The two men are heading down the dusty road. On this day they carry with them a heavy burden in their hearts as they walk along. They yearn to understand what has happened, why it happened. They must feel a coldness in spirit. Hope of all hopes dashed. Their Master crucified.

And now after three days since the terrible event, some of the women have found his tomb empty. The women say he is alive. But the eleven disciples haven't seen him. And, perhaps the two men reason, we haven't seen him. He was killed; everyone knows that. What to believe?

As the two men leave Jerusalem behind and are making their way in the direction of a little outpost known as Emmaus, a stranger joins them. It is Jesus. But they are not yet ready to recognize a risen Saviour. He rebukes their lack of faith, yet with compassion he begins to teach them the Scriptures and opens up all the prophecies that his life and ministry had fulfilled.

Later they stop for a meal. The Master, as he has done on other occasions, breaks bread and offers a blessing. The men have been made ready. They know him. It is Jesus. Then he is gone. "And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" ^{See Luke 24:13–32.}

Can there be any question that the lives of these two men could never again be the same? Their hearts had caught fire. The vital spirit of Christian discipleship had been kindled in them. They were to be part of a new Church, a new way of living, a new vision of God's transforming power in human experience.

Even though the exact location of that particular road which once led past a nondescript little village in Palestine can no longer be identified, there still remains a "road to Emmaus" that is always open to each of us. Today the Science of Christ reveals the spiritual meaning, the light, of the Scriptures to anyone who will search and pray and listen in humility. The textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, compassionately teaches the power of the Bible's inspired message and shows how God's grace embraces humanity with healing and redemption.

Mrs. Eddy, the author of Science and Health, writes: "In the walk to Emmaus, Jesus was known to his friends by the words, which made their hearts burn within them, and by the breaking of bread. The divine Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and healing the sick." ^{Science and Health, p. 46.}

The one divine Spirit, which speaks "through the inspired Word," tells us of the greatest good we can ever know, because this good is infinite, the only good. It is permanent, indestructible, deathless good—eternal Life itself. It is the good that nourishes, that sustains, and that is all-embracing—omnipresent Love itself. It is intelligent good—all-knowing Mind. It is the one true good, the one true God.

When we glimpse something of the reality of this divine good and the fact that man reflects God as His spiritual likeness, His supreme creation, we begin to feel that God's goodness must constitute the actual substance of our being. Christ Jesus understood man's substance as the manifestation of God—spiritual, not material. He proved it when he healed blindness and leprosy and fever and paralysis and "all manner of disease." ^{Matt. 4:23.} He fully demonstrated the indestructibility of man's perfect substance in his own resurrection and ascension.

After the resurrection, as Jesus opened the true import of the Scriptures to those two men on the way to Emmaus, they must have felt the power of the Bible actually changing them. The great goodness of God revealed in Love's plan of salvation is undeniable. When we begin to see what the Bible is telling us of who we really are—of what man is—we can never again be what we may have thought we've been. We're not hopeless and helpless mortals bereft of our Saviour. We're the immortal outcome of God, and His Christ is ever with us.

What a glorious blessing: this message of penetrating light, of divine Truth, is available to anyone who humbly seeks the spiritual meaning of the Bible and listens in the quiet of prayer. The men going to Emmaus had certainly known the words of the Scriptures before, but not until the Christ-spirit shone through the letter did their hearts burn within them. As Mrs. Eddy wrote to the members of her Church in 1902, "Our thoughts of the Bible utter our lives." And she also declared, "Christian Science stills all distress over doubtful interpretations of the Bible; it lights the fires of the Holy Ghost, and floods the world with the baptism of Jesus." ^{Message to The Mother Church for 1902, pp. 4–5.}

The inspired Word revealed in Christian Science shows us the profound meaning for today of the saving mission that Christ Jesus set in motion nearly two thousand years ago. The road where hearts catch fire is always open to you. And remember, when you walk that road you will never again be the same. Your life is made new in Christ.

WILLIAM E. MOODY