Article February 26, 1916 Issue

"We shall not all sleep"

REV. ANDREW J. GRAHAM

Mrs. Eddy has quickened and invigorated the thought of multitudes by her illuminating declaration that "death must be overcome, not submitted to, before immortality appears" (Science and Health, p. 76). This citation is the scientific correlative of the fifty-first verse of the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians, which reads: "Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." In this great chapter Paul, speaking after the manner of men, is contrasting life with death, and he unequivocally declares that what mortal man calls death is not a sine qua non of entrance into eternal life. A recent writer on this text fails entirely to note this fact, which is important not only because Enoch and Elijah did not "sleep," that is, did not die, not only because Jesus did not go to heaven by means of death, but still more because this exemption bestows upon each of us the privilege and right to immunity from the much feared episode named death.

We should reverently and confidently lay claim to all that the will of Jesus the Christ has bequeathed us. To relinquish or fail to lay hold upon the full promise is to disregard the promisor. Jesus said, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," a statement to which Christian Scientists cling, and which is an inspiration not confined to spiritual life, but includes all the phenomena connected with the working out of the problems of human existence. A man should set before him nothing short of the perfect ideal, and the perfect ideal is not unattainable. As the poet has said,—

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