Is There No Sacrificial Atonement?

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 Self-sacrifice is the highway to heaven. The sacri-
 fice of our blessed Lord is undeniable, and it was a million
15 times greater than the brief agony of the cross; for that
 would have been insufficient to insure the glory his sacri-
 fice brought and the good it wrought. The spilling of
18 human blood was inadequate to represent the blood of
 Christ, the outpouring love that sustains man’s at-one-
 ment with God; though shedding human blood brought
21 to light the efficacy of divine Life and Love and its power
 over death. Jesus’ sacrifice stands preeminently amidst
 physical suffering and human woe. The glory of human
24 life is in overcoming sickness, sin, and death. Jesus suf-
 fered for all mortals to bring in this glory; and his pur-
 pose was to show them that the way out of the flesh, out

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1 of the delusion of all human error, must be through the
 baptism of suffering, leading up to health, harmony, and
3 heaven.

 We shall leave the ceremonial law when we gain the
 truer sense of following Christ in spirit, and we shall no
6 longer venture to materialize the spiritual and infinite
 meaning and efficacy of Truth and Love, and the sacrifice
 that Jesus made for us, by commemorating his death
9 with a material rite. Jesus said: “The hour cometh, and
 now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father
 in spirit and in truth.” They drink the cup of Christ and
12 are baptized in the purification of persecution who discern
 his true merit, — the unseen glory of suffering for others.
 Physical torture affords but a slight illustration of the
15 pangs which come to one upon whom the world of sense
 falls with its leaden weight in the endeavor to crush out
 of a career its divine destiny.

18 The blood of Christ speaketh better things than that
 of Abel. The real atonement — so infinitely beyond the
 heathen conception that God requires human blood to
21 propitiate His justice and bring His mercy — needs to be
 understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet
 discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to
24 the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of
 uplifted humanity, — this is the deep significance of the
 blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are
27 the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus’ life, purchas-
 ing the freedom of mortals from sin and death.

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1 This blood of Jesus is everything to human hope and
 faith. Without it, how poor the precedents of Christian-
3 ity! What manner of Science were Christian Science
 without the power to demonstrate the Principle of such
 Life; and what hope have mortals but through deep hu-
6 mility and adoration to reach the understanding of this
 Principle! When human struggles cease, and mortals
 yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be
9 no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death. He who pointed
 the way of Life conquered also the drear subtlety of death.

 It was not to appease the wrath of God, but to show the
12 allness of Love and the nothingness of hate, sin, and death,
 that Jesus suffered. He lived that we also might live. He
 suffered, to show mortals the awful price paid by sin, and
15 how to avoid paying it. He atoned for the terrible un-
 reality of a supposed existence apart from God. He
 suffered because of the shocking human idolatry that
18 presupposes Life, substance, Soul, and intelligence in
 matter,—which is the antipode of God, and yet governs
 mankind. The glorious truth of being — namely, that
21 God is the only Mind, Life, substance, Soul — needs no
 reconciliation with God, for it is one with Him now and
 forever.

24 Jesus came announcing Truth, and saying not only “the
 kingdom of God is at hand,” but “the kingdom of God
 is within you.” Hence there is no sin, for God’s kingdom
27 is everywhere and supreme, and it follows that the human
 kingdom is nowhere, and must be unreal. Jesus taught

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1 and demonstrated the infinite as one, and not as two.
 He did not teach that there are two deities, — one in-
3 finite and the other finite; for that would be impossible.
 He knew God as infinite, and therefore as the All-in-all;
 and we shall know this truth when we awake in the divine
6 likeness. Jesus’ true and conscious being never left
 heaven for earth. It abode forever above, even while
 mortals believed it was here. He once spoke of himself
9 (John iii. 13) as “the Son of man which is in heaven,” —
 remarkable words, as wholly opposed to the popular view
 of Jesus’ nature.

12 The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin,
 disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of
 good, of eternal Life, and harmony. Hence the human
15 Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the
 Father, and there could find rest from unreal trials in
 the conscious reality and royalty of his being, — holding
18 the mortal as unreal, and the divine as real. It was this
 retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuper-
 ated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death. Had
21 he been as conscious of these evils as he was of God,
 wherein there is no consciousness of human error, Jesus
 could not have resisted them; nor could he have conquered
24 the malice of his foes, rolled away the stone from the
 sepulchre, and risen from human sense to a higher con-
 cept than that in which he appeared at his birth.

27 Mankind’s concept of Jesus was a babe born in a manger,
 even while the divine and ideal Christ was the Son of God,

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1 spiritual and eternal. In human conception God’s off-
 spring had to grow, develop; but in Science his divine
3 nature and manhood were forever complete, and dwelt
 forever in the Father. Jesus said, “Ye do err, not know-
 ing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” Mortal thought
6 gives the eternal God and infinite consciousness the license
 of a short-lived sinner, to begin and end, to know both
 evil and good; when evil is temporal and God is eternal, —
9 and when, as a sphere of Mind, He cannot know begin-
 ning or end.

 The spiritual interpretation of the vicarious atonement
12 of Jesus, in Christian Science, unfolds the full-orbed glory
 of that event; but to regard this wonder of glory, this
 most marvellous demonstration, as a personal and material
15 bloodgiving — or as a proof that sin is known to the
 divine Mind, and that what is unlike God demands His
 continual presence, knowledge, and power, to meet and
18 master it — would make the atonement to be less than
 the at-one-ment, whereby the work of Jesus would lose
 its efficacy and lack the “signs following.”

21 From Genesis to Revelation the Scriptures teach an in-
 finite God, and none beside Him; and on this basis
 Messiah and prophet saved the sinner and raised the dead,
24 — uplifting the human understanding, buried in a false
 sense of being. Jesus rendered null and void whatever
 is unlike God; but he could not have done this if error
27 and sin existed in the Mind of God. What God knows,
 He also predestinates; and it must be fulfilled. Jesus

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1 proved to perfection, so far as this could be done in that
 age, what Christian Science is to-day proving in a small
3 degree, — the falsity of the evidence of the material senses
 that sin, sickness, and death are sensible claims, and that
 God substantiates their evidence by knowing their claim.
6 He established the only true idealism on the basis that God
 is All, and He is good, and good is Spirit; hence there is
 no intelligent sin, evil mind or matter: and this is the only
9 true philosophy and realism. This divine mystery of
 godliness was the rock of Truth, on which he built his
 Church of the new-born, against which the gates of hell
12 cannot prevail.

 This Truth is the rock which the builders rejected; but
 “the same is become the head of the corner.” This is
15 the chief corner-stone, the basis and support of creation,
 the interpreter of one God, the infinity and unity of good.

 In proportion as mortals approximate the understand-
18 ing of Christian Science, they take hold of harmony, and
 material incumbrance disappears. Having one God, one
 Mind, one consciousness, — which includes only His own
21 nature, — and loving your neighbor as yourself, constitute
 Christian Science, which must demonstrate the nothing-
 ness of any other state or stage of being.