Christian Science is lifting Christendom's concept of Scriptural prophecy from the level of what is more or less mystical to the position of the foretelling of the natural operation of divine law. Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has given us this definition of "prophet" in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 593): "A spiritual seer; disappearance of material sense before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth."
The teachings of Christian Science include the basic truths that God's creation is spiritual and perfect; that the correct concept of His creation can be perceived only by means of spiritual sense, for the five corporeal senses present a false, mortal view of all things. Christian Science declares that what the world calls matter is an illusion; that actually it is the substratum of material thinking, evolved and sustained by the very senses, alias mortal mind, which behold it.
A prophet, according to Mrs. Eddy's definition already quoted, is anyone who forsakes the material sense of any situation or thing and beholds in place of it the spiritual fact as it exists in absolute scientific reality. This exalted view of Truth is prophecy in its highest scientific sense. It dispels the illusion of matter much as the sun's warm rays disperse a damp and gloomy mist. Truth demonstrates the superiority of its own true nature, and material sense eventually disappears, leaving unveiled the ever-present, eternal, spiritual reality.
