0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

12	        IS THERE NO SACRIFICIAL ATONEMENT? 

  	    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
 
   
No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy                                                 34


 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, wh...en 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. 
  
   
No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy                                                 35


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
 
   
No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy                                                 36


 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,
 
   
No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy                                                 37


 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
 
   
No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy                                                 38


 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. 
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