Article December 27, 1941 Issue

"Spiritual evidence opposed to material sense"

GEORGE C. EWING

WHEN the disciples questioned Jesus concerning the coming of Elias, he replied: "Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already." In the Glossary in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 585) Mary Baker Eddy defines "Elias" as, "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." A dictionary defines "restoration" in part as, "Recovery of health, strength, etc." Thus restoration implies the recovering of something which seemingly has been lost or obscured, but which rightly belongs to an individual or with which he has been endowed.

Since the Bible declares that God made man in His image and likeness and endowed him with dominion and power, it logically follows that, God being omnipotent and eternal, man can never lose his divine heritage, but possesses by reflection only divine goodness and completeness. What, then, is the opposite picture which presents man as subject to sin, sickness, and discord? Although the false picture may seem very real to human consciousness, it is an illusion of the material senses and seems to exist only in false belief. Erroneous thinking and mesmeric suggestions may distort and obscure man's true status, but Christian Science, through the unfoldment of the Christ, Truth, dispels the mists of materiality and enables the individual to discern the spiritual fact which reveals the man of God's creating, pure, upright, immortal, expressing the riches of God's goodness and holiness. Thus Christian Science restores to human apprehension the true concept of man as the reflection, the image and likeness, of God.

Jeremiah voiced God's promise, "I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds." If we seem to be in bondage to the belief of pain, injury, or disease, we can with God-given authority deny the evidence of the material senses and declare our oneness with God. We can utilize spiritual power by applying God's infinite, ever-operative law to purify and purge the human mind of selfish and erroneous thinking, and to replace false thoughts with God's spiritual ideas, which restore to the individual his heritage of freedom, health, and wholeness.

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