Editorial September 22, 1917 Issue

Transformation

Annie M. Knott

A MOST insistent demand of the Christian religion reads, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." A dictionary definition of the word transform is, "To change in nature, disposition, heart, character, or the like." This is good so far as it goes, but it does not even point to the tremendous change presented in the Scriptures. There the demand is that the mortal shall "put on immortality," and that man shall express the divine nature in thought, word, and deed. The healing which comes through Christian Science may be said to inaugurate the work of transformation from the very start, and in some cases the change is so rapid and so marked as to seem miraculous to those who know of it. One who has been for years in bondage to the belief of intemperance or some other phase of sensual slavery, suddenly rises out of it and turns with loathing from the fetters which appeared to hold him without his consent. He rises up a man, because he has begun to apprehend what man in God's likeness must of necessity be.

On page 295 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "Mortal mind would transform the spiritual into the material." If we accept the evidence of the senses, it would seem as if it had been successful in so doing, but its illusions vanish when the light of Truth is turned upon them, and then the effort is made, as she adds, to "recover man's original self in order to escape from the mortality of this error." Even where humanity does not yield to the enslavement of sinning sense and false appetites in their grosser forms, there is the equally hopeless slavery of sickness, with all that this implies. Thought is centered upon the mortal body, quite forgetful of the admonition to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The sick thought is a source of misery, not only to the one who entertains it, but to all who are acquainted with it; and the sad thing is that material methods of treating disease only intensify the tendency to think upon bodily conditions and so to aggravate the discord. It cannot be said that popular theology does anything to remedy this direful condition; rather does it stand helpless before it, and what is even worse, it condemns the appeal to divine law which is made through Christian Science.

In spite of all this, however, the demand of the Christ voiced by St. Paul comes down through the ages; and what a wonderful meaning it has: "Be ye transformed." Sickness gives place to health as a proof of the divine ever presence; and this is only a small part of the change, for it indeed includes the entire "nature, disposition, heart, and character." The most fitting illustration of this on the physical plane may be found in the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly, and it should not be forgotten that the work of transformation has already begun when the creature is enclosed in its temporary shroud, awaiting the hour of fuller unfoldment.

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