis state of the butterfly; and yet even so a great change is going on for the little creature in its close-sealed envelope. Naturalists tell us that the latent energies of the butterfly must be developed through struggles unseen by the outward eye, and that these become very strenuous at the period of emergence through the tiny opening which may be likened to the Scriptural figure of the eye of a needle. From the evidence of physical sense it would seem as if the butterfly had no chance to emerge; in fact it could never do so were it not for the divine energy which fills the universe and which operates through everything that presents the semblance of an idea. During its seeming imprisonment this little creature is having its wings developed, and is getting ready for flight in the sunlit air.

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