The transformation of all human beings to a state of spirituality is inevitable because it is in accord with God's demand for perfection. None can escape it, however degraded by sin and selfishness some may seem to be. Those who see this wisely yield to the purifying power of Spirit, accept its standard of perfect God and perfect man, as Christian Science reveals it, and then live the truths of character and action that such a standard implies.
Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus started his transformation of character, but many passages in his letters show that his redemption from the mind he called carnal did not take place in a moment. His moods of despair, however, always gave place to a positive realization of the power of the Christ to save. He remembered his great conversion, and he pressed on. Paul's experience appeals to Christians as an example of what anyone may expect of himself if he heeds the presence of the impersonal Christ, God's ideal, and lets the divine Mind, rather than the seeming carnal mind, possess him. Mary Baker Eddy significantly links Paul and Jesus in their love of good when she says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 360): "Great only as good, because fashioned divinely, were those unpretentious yet colossal characters, Paul and Jesus. Theirs were modes of mind cast in the moulds of Christian Science: Paul's, by the supremely natural transforming power of Truth; and the character of Jesus, by his original scientific sonship with God." Both Jesus and Paul stand as examples for Christians: Jesus, because of his divine standard of sonship; and Paul, because of his transformation through accepting that standard as his own.
The Christ-idea was the Master's natural sense of himself. Paul had to attain this sense through spiritualization. To him the Christ-idea, Spirit's reflection, appeared as "a light from heaven" (Acts 9:3) correcting him by dispelling shadows of evil thought. This great light never lost its significance to Paul. It consecrated him to a life of service. It comforted him in times of physical persecution and personal anxiety. His vision of man as God's son, ever apart from flesh, nerved him to great endurance and inspiration and made it possible for him to say to others (Gal. 4:6, 7): "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ."
