We shall leave the ceremonial law when we gain the truer sense of following
Christ in spirit, and we shall no 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 the blood,
the vital currents of Christ Jesus' life, purchasing the freedom of mortals
from sin and death.
This blood of Jesus is everything to human hope and faith. Without it, how
poor the precedents of Christianity! 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 humility 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 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 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 how to avoid paying it. He atoned for the terrible unreality of a
supposed existence apart from God. He suffered because of the shocking
human idolatry that 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 God is the only Mind, Life,
substance, Soul--needs no reconciliation with God, for it is one with Him
now and forever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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