Sometimes students of Christian Science are perturbed when it is said that there is back of every material thing a right idea, or a spiritual fact. Yet Mary Baker Eddy says this quite plainly on page 585 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she defines Elias, in part, as "Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold." And when one says that there is a spiritual idea back of every material object, he does not mean that the idea is back of the object, in space, but that it underlies it in thought or consciousness.
By way of further elucidation of this point it may be helpful to call attention to the fact that on page 269 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul." And she continues, "These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual consciousness, and they have this advantage over the objects and thoughts of material sense, — they are good and eternal."
It should be plain that the "objects of material sense" are in no respect like the spiritual ideas which they counterfeit. A material object is finite, temporal, destructible. A spiritual idea is infinite and indestructible. A material thing is tangible to the material senses. A spiritual idea is tangible only to spiritual sense. Thus it will be seen that spiritual ideas and their material counterfeits differ utterly, and therefore bear no resemblance whatever to one another.
