Article August 2, 1930 Issue

Breaking Through

KATE BUCK

SOME years ago the writer was standing in an orange grove on the east coast of Florida, enjoying the fragrance and beauty of the blossoming trees. Presently a curious humped-up object, which seemed to be going through various contortions, attracted attention, as it clung to one of the orange leaves. As she drew nearer to notice more carefully what was taking place, an interesting transformation and development was observed. Securely fastened to the leaf, with very minute but firmly clinging claws, was the dull brown shell of a beetle, nearly emptied now of a brilliant green creature which was slowly, and with cautious effort, struggling out of the enveloping dinginess through a tiny slit in the top. When it was finally free and stood on the leaf stretching itself, a little in advance of its former abode, a frail thread alone kept the two together; and while this held, there seemed to be a vestige of movement in the brown shell also, but as this thread suddenly snapped, action was manifested only in the newborn creature and the former covering remained but a dry and discarded husk. This old shell, still clinging to the orange leaf, was kept among a collection of curios for several years, until it finally crumbled to dust.

The incident faded from thought until recently when, in studying "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, the writer found on page 552 a certain sentence which brought back the picture. Referring to the emergence of mortals from the "notion of material life as all-in-all," Mrs. Eddy writes, "They must peck open their shells with Christian Science, and look outward and upward." Instantly thought reverted to the transformation of the beetle and its symbolic indication of development and progress. The growth of the new insect was taking place within the old; and when it had grown sufficiently to be ready for a larger expression, it naturally and imperatively came forth, because the enveloping shell could no longer hold it.

In those days nothing was known to the writer of Christian Science, and very little of the Bible teachings. Only an innate desire existed to know the seemingly unknowable, to understand actual cause and effect, and to solve the mysteries of human experience. This cry for freedom from restrictive material beliefs, a freedom which can be gained only through a realization of God's ever-presence throughout His perfect spiritual universe, is inborn in the so-called children of men. The human heart fundamentally longs for God; and frequently, when surrounded by conditions which would seek to limit and hinder one's eager advancement toward the truth of being and its fuller expression, there comes a sense of wanting to burst forth into a fuller, freer atmosphere, where Spirit may be seen as master and body as servant.

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