"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.
