"Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things" (Matt. 17:11). This statement of Christ Jesus may have no great meaning to us until its spiritual significance is grasped. And Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, brings out this significance in her definition of "Elias" in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 585): "Prophecy; spiritual evidence opposed to material sense; Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold; the basis of immortality."
As seen in the light of this definition, the coming of Elias is not the return of Elijah, the prophet, who struggled so effectively for the moral rights and freedom of men. On the mount of transfiguration, Elijah appeared as the representative of prophecy. Is it not in this context that Jesus spoke to his disciples of the coming of Elias?
To the Christian Scientist, then, the coming of Elias is the appearing to human thought of spiritual discernment, through which we are able to behold spiritual ideas of which the useful objects we observe are but types or symbols. This coming involves an ever-increasing ability to understand the true evidence of the spiritual nature of ourselves and of our environment which divine Mind is constantly unfolding and to reject the false evidence which the material senses present.
This discernment comes to us from God, Spirit, the divine source of being. Its active presence in us evidences the inherently spiritual nature of our being. In exercising this spiritual faculty, we discern "the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold."
Through the coming of Elias to our thought, we see ever more clearly that the universe in which we live is not at all what it seems to be to our material senses. It will seem to be material only as long as we entertain a material sense of it, much as looking at an object through an imperfect lens induces us to believe that the object itself is imperfect. Through the transforming power of Christ, the spiritual idea of God, in our consciousness, we exchange the lens of material sense for the lens of spiritual sense. In so doing, we bring what we see into the focus of spiritual understanding.
Christ Jesus possessed spiritual sense, a capacity of Soul, and utilized it in his works, which often are called miracles. This capacity increases in us as we gain a spiritual interpretation of the Bible and of Mrs. Eddy's writings. Grasping the true significance of what has been recorded and preserved in these books, we are able to make divine Truth practical in our lives.
Spiritual sense enables us to yield to absolute statements of truth concerning God and man and then to apply them to the beliefs we are entertaining about ourselves and others. Take health, for example. As understood in Science, health is a spiritual quality of being which we derive from God and which is preserved by His ever-operative, all-encompassing law. It is therefore perfect, constant, unchanging. In no way is it dependent upon matter for manifestation and so is never subject to material conditions. It is always present and is always giving evidence of itself. This must be the forever nature of health as an immortal quality of Spirit, Soul.
At this moment one may be entertaining an altogether different sense of health. Perhaps he is believing it to be material, variable, imperfect, subject to impairment or loss. Maybe he believes this because of his own or another's experience which seems to confirm it. But Christian Science explains that not only do we believe what we experience, but also we experience what we believe, and then we must set to work to improve our experience by yielding to the understanding that health is present as a quality of divine Mind right where material sense is falsely testifying to the contrary. This yielding replaces disease with health in tangible ways.
One who assumes the diseased condition to be physical rather than the objectification of his belief may question the validity of this method of healing. But spiritual healing has been and is being proved effective time and again in overcoming all kinds of diseases.
People in general accept a dualistic concept of existence in which Spirit and matter seem not only to coexist and cooperate, but also to contend with each other in an endless warfare in which human beings are the victims. This erroneous concept meets with a vigorous and effective challenge in divine Science.
It is impossible to solve the problems which attend the dualistic theory from within the framework of the theory itself. This gradually became clear to Mrs. Eddy in her search for an understanding of the Bible. As a result of her prayerful study of this great Book she was able to declare (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 194), "The lens of Science magnifies the divine power to human sight; and we then see the supremacy of Spirit and the nothingness of matter."
The secret of the Master's life, including what he taught and what he did, was in his understanding of Spirit's supremacy and matter’s nothingness. The Science of the Bible is to be found in an understanding of spiritual prophecy rather than in an acquaintance with religious history.
Mrs. Eddy became impressed with the important place those spiritual seers of the Old Testament occupied. The early Hebrew prophets glimpsed with increasing clarity the spiritual facts of being which Christ Jesus clearly understood but which were obscure to those who lacked spiritual discernment.
With rare spiritual insight some of these prophets realized that the answer to the iniquitous doctrine of dualism could come only through the recognition of the coincidence of the Son of God and the Son of man—what Christian Science refers to as the coincidence of the divine with the human.
Christ Jesus came in fulfillment of these divinely inspired prophecies. His mission was to reveal the true nature of man as the son of God and in doing so to save mankind from the dualistic concept of existence which has been and still is responsible for the religious confusion that has delayed the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth. As the divine Science which he taught is understood, it will do away with this confusion. It will lead men and women into a demonstrable understanding of their divine heritage as sons and daughters of God, and the restoration which Christian Science has come to provide will be achieved.
As we exercise spiritual discernment, the underlying spiritual realities of being will come into the focus of our thought in such a way as to bring our lives into accord with God's perfect government. Harmony and order, moral strength and health, will appear in human thought. The divine qualities of being which we embody will lift our lives above sin and disease. The human will yield to the divine, and the divine will appear more and more clearly in our experience.
The Master's understanding of "the supremacy of Spirit and the nothingness of matter" did not separate him from the problems with which mankind were struggling, nor will this understanding separate us, his followers, from such problems today. He solved them on a spiritually scientific basis, and so must we. He showed us how to subdue material sense even while we are abandoning it. The subduing has to do with our resurrection; the abandoning with our ascension.
"The Scriptures are very sacred," writes our Leader in Science and Health(p. 547). Then she adds, "Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained." Later in the paragraph she states, "Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, and mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and immortal."
As we are willing to set aside the mortal, material concept of ourselves, which has erroneously been imposed upon us, and to accept the spiritual concept, which Science brings to us, we shall not immediately disappear to human sense. But we shall definitely begin a resurrectional experience in which false beliefs and their physical counterparts fall away and spiritual ideas take their place.
As Paul put it in his second letter to the Corinthians (5:17), "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Such a transformation must result from our discerning the facts of Spirit, which bring us into accord with the spiritual order of being, making our experience more and more harmonious.
The coming of Elias to our thought gives us a true understanding of this spiritual order. It assures us that in reality there are not two laws, one material and the other spiritual, because spiritual law can have no opposite. As we adjust ourselves to this fact, we shall see evidences of this law operating in our lives and controlling them. The false view of ourselves as mortals will disappear. The true sense of ourselves as immortals will appear, and we shall discern more of what we always have been and always shall be—spiritual identities made in the image and likeness of God. This discernment has a transforming and redemptive effect upon the present sense of ourselves and others.
