More than once Christ Jesus pointed to a change in order that must come to the world's thinking, when the first shall be last and the last first. One such instance is recorded in the nineteenth chapter of Matthew. Here we read that Jesus summed up in these words the reward for those who are faithful to the Christ (verses 29, 30): "Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first."
The meaning of this teaching is clarified by Christian Science, which shows that such forsaking is not personal disloyalty, but the scientific giving up of false concepts for those revealed by Christ, Truth.
On pages 115 and 116 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy describes the scientific translation which takes place when thought, rising above mortal mind, or depravity, goes through the moral degree when evil traits are leaving the human mind and finally reaches the spiritual reality of being. Our Leader then says: "In the third degree mortal mind disappears, and man as God's image appears. Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses, as to make this Scriptural testimony true in our hearts, 'The last shall be first, and the first last,' so that God and His idea may be to us what divinity really is and must of necessity be,—all-inclusive."
