BT 265 .fi2 Copy 1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 021 066 122 . ^mMkM*$m A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION OF THE ATONEMENT BY JOSEPH ADAMS, 38 McVicker's Theatre Building, CHICAGO, ILL. /& or 568 SEVENTEENTH ST., OAKLAND, CAL. Price, Single Copies, 50 Cents. j-i * OF C COPYRIGHTED By JOSEPH ADAMS, 1889. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PREFACE. In John's Epistle, 4th chapter and first verse we find it written, " Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world." This is just what we say to every reader of this little book. It greets you with a claim of Truth. Try it. Put it to the test. Should you ask, "By what means can it be tested?" we reply, If you test it by what is called the teachings of orthodox theology, you will conclude that it is not fit to live, but if you will try it by the only proper method of trial, viz., Does its teachings harmonize with the voice of Truth within you? Then Ave are presumptious enough to think that you will hail it with as much pleasure as you would a companion with a lantern on a dark night, if you had a long and dangerous road to travel. The following nine lectures were first delivered to the congregation worshipping every Sunday morning in Hooley's theatre, Chicago, then published monthly in The Chicago Christian Scie?ttist, and now in this form at the earnest solicitation of many whose difficulties in relation to the atonement (as formerly interpreted by the theological schools of to-day) have been removed, and their lives made constantly happy in the consciousness of their being the spiritual and not material children of God. To you, beloved reader, this little messenger comes, with the earnest desire of the author, that in its perusal, you may find the Christ, who is Life, Truth and Love, and finding him, be freed from sin, sickness and death. JOSEPH ADAMS, McVicker's Theatre Building, Chicago. THE HTONEMENT, Prove all things \ hold fast to that which is good (Truth). — Paul* FIRST LECTURE. In giving you our thoughts on the sublime subject of Atonement, we are not presumptuous enough to think that what we may say on that subject is all the Truth and nothing but the Truth. It can hardly be expected of one who has been preaching for thirty years (and conscientiously too) the old orthodox view of the Atonement, that he should be able to learn, and accurately express with only three years' of study, and proof, the new tongue, which the spiritual interpretation of Scriptures requires. In making this statement, however, do not under- stand us as asking you to overlook, or excuse us for any misrepresentation of the Truth. If we should declare error, as it is quite possible with our limited understanding we may, and any of our readers should detect the same, we beg of you not to let it alone, or cover it over, for fear of wound- ing our feelings, but bring it to the light, uncover it, and you will find us with a grateful heart for your service, and readiness to put the error away forever. We desire, far above gold or silver, or the honor whieh cometh from men, the Truth and nothing but the Truth, so if our ex- position of the Atonement, in any part, is manifestly con- trary to the Truth, and you know it, please let us know it, and our debt of gratitude we will own and pay to the best of our abilitv. 6 A CHRISTIAN' SCIENCE EXPOSITION The doctrine of the Atonement is and has been for centuries considered the fundamental doctrine of Christi- anity. All the knowledge we have of it is supposed to be derived from the Bible. The vicarious nature of the Atone- ment distinguishes Christianity from Deism, Mohamedan- ism, Budhism, Paganism, in fact all the other religions of the world, and by it the Christian system is isolated from all others. Inasmuch as it constitutes the very pith and ground work of Christianity, it should never be tampered with, set aside, or its value depreciated without good and sufficient reasons. Christian Science does not propose to discard it or depreciate its value. We believe, as Scientists, most cor- dially in the doctrine of the Atonement, but we do not believe in the interpretations which the creeds of so-called orthodoxy put upon it, and in the discussion of this im- portant doctrine, all we propose is, simply to explain it reasonably, scientifically, and spiritually, and show its per- fect harmony with the great verities of man's being, for notwithstanding all that has been said about our being under obligation to accept it because it is revealed to us in the Bible, we must affirm with profound respect for all who differ with us in opinion, that we can not accept as Truth that which is manifestly unreasonable. The argument " that we admit, or believe in the truth of many things, as having an existence in the natural world which we do not understand," can have no weight, as for example, we believe in the growth, beauty, and fragrance of the rose, but we do not understand how it grows, who paints with such exquisite taste its shades of color, or how it is invested with such delicious perfume. It is quite true, with our present limited knowledge we can not tell just how this thing is done, but in its being done there is noth* OF THE A TOXEMENT. 7 ing to make it unreasonable. If you should tell us, how- ever, that the real rose, of which that material rose is but a faint symbol, had its origin in a Being who is so inflexi- bly just that He could not smile upon, and receive to His bosom an erring child of His, until an elder brother, who had never erred, had suffered indescribable miseries to pur- chase the Father's forfeited favor, then we should be obliged to say, that such a representation of the nature of Him to whom we spontaneously look as " Our Father," is altogether unreasonable and we can not accept it. That the doctrine of the Atonement, when spiritually under- stood, is in harmony with the great verities of man's being, we have no doubt. The chief verity, or fact of that being is, that Man, created in the image and likeness of God, never fell ; that he never was at variance with his Creator and never can be, for the simple reason that he has no separate or inde- pendent existence, seeing that he lives, moves, and has .the only being he possesses in God. If man is an image and likeness of God, as the Scriptures so emphatically affirm, man can never be anything else. To illustrate my mean- ing, suppose that you hold before a mirror a watch, as perfect as it can be made, the reflection of that watch in the mirror will correspond exactly to the perfection of the watch, and just so long as the watch remains intact the reflection will remain so. The only way you can change the reflection is to change the watch. You can not even mar the reflection while the object remains perfect. Just so we make the following self-evident affirmation in Science. Seeing that God is absolutely perfect and incapable of change, so must His image and likeness (Man) be, for if he is not, then God has no manifestation of Himself, and Man is left without the means of knowing what God is. <? A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION The admission that Man was once an image and likeness of God, but that he lost it by disobedience, will not hold in logical argument, for the moment that you assume that Man had the power to disobey God, that moment you assume that Man never was the image and likeness of God, for you cannot conceive of God's likeness possessing a capacity to antagonize himself. This being the case, Man — using the term in its generic sense as used in Gen. i., 26, and comprehending all mankind, and there is no other man that is the likeness and image of God — this man never fell, never got out of harmony with his Maker or the Being of whom he is a likeness, and hence the only real man there is, needs no atonement (in the sense that word has been interpreted by Theology) to bring him back to, and make him at one again with God, for the only being he ever had is in God, and could not by any possibility fall out of God, because God is everywhere present. Another great verity of man's being is, that he is already immortal, or he can not be the image and likeness of God. If God be immortal, then that which reflects Him must be, and hence no atonement is needed to restore a lost immortality. How can man's immortality be lost when there is no place in which to lose it except in God, and as man's only being is in God, he is immortal just as long as God is. So much by way of preface. Now let us proceed to give you our idea of the Atonement, and first we shall give you the literal meaning of the word Atonement. It is synonymous with the clearest idea we have of agreement, concord, peace, reconciliation, covering, putting away, hiding from view. The verb carries the thought, reconcil- ing parties who have been at variance, by some considera- tion, apology, or present made by one of the parties, or OF THE A TENEMENT: 9 some other in their behalf, by which the variance, unpleas- antness or strife is broken down, the chasm bridged, and the persons once more made one. Atonement in this sense is being made every day. The principle of atonement is well illustrated by the con- duct of Jacob toward his brother Esau. According to the Bible record Jacob was in disposition a supplanter, or, as we should say now, a schemer, one who is always trying to get ahead of somebody else and secure the best of a bargain. Aided by his mother, who, unfortunately for Jacob, re- garded him as her pet, (all pets have in the end a hard time of it) he stole by a ruse the birthright of his brother, who on finding it out vowed vengeance, and Jacob, to save his life, was obliged to fly from his home and country. He was away for a number of years, during which time he married, had a family, and acquired considerable prop- erty. Getting, as we should say, homesick, he made up his mind to go back to the old country, and started with a great company and an abundance of live stock. As he neared his native land he sent ahead some servants to ascer- tain the mind of his brother, for the sense of wrong he had done Esau was still alive, — " the ghost would not go down." So it is to-day ; wrong must be righted before the consciousness of rest is realized. Jacob's messenger returned with the tidings that Esau was coming to meet him with four hundred armed men. Then his fears increased, and he immediately set to work to turn aside, if possible, the just punishment that was due to him. So he went to work and prepared a handsome present for his brother, to atone for the wrong he had done him and to propitiate his wrath. " Two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty milch camels with their colts, forty io A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION kine and ten bulls, twenty she-asses and ten foals. And he delivered them into the hands of. his servants, every drove by themselves, and he commanded the foremost, saying: "When Esau, my brother, meeteth thee, and asketh thee, saying, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee? Then thou shalt say, they be thy servant Jacob's; it is a present sent unto my lord Esau ; and behold, he also is behind us.' And so com- manded he the second and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, in this manner shall ye speak unto Esau when ye find him, and say ye, moreover, thy servant Jacob is behind us, for he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face ; peradventure he will accept me." This same idea has been retained in theology. God is represented as having been made very angry at man's sin, and determined to punish him, just as Esau his brother Jacob, and as man was not able to appease God's wrath as Jacob did his brother, by giving him a very handsome pres- ent, or doing something else by which he could allay the anger of God, Jesus Christ is represented as coming for- ward, and himself bearing the punishment so justly due to man ; hence theology calls the sacrifice of Jesus Christ " vicarious," that is, substituting one person for another* And further, God, according to the old system of theology, is represented as saying in substance to the sinner, u If you will repent of your sins and trust implicitly in what my son Jesus Christ has done for you, I will remit the punishment due to your transgressions, receive you into my favor again, and treat you just as if you had never sinned. It is not enough that you should repent of your sins, for my offended justice must be satisfied by an atone- ment, which has been made for you by the incarnation, OF THE ATOXEMEXT. it sufferings, and death upon the cross of My beloved Son, Jesus Christ. If you trust altogether to that and not to anything you can do, I will receive you graciously and love you freely, and if you continue in the exercise of that trust until you die, then I will take you to my beauti- ful home in heaven, but if you do not, I will withdraw my favor from you in this life, and when you die, I will put you in hell, and there I will torment you in fire and brimstone for ever and ever; for there will be no let up to my anger in that place into which the impenitent wicked are put on the great day of judgment, because they refuse to trust in the vicarious work of my Son Jesus." Is it any wonder that thoughtful, intelligent men and women should say: "If that is a correct interpre- tation of the God of the Bible, and the author of what is called Religion, I don't believe in Him, neither do I want His religion." Nor I, beloved. My whole being revolts at the thought of such a God, and to-day the problem which I find myself unable to solve is, how was it possible that for thirty years, while in what is called the orthodox ministry, I should have been in. such ignorance, as to be- lieve in, and preach with such persistency that horrible doctrine? I don't know. I can't account for it, only as I accepted what I had been taught without thinking of ever asking the question, "Are these things so?" Beloved reader, whatever you do, don't fall into my folly. Challenge everything, no matter from whom it comes, and don't give up your right of inquiry, even if the claim or doctrine taught is white with the ages of antiqui- tv. Unless it is reasonable, and commends itself to your spiritual understanding as verity and truth, tell it to pass* on, for you have no use for anything which is not in 12 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION harmony with your capacity for perceiving spiritual truth and understanding God. From my eyes the scales have fallen, the night of beliefs is fast passing away, the day of light, Truth and understanding dawns upon me ; and as I stand before you this day, thrilled with the consciousness of freedom, I re- joice to affirm, because I no longer believe, but know that the old belief is a libel on the character of " Our Father." His name and nature is Love. He never gets angry and furious because you don't do just as he tells you. Perhaps you will say to me, " Does not the Bible say that God is angry with the wicked every day?" Yes, there is such a passage, but that cannot be God's declared opinion of Him- self, but man's opinion of God. Mortal man knows that if he can not have his way of things, that he gets cross, or as we commonly say, " mad," and he thinks that God is just like him; but when the voice of God or Truth is heard, as it is through Asaph in the fiftieth Psalm, such an opinion or belief of God is severely rebuked; " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself ; but I will reprove thee and set them (thine errors) in order before thine eyes." The same spirit of Truth, speaking through Isaiah in Chap. 55, says, " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Why, in the presence of such statements of self-evident Truth, will mortal man persist in making God /like unto himself ? God is Principle, not person, limited, located or outlined. He is Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Intelligence. How can you outline or invest with personality such qualities of Deity? If God is Principle, OF THE ATONEMENT. is outlining everything in the realm of reality, but never out- lined Himself, how is it possible for Principle to get angry, out of temper, or vindictive? Would it be possible for you to conceive of the Prin- ciple of harmony in music getting angry, and punishing with great severity a scholar, who through ignorance pro- duced discordant notes? Never! Or to make the error of such a supposition more apparent, could you imagine the principle of harmony as investing the learner of music with a capacity to make mistakes, yea, authorizing another, and endowing that other with a capacity to induce the scholar to produce discordant notes, as the serpent did our Mother Eve (so said), and then if the scholar did make a mistake, severely punish him for doing it, unless some atonement is made to appease the supposed anger of the Principle, Harmony. I can imagine that you are ready to exclaim with in- dignation, " The thing is utterly preposterous, and can have no foundation in fact or Truth. And yet, beloved, this is the very thing which orthodox Theology (so-called) predi- cates of " Our Father who art in heaven." We know, some of you will be disposed to say, " You are mistaken, sir; such is not the teaching of what is called orthodox The- ology." We have not the least desire to overdraw, highly color, or misrepresent, for if we do we shall only be send- ing forth a boomerang, which will certainly return on ourselves and do us more harm than it can possibly do anyone else, so in our next we shall furnish you w4th the evidence upon which we base our assertions, so that each one may judge as to whether our statements are true or false. j 4 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION SECOND LECTURE. In this lecture we are to show you, first; What the teaching of so-called orthodoxy is, in relation to the doctrine of the Atonement, and thus prove to you, that we have not misrepresented or too highly colored, in order that we may produce an effect, by stirring the emotions and leaving the judgment unenlightened. If you refer to Webster's theological definition of the Atonement, you will find it reads as follows: " The expiation of sin, made by the obedience and personal suf- ferings of Christ." To expiate, he says, " is to extinguish the guilt of, by sufferance of penalty or some equivalent, to make satisfaction or reparation for, to atone." Theology says this expiation was made for the human race by Jesus Christ. In Binney's Theological Compend, which is a condensed expression of the theological views of the Con- gregationalists, on page 69, he says: " By the Atonement is meant the satisfaction offered to divine justice by Jesus Christ, who underwent by His suffering and death the penalty due to our sins. The Hebrew word signifies cov- ering, and intimates that our offenses are, by a proper atonement, covered from the avenging justice of God." Dr. Hodge, in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith, which expresses the theological views taught at Princeton and accepted by the Presbyterian Churches, says on page 205, section 5: " The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself, which He, through the Eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father, and pur- chased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inherit- ance in the Kingdom of Heaven for all those whom the OF THE ATONEMENT, 15 Father hath given unto Him," — and those whom He has not given to him we are at liberty to infer are left out in the eternal cold? No! they are to be put in the eternal fire. Section 6: "Although the work of redemption was not actually wrought by Christ till after His incarna- tion, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefits thereof were communicated unto the elect in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices wherein He was revealed, and signi- fied to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the serpent's head, and the lamb slain from the beginning of the world, being yesterday and to-day the same and for- ever. Christ by His obedince and death did fully dis- charge the debt of all those that are thus justified, and did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to His Father's justice in their behalf." The Doctor, in commenting on these sections, says: " This truth is taught in the Confessions of all the Churches, Lutheran and Reformed. The Heidelberg Catechism, one of the most generally adopted of all the Reformed Confessions, says, question 60: i God without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, . . . As if /had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ hath accomplished for me.' r He says further: " This is the doctrine of the whole Christian Church. The thirty-nine articles of the Church of England say, article 31: 'The offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual.' " The Catechism of the Council of Trent, ii., 5-63: " Whatever is due by us to God on account of our sins has 16 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION been paid abundantly, although He should deal with us according to the strictest rigor of His justice. . . , For it we are indebted to Christ alone, who, having paid the price of our sins on the Cross, most fully satisfied God." In the Catechism of the Weselyan Methodists, No. 2, page 13, the following question is asked and the answer given : " How did the death of Christ satisfy the Divine justice?" " The death of Christ satisfied Divine justice in that our sins deserved death; but Christ being both God and man, and perfectly righteous, there was an infinite value and merit in His death, — which being undergone for our sakes and in our stead, the Almighty God exercises His mercy in the forgiveness of sins, consistently with His justice and holiness." One other quotation and then we shall have given you the views of all the Evangelical Churches in relation to the Atonement, and that is from the " Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church," Page 24, Article 24: " The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual ; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone." From these quotations, which you can all verify if so inclined, you will see that the universal church, that is, all the Evangelical Churches, do regard the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, as a price paid to our loving Father to appease His anger, satisfy the demands of His justice, and induce Him to be merciful to the penitent sinner, be- cause of what Jesus Christ had done. Indeed, God is held as under obligation to remit the penalty of sin due to a vio- OF THE A TONEMENT. i 7 lator of law, because Jesus Christ is represented as satisfy- ing the demands of justice by His own obedience and death in the stead of the sinner. The only difference of belief in any of the churches in relation to the Atonement is, that one part believe that it is only the elect who will derive any permanent benefit from the vicarious work of Christ, and that all others will certainly perish, or be punished eternally for their sins. Of course you will not expect me to explain to your satisfaction how a just and loving Father and Mother God can receive an ample and sufficient satisfaction and atone- ment for the offenses of all His children and then confer the benefit of that atonement only upon a 'part of His family, when they are all entitled to it. Such conduct is inexplainable by me. Perhaps Brothers Calvin and Hodge can harmonize it with a God who is said to be, and must be, to command the love and obedience of His children, u no respect or of persons ," we cannot. We shall now proceed to consider the various Scrip- tural and Theological terms employed to express the differ- ent phases of the Atonement. (1.) The word itself, Atonement. This word is only to be found once in the New Testament, and that in the old version, Romans v., 11 ; " And not only so, but we also glory in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." In the new version it is rendered reconciliation, which, according to the original, means " restoration to favor." In our last lecture we showed you that the word atonement was a name given to those means by which two or more parties who had been at variance were made at-one-ment again, which implies that at one time they had been one, but an alienation for some real or imagined cause had taken j 8 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION place, but now removed by what is called the Atonement. The whole doctrine of the atonement proceeds upon the basis that the material man is the real man, of God's creation, and originally created perfect in Adam, who is supposed to be the fir/st man, and that from him and his equally perfect wife, Eve, the whole of humanity sprung. This perfect pair fell from their first estate, by which fall they became incapable of transmitting to their posterity a nature like that which they received from God. This inherent bias, or natural inclination to evil, or as the- ology puts it, " They (that is, Adam and Eve,) being the root of all mankind, the guilt of their sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and coirupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary genera- tion. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual trans- gressions." This moral and physical corruption has gone on de- veloping until it has reached the state described by Paul in Rom. i., 29: "Filled with all injustice, fornication, maliciousness, covetousness, wickedness; full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, back- biters; haters of God, proud, violent; boasters, inventors of evil things; disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful ; who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that they who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that prac- tice them." Out of this mass of moral and physical corruption, theology represents God as engaged in manufacturing a perfect man, or rather restoring this man which Paul OF THE A TONEMENN. ig describes, to his original state of holiness and oneness with God by means of the Atonement. Jesus says that such a thing can not be done. Hear Him: "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?" " A corrupt tree cci)i not bring forth good fruit." " Out of the heart pro- ceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings." If the essential elements of this natural man are bad, and Paul confirms the idea of his Master in Rom. viii., 7: "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." You can no more change its nature than you can convert lead into gold. You may subject the lead to any fiery or chemical process that it is possible to think of, but it remains lead still. So you may preach to the carnal mind the laws of Sinai and show it the flames of the bottomless pit, or you may take it to Calvary and by all the manifestations of love which reached its climax there; you may entreat it, even with tears, and you can not change by any such means the nature of the carnal mind. Then what are you to do with it? Utterly consume it bv the perception, understanding, realization, and decla- ration of the truth, that it is a lie, a nothing claiming to be something, a mere belief without a fact or truth to sustain it. The carnal mind is not changed, but destroyed, its claims are annihilated by Christ the Truth. Against this position, which we take in science, is urged the thought with a kind of holy horror, " Why you limit the power of God when you say that God can not convert a sinner into a saint!" It all depends on what you mean by conversion. If you mean that God can manu- facture the truth out of a lie, purity out of impurity, light out of darkness, and life out of death, then science declares 20 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION that God can not do it any more than you can manufacture gold out of iron. The quality of a thing is its inherent property or nature, that which it is in and of itself; if that is bad you cannot make it good. Sin is sin, and the only thing that you can do with it, is not to change it, but utter- ly destroy it. This is the specific work of Christ, not to transform, but destroy the works of the devil, and He, the Truth, will never cease its work until the last belief of mortal man goes out in eternal oblivion. Instead of our limiting the power of God by this reasonable and scientific position, it is the objector that limits God. Mrs. Eddy, in an article in The Christian Science ^Journal for March, 1887, makes this very clear. "Error says that to know all things God must know evil, and it dishonors Him to say He is ignorant of evil. But God said of this fruit of the tree of good and evil, c in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' If God is Infinite and good, He knows nothing but good ; if He did He would not be Infinite. Infinite Mind knows noth- ing beyond Himself or Herself, the noumena and its phe- nomena. It was not against evil, but against knowing evil that God forewarned. He dwelleth in light, and in the light He sees light and cannot see darkness. The opposite conclusion, that darkness dwelleth in light, has neither pre- cedent nor foundation in nature, logic, or the character of Christ. " Error or the senses say, that to save from sin God must know sin. Truth replies, c God is too pure to behold iniquity;'" and virtue of His ignorance of that which by not, He knoweth that which is, and abideth in Himself the only life, truth, and love, and is reflected by a universe in His own image and likeness. Error or the senses say, dis- ease is real, and God must know it to heal it. Truth OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 21 replies, because disease seems real, and is error, truth destroys this seeming and thus heals it. God cannot know unreality. Immortal mind is real, mortal mind is unreal. for mind is immortal; thought is a quality of mind, then if God thought of the unreal, the unreal would be a quality of His mind, and haying this quality He could not destroy the illusion of so-called mortal mind and heal the sick by disabusing mortal mind of the unreality of false knowledge which is the sickness. " Error, or the senses say. you must know sorrow to console it, c like as a father pitieth his children.' Truth replies, the modes of Diyine pity are the very antipodes of the human modes of pity. The Diyine sympathy is with truth, not with error; and for it to be otherwise would perpetuate error. His modes of harmony virtually deny the existence of error ; to sympathize with error would be to admit the reality of error and thus dethrone truth as Infinite and all. Suffering and sorrow are the effects of sin and ignorance, and the sympathy of our God is made manifest in the destruction of ignorance and sin. The Father's loye is truth, not error; and the Father is seen in this loye that c destroyeth our iniquities and healeth our diseases;' human pity cannot do this. " Error says, God must know death to destroy it. Truth replies, God is the eyer-conscious Life, and to be eyer-conscious of Life is to be neyer conscious of death. He is all; then it is impossible for Him to know something beside Him ; and if it were possible, it would make Him less instead of more, for evil is nothingness. Because the senses say that to know evil is an attainment it does not make it so. This was the original lie of the Serpent, and the Serpent still says the Lord knows evil, and there is an adyantage in knowing it — that man knows evil, and it 22 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION makes him who knows it as God's, since God knoweth it.' " This is the old new story, and subtlety of sin lifting its voice higher because God is speaking louder than ever against evil, and Truth is saying, that for God to be like a sinner in one single capacity would make Him no longer God. With Him, to know, is to be; the foreknowledge, foreordination and election of God are one. God is Mind, and if this Mind knows evil, all is not good in God, and our Model is gone, and man need not seek to escape what is in Eternal Mind, for it must and will be reflected by man. Even the Divine Mind with these opposite elements • would be a kingdom divided against itself, that is, brought to desolation; for evil is a self -destroying and self- destroyed lie, it has no fact that can be known. " Evil is egotistic, but not ego-istic, and boasteth itself for a time and then passeth away when the day breaketh and the shadows flee: so Father, let 4 the light that shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not,' dispel this illusion of the senses, open the eyes of the blind and cause the deaf to hear. 4 Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.' " No one can study the foregoing quotation who is open to the force of Truth and Reason without being led to the conclusion that the teachings of orthodoxy (as it is called) upon the subject of the Atonement denies the Infinity and Omnipotence of God, because it invests evil or sin with a reality, which cannot be true while God or good is the only reality. OF THE ATONEMENT. 23 THIRD LECTURE. In this lecture we shall first consider the significance of the word " reconciliation" as applied to the atonement. The original word, " Kattalage," (Greek) from the verb " Kattalatto," means to change, exchange, to part with something that has been held, to restore, or bring back again. This work of change, or exchange, is wrought by Christ the Truth. Please notice who it is that is to under- go the change. The old teaching has been that God is to be reconciled to man; that His purpose toward man must undergo a change ; hence the atonement has always been represented as a work of Jesus Christ, to change the pur- pose of God toward man. Just as if man was already willing to be reconciled to God, but that God was not will- ing, until the incarnation, sufferings and death of Jesus broke down his antagonism to man and made it possible,, bv the substituted punishment of his son for the sinner, to relax the claims of justice. This is a very great mistake, and freighted with the most pernicious consequences to human kind. God's dis- position or purpose toward man can never be changed. He says: "I am the Lord, I change not." He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. There is no ill will or grudge in God against man. " God is love," and never anything else. Infinite love, filling immensity, manifested everywhere, can have no knowledge of what is called mortal man's sin, and therefore can never show a disposi- tion or purpose to punish sin, in the sense that punishment is commonly explained. It is this mortal man, the " per- sonna" or mask of the real man which sets up its illusive 24 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION claim, and says: " I am the real man. I shall do just what I like, God shall not control me, for I am a God, and will not submit to the control of another." It is this claim of the carnal mind which is at enmity with God. This mist which arises from the beliefs of materiality, that has to be cleared away by the bright shining of the Truth, so that the real man may be seen, known, and recognized as one with God ; spiritual and not material. In " Science and Health," page 507, we have such a clear, terse, and truthful exposition of this point we desire to make clear, that we offer no apology for the quotation : " The atonement of Christ reconciles man to God, not God to man, for the Christ-principle is God, and how can the Christ-principle propitiate itself? How can the Christ-heart reach higher than itself, when no fountain can rise higher than its source? Jesus can conciliate no nature above His own, because He is part of the Eternal Life. It was therefore His purpose to atone, or reconcile man to God, not God to man. Love and truth are not at war with God's idea, and man is this idea. Man can not exceed God in love and so atone for himself. Even Jesus could not reconcile truth to error, for they are irreconcila- ble. Jesus reconciled God to man, only by giving man a true sense of this divine principle in His own life and teachings, which would redeem man from under the law of matter, by this explanation of the law of Spirit." The antagonism of the carnal man to God proceeds from his holding a wrong thought. He thinks God is his enemy, because He says " Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me," no will but Mine. "No Life, Truth, Love, Substance, or Intelligence, but that which is spiritual." This restric- tion the natural man believes is an interference with his free agency, an impediment to his advancement in knowl- OF THE A TOXEMENT. 23 edge and consequent happiness. It is a continuation of the first recorded lie, which invested matter (the tree ) with an intelligence and capacity to furnish man with that which God had failed to give him, and without which he would not be supremely happy. Let us turn to the third chapter of Genesis and see if this is not so : " And the Serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die ; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Now here it will be seen that the Serpent invests that tree in the midst of the garden, with Life, Substance, and Intelligence ; for the serpent assures the woman that by eating the fruit her eyes w^ould be opened. Then did God create a blind woman, with no capacity for spiritual perception? Such is the assumption of the serpent. This is equivalent to an affirmation that God or Spirit either would not, or could not give to the woman what it was in the power of mat- ter to give, for the serpent declares that the eating of the fruit of that tree would result in the opening of her eyes, or power to know, which power would exalt her to an equality w r ith God, who is said to know evil as well as good. A more consummate lie was never conceived, told, and be- lieved than that. That lie, or negation of the truth, is the root thought of the natural man. Yea, it is the natural or carnal man. Is the carnal man anything more than a visi- ble expression of that lie, which all the time claims to be the Truth, and declares that Life, Substance, and Intelli- gence is in matter? Just as long as the carnal man holds that thought of error, he turns away from God, fights God, keeps him out of his thought, walks in darkness, sin, sickness, and death, which death, according to the teachings of the Scriptures, 26 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION is ignorance of God. To reconcile man to God is to kill out that thought of error, for while the natural man holds such a thought, he will be in darkness, sin, and death. To utterly destroy that thought was the atoning work of Jesus. His life, teachings, demonstrations, and ressurrec- tion from -what was called death, uncovered % \h&. lie of the old serpent, tore off its mask, laid bare its nothingness, and showed to humanity then, and for all time to come, that Life was not in matter, that it did not possess the power it claimed, that it had no Intelligence to frame, cause, or exe- cute a single thing ; that it was simply an illusion, a belief of mortal mind without an ego or principle to sustain it. When Jesus walked the angry sea, touched and cleansed the leper, fed the five thousand men beside women and chil- dren with five loaves and two small fishes, He proved that matter was only a belief, and as for death being a reality and something which we have to live in dread of, he showed at the grave of Lazarus that it also was a belief of mortal mind ; and when what is called death, seemed to say, " Lazarus is my victim, I have control here; this is a vast domain of mine into which no Life can enter, here I reign as king, and in due time I will bring nnder my dominion all of human kind, not one shall escape." Such was the claim of death; but where was the claimant when Jesus uttered the words, " Lazarus come forth!" He that was dead came forth, and thus the boasted power of the reality of death was proved to be a myth. The fear of that power, called death, has spoiled what might have been a delicious dream, and kept the world in bondage; but the darkness is disappearing; the bands are breaking, the stones are being roiled away, and even sepulchres are becoming luminous with light. No one before the blessed Jesus ever showed that death was OF THE A TONEMENT. 2? simply a belief of mortal mind, an illusion, a pretense, an unreality, a Baal, a lie and nothing more. Strong as is the proof of death's unreality, by the resurrection of Lazarus, that proof would soon have lost its power but for the resurrection of Jesus himself. That was the climax of all; but for that the Apostle Peter would never have ex- claimed in such exultant language, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His abundant mercy, hath regenerated us to a living hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadethnot away, reserved in heaven for you." As long as the resur- rection of Jesus remains an eternal fact, that long the un- reality of death is proved. " Break off your tears, ye saints and tell How high your great Deliverer reigns; Sing how He spoiled the hosts of hell, And led the monster death in chains. Say, c Live forever wondrous King, Born to redeem and strong to save/ Then ask the monster, « Where's thy sting?' And * Where's thy victory boasting grave?'" As Christian Scientists we indorse the language of II. of Cor., v., 18 and 19: "And all things are from God, who hath reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christy and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation — name- ly, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and hath committed to us the word of reconciliation." 28 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION FOURTH LECTURE. Propitiation is another word frequently employed in theology to express the nature of the atonement. The passages of scriptures often quoted are Rom. iii., 25 and 26: " Whom God hath set forth a propitiation, through faith in His blood, for a demonstration of His righteous- ness by the remission of past sins, through the forbearance of God, for a demonstration, I say, of His righteousness in this present time, that He might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." Also in the first of John, 2 and 3: " And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world." On the basis of this scripture, theology has interpreted this word, frofitiation / as an act of Christ, which includes His incarnation, life, sufferings and death, as that, by which He appeases the wrath of God, and satisfies trie rigorous de- mands of divine justice. We admit that the real meaning of the word is to appease, soothe, conciliate, quiet down, and hence we cannot see how such a meaning can be ap- plied to God, as He can never be excited or disturbed. We conceive of God as absolute goodness, infinite love and unlimited power, and we cannot think of the harmony of His being ever being disturbed by a single note of discord. Can you think of God as ever likely to get out of temper, because of some person or thing defeating His purpose? Can His plans be defeated ? or is there any one outside of Himself that can make Him angry ? The very thought seems preposterous, and yet you will probably quote to me this passage of scripture: Is it not written that - c God is angry with the wicked every day?" Precisely. " Well, what does that mean? It is a humanized idea of God. It cer- OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 2 g tainly cannot be God's idea of Himself. Mortal man knows that he Sfets angry when he cannot have his own way, and he infers that God is just like him, for he assumes there is in existence a principle of evil, a satan somewhere, that would upset the plans of God, and thereby make Him angry. Mortal man forgets that in the same Bible it says, "My ways are not your ways, neither are your thoughts my thoughts, saith the Lord;" but we have long been educated in the belief that these bodies with all their pas- sions are the creation of God, and therefore the conclu- sion is, that like as we get angry, so does God, but of course under a greater provocation, which is supposed to exist in the malice of satan, and manifested in the wick- edness of the material or mortal man. The spiritual signification of the passage must be, That Truth cannot harmonize with error; opposites can not meet and fraternize; good and evil cannot be mixed. Such a construction presents no difficulty, and we think will commend itself to all as being- the true meaning:. So this word (propitiation) can never be scientifically applied to God, for He is never out of temper; no possible circum- stance can ever rile Him or disturb the eternal harmony in which " Our Father" dwells. A friend and namesake of mine, who is not a Christian Scientist, but a scholar, and devoted student of the Bible, in commenting upon this passage in Heb. 4 and 17, " Wherefore in all things it be- hooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people," says, " This passage at first thought seems to convey the idea of Christ doing something to make God willing to forgive the sinner, or to induce him to remit the penalty; but a little farther thought will convince us that jo A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION this idea cannot be true, because God loves the sinner and has Himself made full provision, not only for his pardon, but also for his deliverance from sin; and this God has done of His own free will, unsolicited, but simply in the carrying out of His plan of creation ; therefore it cannot be that He is to be propitiated, or appeased, and yet, so the creeds put it; and this great lie, that God's favor and good- will can be bought, has laid the foundation of many shame- ful abuses and foul superstitions." The Romish Church builds on this lie its false doc- trine of purgatory, prayers for the dead, the intercession of the virgin Mary and the saints indulgences, absolu- tions, etc. The Protestant Chureh has dropped these dogmas, but it still retains the essence of them all, in the idea that a part of Christ's office is to propitiate or con- ciliate the Father in the sinner's behalf, thus conveying the false notion that God's favor and good-will is not spontaneous and unchangeable, but that it vacillates accord- ing to the merit or demerit of the individual, and may increase or diminish according as more or less is done to conciliate Him; I do not say that the creeds state the above in so many words, but this is the idea implied in them, and the practical belief of those who accept them." In the second book of Kings, the fifth chapter, we have a beautiful account of the work of a little Hebrew maid, who had been taken captive by a company of the Syrian army and carried into slavery. She became the waiting- maid of Naaman's wife. He was chief of the Assyrian host and a great man with the King, but a leper. One day this Hebrew girl said to her mistress: " Would God my Lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria, for He would recover him of his leprosy." This little word of Truth soon found a soil, it grew rapidly, for it was not OF THE A TONEMENT. 3 i long before Naaman, with a letter from his Master to the King of Israel, a great retinue of servants, and a very handsome present, was on his way to the prophet of Sama- ria. He soon reached the King of Israel, who mistook his visit. At length he found his way to the house of the prophet Ehsha, who did not as much as come to the door to see this distinguished man, but sent his servant to tell him " to go and wash seven times in the river Jordan, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean." Such conduct was more than the dignity of Namaan was able to bear, so "Naaman was wrath and w r ent away, and said, behold, I thought he would come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place and remove the leperosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel ? May I not wash in them and be clean ? So he turned and went aw r ay in a rage." Such is a fair specimen of mortal mind. It always turns away from God's methods and ways. Just at this juncture, a sensible servant came forward and said, " My father, if the prophet had bid thee to do some great thing wouldst thou not have done it: How much rather then when he saith to thee, wash and be clean?" These words of gentleness and truth soothed him down, appeased his anger, turned him round. He went to Jordan, and lo, such a demonstration of the power of God, that words were not enough to express his gratitude. What a lesson, and espe- cially to those who have been healed by Christian Science, to acknowledge God. But what we wish to point out in this illustration chiefly is, that it was not the prophet, as the representative of God, who needed to be conciliated, but Xaaman. He was the vexed and angry one. He had turned his face from the light, and was going away in a 32 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION rage. Just so it is with mortal man. Turning from God, he starts for Abanar and Pharpar, creations of riis own beliefs, and expects to find in them the antidote for human ills. Man tries in vain. Jesus comes to the rescue, not to make God willing to help, but to dissipate, with the Truth, the beliefs of mortal mind, and show man, that he has not to go beyond himself for healing power, but that right with him is the Life, Truth, and Love that destroys sin, sickness and death. There are two or three words akin to " propitiation" which we will now consider, as they are so frequently used in setting forth the doctrine of the atonement. The next is " Intercession," which carries a similar thought in theology as the word propitiation, with this exception : Propitiation refers more particularly to the work of actual sacrifice, to the incarnation, sufferings and death of Jesus, while intercession is the argument which Jesus is supposed to have used with His Father, as a reason why He should pardon the sinner. The following very popu- lar hymn will show how the intercession of Jesus is re- garded by what is called orthodox theology. It is one of Wesley's : Arise my soul, arise, Shake off thy guilty fears, The bleeding sacrifice In my behalf appears ; Before the throne my surety stands, My name is written on His hands. He ever lives above, For me to intercede, His all-redeeming love, His precious blood, to plead ; His blood atoned for all our race, And sprinkles now the throne of grace. OF THE A TOXEMEXT. jj Five bleeding wounds he bears, Received on Calvary ; They pour effectual prayers, They strongly speak for me ; " Forgive him, O forgive,'' they cry, " Nor let that ransomed sinner die!" The Father hears Him pray, His dear annointed one; He cannot turn away The presence of His Son ; The spirit answers to the blood And tells me I am born of God. At one time we thought this a most beautiful hymn, frequently gave it out in our services, and sung it with much earnestness and delight, but now as we turn upon it the light of Truth, it seems to us a gross misrepresenta- tion of the character of God, whose name and nature is Love. On page 219 of the first volume of the " Spirit of the Word," published in 1885 by A. P. Adams, of Beverly, Massachusetts, we find such an unfolding of the error of what is called orthodox theology on this subject of inter- cession, that we prefer to give you the opinion of one who lays no claim to being a Christian Scientist. " The great preacher, Spurgeon, in one of his sermons thus illustrates this point: He tells a story of a man in Cuba who had violated some of the laws of the island, and was sentenced to be shot; he was English born and a naturalized citizen of America, therefore both the consuls of those two coun- tries interfered in the man's behalf; but the local govern- ment was obdurate and revengeful, refused to release him, and said that he must die. Accordingly at the appointed time the man was brought out to the place of execution and a line of soldiers posted to do the deadly work, but before the fatal discharge the two consuls appeared on the 3 4 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION scene, and making their way to the condemned man they threw over him the folds of the American and English flags, and dared the authorities to fire upon him. Thus cov- ered they dare not do it, the man was released, and his life saved. Now, says Mr. Spurgeon, as long as I am covered with the robes of Christ's righteousness, God can not pour on me the vials of His wrath. Unprotected I am exposed to the terrible penalty of a broken law and a justly angry God. There is no mercy for me out of Christ. But with Christ between me and the law, protected by riim, u e., protected from God, I am safe; and so on in this line. Just think of the illustration! How awfully it maligns God's character! It compares him to the Cuban authorities thirsting for the blood of the transgressor of their laws, and Christ is represented by the brave and humane con- suls who risked their own lives to save the life of their fellowman. Is such a representation true? No, no, a thousand times no! How thoughtless and blind men must be to thus place in the most glaring contrast with God, Him who is the brightness of His glory and the express image of His substance. But now, on the other hand, if we know God we shall understand that Christ's dealings with the Father are not of the above character at all, but that the idea of an intercessor is wholly for man's benefit. The fact that we have a friend at court is for our comfort and encouragement ; the King himself loves us ; but that is the last thing that we will believe, and to help us to see that blessed Truth, Christ is given as a go-between to "manifest" (first of John iv.,9 and 10,) the Father's love." There is another passage in which the word interces- sion is employed, Heb. vii., 25 : " Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost who come to God OF THE A TONEMENT. jj through Him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." This is identical in meaning with first John i., 2, where the word advocate is employed: " My beloved children, I write these things to you that you may not sin. But if any one sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." In first of Timothy n., 5, the word mediator is used: "For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, the man Jesus Christ." The three words, intercessor, advocate and medi - ator are akin in meaning, and are intended to convey to mortal man in his conscious helplessness the idea that he has in Jesus Christ a prese?zt helper. Not an advocate pleading with God to induce him to love and compassion, but that side by side with him he has a helper, some one that can and does show him how to overcome all sin, and thus remove the seeming clouds that hide the smiles of his lov- ing father, and bring him, by the Truth, into the conscious- ness that he is not a material being, subject to sin, sick- ness and death, but a spiritual being, reflecting the Life, Truth, and Love which God, man's Father, is. Paul expresses the correct idea in his second letter to the Cor- inthians, v., 18 and 19: "And all things are from God who hath reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ (thus you see God's work is finished), and hath given to us the ministry of the reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not im- puting their trespasses to them, and hath committed to us the word of reconciliation." There are many other pass- ages which carry the same thought, but we presume the foregoing will suffice. The words mediator and advocate are so nearly allied in meaning, though often and separately used in theology to set forth the doctrine of atonement, that it will not be j6 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION necessary to speak of both, simply of one, say, mediator. He is one who comes between two or more parties at vari- ance for the purpose of reconciling them. That is the work of Jesus Christ with man; He knows that His father is our father, and that He loves us with an everlast- ing love, that we are His spiritual children, and that this material personality which claims to be a child of God, is a claim without a claimant, having no Ego, Truth, or fact as its basis of support; simply a belief, an illusion, an appearance that goes out forever before the Truth, which Jesus taught and demonstrated. The atoning work of Jesus is the revealing and proving of this blessed Truth to man. OF THE A TOXEMENT. 37 FIFTH LECTURE. In this lecture we come to the consideration of the word " redemption," which is so frequently employed in the setting forth and explanation of the doctrine of atonement. We derive the word from two Latin words, " Re," which means " again" or u back," and " Emere," " to buy," so that the literal meaning of the word redemp- tion is the act of buying back, by payment or presentation of something to an owner, which he accepts as an equiva- lent in value to him for a thing he is asked to give up, or relinquish his claim upon. The redemption of humanity by the life, suffering and death of Jesus is often illustrated by the purchase and liberation of a slave. The assump- tion in such purchase is, that the slave's master has a just claim upon him, which he is not willing to forego unless an equivalent in money, or its equal, is paid to him. When that is done and legally attested, the slave is deliv- ered from bondage. According to the old line of teaching, Jesus Christ is represented as having paid the price and redeemed man. Then we ask in all fairness, if the price of man's redemp- tion is paid, and paid to the full, why is man not* free? Who is so dishonest as to hold him in bondage w r hen the supposed master has been paid to let him go? The price for man's redemption, we are told, was paid on Calvary more than eighteen hundred years ago. How comes it to pass then, that he is still in sin, " Led captive by the devil at his will," and if anything, his slavery is more abject and galling than it has ever been before. If any judgment can be formed, from the appearance of this world at the pres- ent time, we must conclude that man is not redeemed ac- S 8 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION cording to the old notion, or his old master has either gone back upon the bargain, or is supporting his dishonesty in holding man in slavery, by a power which Jesus Christ himself is not able to destroy. Nearly two thousand years has elapsed since the re- demption price was paid, and man's condition seems tc be worse to-day, notwithstanding all the efforts of the churches in assisting Jesus in carrying out his plans, that is, if we are to judge from the testimony of those who are supposed to be competent to form an opinion. Quite recently at the " Reform Presbyterian Synod" held in Pittsburgh, at which were present one hundred and sixty delegates, representing congregations from nearly every state in the Union, the Rev. J. B. Thomason, of the committee on the times, read an interesting paper, which contained the statement that " instead of the church pene- trating the world, the world was penetrating the church, and was playing havoc generally." This is the universal lament from every church con- ference in the country. What is the matter? This does not look as if mankind was redeemed. Man is never re- deemed while he is under the dominion of sin, sickness and death. A personal Jesus can never redeem man, but the Truth taught by Jesus, apprehended and lived, Can. He said : u Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free." Just as long as the churches direct the attention of the people to a personal Jesus, and not the Christ, the Truth, Life and Love, which is all, there being none other beside, just that long failure will result from their efforts. The falsity of the old line of teaching will be seen if we consider without prejudice, but simply a desire to know the Truth: OF THE A TONEMENT. 3 q (1) Who is the natural man's master that holds him in slavery? Jesus said: " Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." (John viii. and 34.) And Paul said: "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obev, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness ?" (Rom. vi. and 16.) Again he said: " For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing ; for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not, for the good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me." (Rom. vii. and 18-21.) From this scripture it will appear, that sin is the master of this natural or carnal man, and that that sin is not in the inner or true man, but in the flesh. Now if sin is the master, are we to infer that sin has a claim on man which it will not let go, till Jesus has given to it a price to relinquish its hold upon man? Did Jesus Christ pay the price of man's redemption to the devil, whom Jesus de- nounces as a murderer, a liar and the father of all lies, to induce him to let the sinner go free? Never! a million times never. Old theology may say, "No; the payment was made to divine justice, to God." How does that help the matter? Does God hold mortal man in bondage, that is, compel him to remain in error or sin until a redemption price is paid to let him go? Is the price paid to God, to induce Him to grant deliverance to His creature man? That cannot be, for if Christ is God, as John and all so- called orthodoxy and theological teachers say, then God must have paid the price to Himself for the release of 4 o A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION man? Can anything be more absurd? If such were the case, it would be as if the slave-owner should take his own money from his pocket, a thousand or more dollars, just what he supposed the slave to be worth, and pay it into the bank, for the benefit of himself, and then set his slave at liberty because his value had been paid to him by him- self. We know you will smile at the ridiculousness of such a transaction, and yet that is in substance the very thing we are asked to believe about a God of infinite wis- dom, love and almighty power. No! No! You must pass that on, or rather back to the hallucinations of the carnal mind, for we cannot predicate such an act as that of God. "Well," says the objector, " that is not exactly what we mean." What do you mean then? "We mean that man has sinned, and by that sin he has offended the divine justice, and justice cannot release the sinner, until its claims are met. The sinner must be punished for his sin, and the only way in which justice can be satisfied is in the administration of the penalty of the violated law, or something must be done for the sinner which justice will regard as an equivalent for the sinner's punishment, and that equivalent was paid* in the incarnation, suffering and death of Jesus Christ." Well, all this does not disprove, but only confirms what we have just said; that God is offended by man's sin, and by his own act and deed you represent him as furnishing the means by which he cools down his own anger. It is not man, according to your representation, that appeases the anger of God, by something which he does for offending God, but God, by His own act and deed, makes atonement to Himself for Himself. He allows Himself to get offended by what man does, and then, ac- OF THE A TONEMENT. 4 i cording to your idea, punishes Himself to make atonement for man's sin. If vou can see the manifestation of infinite wisdom and love in a scheme of this kind to redeem man, your vision far exceeds any conception which we can form of infinite wisdom. Further, old theology tells us, that justice (by which we suppose is meant God) cannot relax its hold on the sinner, till its claim is met. Let us inquire: What is the claim or obligation which man is under to God ? Is it not to be good, as God is, to love Him with all the heart, to have no other God, to hate lying, stealing, covet- ousness, pride, malice, envy, adultery, revenge, murder and every evil thing? Can the claim of justice or God be less than this? Can God let up one iota on that claim? No indeed. And do you propose to give some consideration to God, by which He can and will release mortal man from his obligation to resist evil of all kinds? No vicarious suffering of Jesus Christ, uor anything else that can be done for us by another will ever relax the demand to be good and perfect even as God is perfect. Each one must be consciously right, in thought and act, before the hold of eternal right can ever be relaxed. While our common sense constrains us to reject the old interpretation of redemption, we are delighted to tell you there is a redemption of man, which, when explained in the light of Christian Science, we think will commend itself to every man's conscience in the sight ot God, as being the Truth, but of that each one for himself must be the judge. Thus far, we have explained to you the old ideas of the atonement, and now we propose to give you the Christian Science view, or rather what seems to us in perfect harmony with the spiritual teaching of scripture 42 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION and reason. We deliberately say reason, which we regard As synonymous with our spiritual intuitions, and as Emer- son has justly said, " That which another announces to me I must find true within myself, or reject." We make no affirmation that our view of the atone- ment is the absolutely correct one, to us it is true, and the perception of it from this stand-point has brought a freight of health, peace and blessing, that no language of ours can adequately describe. Our earnest desire is that it may be so to you ; our friend and brother in Christ. Mr. Adams, of Beverley, Massachusetts, though not a Christian Scientist, and not able yet to see things from our stand-point, has gi ven us in a general summary of the orthodox teaching of the atonement, twelve propositions, containing his objections to the old theology. They are so thoroughly in harmony with the views of Christian Scientists that we prefer to give them, (with our own comments thereon,) in order that you may see how others, who are not tinctured with Christian Science, regard this fundamental doctrine of the Christian Church. Before doing so, however, let me affirm once for all, that the oft-repeated charge against us, viz: That "we utterly deny the doctrine of the atonement," is not true. We believe in, and teach the doctrine of the atonement,, but our interpretation of what the scriptures teach, on that subject, is vastly different from what is taught by so-called orthodoxy. We cordially endorse the following view of the atone- ment as set forth in Mrs. Eddy's book "Science and Health," Page 527, " Atonement; the teachings, demon- strations and sufferings of the man, Jesus, when showing mortals the way of salvation from sin, sickness and death: Divine Science; Soul's triumph over material sense; the OF THE A TONEMENT. 43 supremacy of spirit asserted; man reassuming the image and likeness of God, in His scientific at-one-ment with Him. Jesus of Nazareth, gave the all important proof, that when God is understood, it will be seen that God creates man, and man cannot for the smallest moment be without a bodv. This Divine Science overcame death and the grave, and was Jesus' final demonstration that the body is the same after, as before death. It follows that there is a future state of probation and progress; wherein to grow out of a material, and into the spiritual sense of existence. The meek and mighty Nazarene exhibited a material body, after the crucifixion, to show His followers the great need there is of spiritualizing thought and action, in order to make man God-like before he reaches what is termed death; that after it, he may be fit for the higher school of the "just made perfect." Not death, but the under- standing of Life or God, spiritualizes man and determines forever His spiritual progress and His physical condition. Atonement stands for mortality, disappearing, and immor- tality, coming to light; for self abnegation and love, bless- ing Truth's enemies. Atonement is not blood from the veins of Jesus, but his out-flow T ing sense of Life, Truth and Love; so much higher, purer and more God-like than mankind's, shedding its hallowed influence over the whole human race, and marking out the only way to heaven. Atonement is not so much the death on the cross, but the cross bearing deathless life, which was left by Jesus for an example to mankind, and ransoms from sin all who follow it." Now let us consider the twelve propositions of our friend in relation to the atonement. (I) " 7 he atonement was not to satisfy God^s jus- tice, but to reveal His love" 44 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION We endorse this for the following reasons, the highest conception that we can form of justice is, that it consists in being right and doing right. No one will doubt the rightness of God. "Just and right is He," and because He is so, all His manifestations must correspond to His nature. Mortal man is not just and right in all his ways, but justice demands that he shall be, and rest he will never have until he is. How then is he brought into that state of being, by virtue of which he will do right? It is evi- dent that he must have the right thought, or he cannot have the right act, as all action is but the expression of thought. " As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." The reason why man's actions are not in harmony with the right, is, because his thoughts are wrong. The latter is a reflection of the former, the connection is that of cause and effect, and can never be anything else. If then the deeds of man are to be reformed, the reformation must begin with the thought of which the act is but an expression. If the act is an error, then the thought must be. So the first thing to be done is to correct the thought and the other will follow as a matter of course. How is that correction of thought to be brought about, or how is man to be brought into harmony with the just, right and true? The doing of that must be the work of the atonement, bringing together or making one. Jesus, and Jesus only, shows us as no one else has ever done, just how that thing is to be done. His recognition of, and personal conformity to the eternal law of right can never make me right, or bring me to the consciousness that I am right. Neither can His sufferings and death satisfy the demands of justice for me. As a man, He was just as much under obligation to do right and conform to the law of right, to the utmost extent of His ability as I OF THE A TOXEMENT. 45 am, and hence He could not perform any work of supere- rogation which He thought His love could transfer to me to supply my deficiency. Justice says, " I do not want the goodness of Jesus as a substitute for yours. My demand is that YOU shall be right in thought, word and act, and L can never let you have the consciousness of being at one with me until you are." In order that we may attain to the consciousness of being good and doing good, Jesus comes, not to do the good, or conform to that which is right in the stead of us, but by His blessed example to show us how to be and do just as He did. How did He show us the way? By denying His personality and all material claims. He said distinctly, "I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me." And at the well of Samaria, He said to His disciples, as they urged Him to eat, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to accomplish His work." Hence His first and most important lesson to those who would follow Him, that is, be as He was and do as He did, is set forth in those words " If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, (that is, his personality and all that appertains to it,) and take up his cross daily, and follow me." " Except a man forsake all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." This absolute renunciation of personality, and following Jesus daily, is not something which He does for us, instead of our doing it, but it is something which each one must do for themselves, or it will never be done. This will be made very plain if we consider the differ- ence between the two prepositions, ''for" and " instead." The writer which we have before alluded to, is so beauti- ful and clear on this point, that we prefer to give you his explanation. He says, under the title of "substitution." 46 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION — The following is not exactly a scientific way of put- ting it, but if you substitute Jesus for the Christ, as Christ stands for Life, Truth and Love, and hence can never die, as death is commonly understood, you will have no diffi^ culty in recognizing the important distinction between for and instead. — " Substitution is as much out of place in the doctrine of the atonement, as it is in the doctrine of sanctification. But if the above be true, how shall we understand such Scriptures as the following? He "tasted death for every man," the " just for the unjust," " He bore our sins," etc. All this class of scripture is made plain, when w r e notice the difference between the two prepositions for and instead. Christ died for us, but He did not die instead of us. In His death He was man's companion, associate, "elder brother," but He was not man's substitute. He suffered with man and on man's behalf, being " made in all things like unto His brethren," and we follow Him, as our fore- runner, in just the same way that He trod, sharing His sufferings, bearing His reproach, " being made conform- able unto His death" (what ever that death was, see 1-3-52), and thereby coming at last to be " like Him" 1 John iii, 2. There is not a particle of substitution in all this, but perfect identity of experience (see 1-3-101, 102 and 103); w^e are one with Him in His humiliation, suffering and death, and one with Him in exaltation, glory and resur- rection life. Christ does not endure a penalty and certain sufferings, and a death, in order that we may not endure the same, as He would do if He were our substitute; but He endures the same suffering and the same death that we endure, and He walked in the same "ways of life" (Acts ii. 28) in which we must walk in order to reach "the same OF THE A TONEMENT. 47 image." Even that supposed stronghold of substitution, the 53d chapter of Isaiah, is in perfect harmony with the foregoing view. Read verses 4 and 5 ; now turn to Matt, viii. 16, 17, and see how this was fulfilled. Christ a bore our griefs and carried our sorrows," not as a substitute, but as a sympathizing companion and friend. He was man's great Burden-bearer (sin included, see John i. 29, margin) not that man might be exempted altogether from the burden (for "every man shall bear his own burden," Gal. vi. 6), but that man might be taught how to bear it, the reason for bearing it, and, above all, might be delivered from the death-load (Rom. vii. 24, 25) in God's "due season." 48 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION SIXTH LECTURE. (2) The next proposition that we shall consider is: " The justice of God is not against the sinner, demand- ing his condemnation, but FOR him, insuring his salva- tion ." This may seem a strange statement to make, for we have always been educated in the belief, that the inflex- ible justice of God demanded the eternal doom of the sin- ner, if he did not avail himself of the atonement which had been provided for him in Jesus Christ. It has been represented to us, and we have many times so represented it to our congregations, that the justice of God was such, and His nature so unchangeable, that He could not do oth- erwise than consign the finally impenitent to eternal tor- ment, not only as a just punishment for their own sins, but as a guarantee to the rest of His children, (who are supposed to be in Heaven with Him, beholding the mani- festation of His justice on their brothers and sisters for persistency in sin), and an evidence of Ihe immutability of God's nature, and their own eternal security, for we were told, in substance, again and again, that the stability of the throne of the Eternal rested upon the everlasting punish- ment of the wicked. As some may think, this is an extravagant statement, made, for the sake of effect, we have simply to say, that not three years ago, one of the most orthodox and influ- ential denominations in this country, did, through an asso- ciation of some of its most able ministers, expel us from the ministry, not for immoral conduct, but because we told them that we could no longer hold and preach such a false doctrine. OF THE A TONEMENT. 49 For thirty years we had believed and thought, that faith in the doctrine of endless punishment was essential to the salvation of the soul, and when, by a better understand- ing of the nature and unchanging love of God, we were led to see, that endless punishment was an impossibility that the nature of God, (Love) was such, that he could not create and sustain a flace called hell, that denomination had no further use for us. May God forgive us for such a misrepresentation of Him, who is unchanging love, for we can scarce forgive ourselves. A little reflection on the nature of punishment and justice will help to blot out this horrible belief con- cerning God. What injustice but eternal rectitude, con- stant uprightness, perfection of being. Straight, not crooked, right not wrong; likeness to God of whom the scriptures say, "Just and right is He, and holy in all His ways." Justice demands that I shall be that, like God, holy as He is holy, good as He is good, love as He is love, that nothing shall exist in the universe of God that is un- like Himself, and that demand of justice can never be relaxed one iota until all conscious being is in perfect har- mony with God, with Love. Now, suppose my carnal nature, or personality, rebels against this principle of Justice or Love, for Justice and Love are identical. Will the principle of eternal rectitude punish my personality or carnal nature with endless misery ? Please note, we say, personality or carnal nature, because my spiritual nature which is of God and in God cannot sin, and hence cannot be subject to punishment any more than God can, for my spiritual nature, that is, my true selfhood is an exact image and likeness of Himself, and therefore cannot sin, as the scriptures say, "Whatsoever is born of God doth not commit sin, and he cannot sin, be- 50 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION cause his seed, that is the very nature of God, abideth in him." If, then, the fleshly or carnal man is the only man that can sin, and by sin become subject to punishment, let us inquire what is punishment and who is it that inflicts it? Punishment according to mortal mind's belief of it is: The judicial infliction of suffering, deprivation of liberty, because of some offence supposed to have been committed against the rights of another. It is the execution of the penalty, (whatever that may be), of violated law. Now if law is the .expression of one or more persons, and those persons attach a penalty of suffering to the violation of law, they must do so upon the basis that there are persons with wills to* antagonize law and order, and that those per- sons must be kept in subjection by the fear of punishment. Does the Principle of justice, eternal rectitude, or God know of any being who has power to question or antag- onize eternal harmony? Certainly not, for if He did, then God would know that He was not a//, filling immen- sity, beside whom there was none; then if there is none but God and His spiritual manifestations, which are only the expressions of right, Truth, holiness and love, what need is there of law to regulate God and His manifesta- tions, with a penalty of suffering, to hold the image and likeness of God in fear and subjection to what we call au- thority? The fact is, in the realm of spirit, or reality, there is no law, and consequently no punishment. Thus we see that in Truth, law, with its penalties and suffering for violation, is neither more nor less than a false human conception which goes down and out forever, before the apprehended Truth that, " God is Love." In this we have another instance of how mortal man believes that God manages and controls His spiritual children and the uni- verse, just as material man regulates the affairs of this OF THE A TONEMENT, ji mundane sphere. All God's children are free, but where law is, there is no Freedom. God is Love; Man and the spiritual universe is an expression of it. What does love need of law, with re- strictions and penalties to keep it on the line of right, when it never seeks her own, but always another's welfare? Again, punishment, according to human conception, has a two-fold object ; first, to maintain what is called the majesty of law for the good of human society, and second, it always contemplates the reformation of the criminal; hence punishment is supposed to be remedial, indeed it is admin- istered with that design. Human experience proves that the fear of punishment deters from crime, but it has never been known to change the disposition, or heart; Truth, and Truth alone, does that, for just as long as the thought of selfishness is held in the mortal mind, just that long selfishness will manifest itself in act. The other day I saw a tree cut down level with the ground, and supposed it w r as the ground, until I saw green shoots springing out of what seemed to be the dust, but on examination, (for green shoots appearing in the dust of a high road arrested my attention), I found the roots of quite a large tree. So you may whip the body, subject it to beliefs of great pain and deprivation, but while the thought of selfishness is held in the mind, it is liable to burst out at any time. If punishment was remedial, the amount of it that has been inflicted upon the human race has been enough during the last six thousand years to have purified a dozen worlds like ours, but instead of lessening crime, the basic thought or source of which is selfishness, the world never presented, on the whole, more gross and refined selfishness, than it does to-day, which we look upon, not as a cause of discouragement but an unmistakable 5 2 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION sign, that mortal Man was never nearer committing sui- cide than now, or being forced to acknowledge that Truth perceived and undersood is the o?ily regenerator. " Still," you say, " There is suffering, and that suffer- ing is what we call punishment for wrong doing, and just as long as wrong is done, just that long there w^ill be suf- fering." That is so, according to the belief of the carnal mind, but who makes the laws for the carnal man, and who inflicts the punishment? God knows nothing of him, for all God knows is good, so that we are shut up to the con- clusion that the carnal man, claiming himself to be a real man, makes his own laws and executes his own penalties. He decrees for himself, and so it comes to pass, he makes hygienic laws concerning the atmosphere, food, drink and clothing, investing by his belief those things w^ith intelli- gence and power, giving them rules of action, and then says to himself, now if you do not obey those rules you will suffer for the violation. So it is with sin. Mortal man decides by his belief what is sin, and what is not sin, and to the sin of refusing to accept what he calls the atoning work of Jesus Christ, he attaches the penalty of eternal misery. He constructs a theological theory of sin, then a remedy for it, then a penalty for not accepting the remedy, and then says, that these are God's Laws, and God's acts of discipline, and punishment for disobedience, while all the time, " God is too pure to behold iniquity." Let me further show the utter fallacy of this eternal punishment business. According to the old idea, the per- sistently impenitent are sent to an eternal hell to secure the ends or demands of justice, and, when once there, the wicked have no possible chance of getting out, or even becoming better, the dye is said to be cast, and their doom irrevocably fixed. Now, we ask, in the light of common OF THE A TOXEMEXT. jj sense and sober earnestness, how is the end of justice, (which is constant conformity to right), to be secured, if you put a person where there is no possibility of their be- coming better, but where they are fixed in a state of antag- onism to love, for love is not the fruit of punishment, but fear is. Why, if punishment produced love to God, it would not be long before hell would be turned into Heaven. When I was a boy I lived in the city of London, on White Cross Street. On that street was a debtor's prison, in which persons who had got into debt were put, until they paid their debts. Some were kept there for years, and died there, because while in prison they had no means for earning money to pay their debt. The folly of de- manding of a man the payment of his debts, and then put- ting him in a place where it was impossible for him to earn a cent, was seen in due time and the prison emptied. Who can conceive of God being guilty of such folly ? So we see, that what is called the demands of justice, prop- erly understood, is really a guarantee that every sinner will be eventually saved, and that salvation will consist, not in the salvation of the soul, for God is the life and soul of Man, but in the utter destruction of the sense of sin, which belongs entirely to the personal man or the carnal mind, which is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, hence it has to be destroved, not preserved in hell, but utterlv consumed bv the understandinof of the Truth, or God, for our God, who is Love, and Justice, is a consuming fire. Justice will never relax its claim for all to be right, until the claim of the carnal man, with all his beliefs of sin, sickness, punishment and death, shall be seen and known to be claimless, that the carnal mind, with all its beliefs of personalties is no mind, that it has no Truth 5 4 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION in it, no Principle, fact or Ego as its basis of support, that it is simply a cloud without water, an illusion which ap- peareth for a little while and then vanisheth away. Then will appear, without a cloud between, the true Man, the individual, the concrete thought of the most High; sinless, sickless, deathless, the perfect manifestation of Life, Truth, Love, Intelligence, and Power. Until these sons of God are manifest, Truth, which is justice, will never cease to agitate or shine until every cloud is dis- persed and the words of Jesus verified. " The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened?" If an immense number of the human race are to be shut up in an eternal hell how can the WHOLE be leavened? For ourselves, we believe the words of Jesus to express the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, but we have no quarrel with those whose educational beliefs find end- less punishment necessary to meet the demands of God's justice. If it is any comfort for them to believe that their security in heaven is made more sure by the fact of millions of their brothers and sisters being in hell, we must simply wait until they get the better view. (3) The next proposition of our friend is: " God is not in contrast with, much less in opposi- tion to Christ in the atonement, but in perfect harmony and accordP In Science we learn that Christ is not a person, inde- pendent of God, and using his influence with God to induce Him to be gracious to the sinner, but as John tells us in the first chapter of his gospel, " Christ, the Word, was not only with God, but he was God, and that by him all things were made. And Paul in his letter to the Hebrews says that, "Christ was the express image of His, (the OF THE A TONEMENT. 55 Father's,) substance and sustaining all things by the word of His power." Christ then is the Word, and the Word was with God and is God, hence Christ, according to the teaching of scripture, is the Divine Principle of Life, Truth, and Love, and this is confirmed by the direct teach- ing of Jesus, for when Philip said to him, " Show us the Father and it sufficeth us," Jesus replied, a Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou, show us the Father?" It is evident that the " Me" which Jesus referred to in this reply could not have been the personal Jesus, but the Divine principle of Life, Truth, and Love^ which the personal Jesus had endeavored to make manifest to Philip and his companions. So that the thought of Christ being in contrast with God as an independent person, operating upon God to induce him to do something, which if left to himself he would not be likely to do, is altogether foreign from the truth. (4) This leads us to the proposition : " The atonement is not the exclusive work of Christ, in order to reconcile God unto the world, but it is the work of God in Christ to reconcile the world unto Himself." In the work of the atonement, according to the old theology, Christ has always been represented as though He was a separate being from God, and the most con- spicuous person, loving and working for the sinner with an indefatigable zeal and self-abnegation, while the Father has been represented as not only looking on our miserable condition as sinners, but determined on punishing us for the least offense, hence from boyhood we have regarded the Father as a being we had to fear, but Jesus Christ, the son, as a being to love, because he was not only trying to j6. A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION appease the Father's anger toward us, but he had actually received on his own person the stripes that ought to have fallen on tfs; In Science we are constrained to take de- cided exception to this particular theory of the atonement for the following reasons : 1. There are not two persons in the Godhead, one inflexible, just, and the other tender, loving, and merciful. We take our stand with Dr. Hodge, who says in his " Ex- position of the Westminister Confession of Faith: " God is an absolute unit, incapable of division." As long as this is true, there cannot be two persons in the Godhead, one seeking to influence the other to a certain course of action which he is not likely to pursue unless the second person can bring -forward considerations or reasons which will out-weigh his supposed objections to such a course of con- duct. ■ : ' 2. The atonement is God's work from beginning to end, and iChrist the Truth or Word is the instrument by which it is accomplished. This seems to us to be the plain teaching qf Jesus, for in the conversation He is reported to have had with Nicodemus, he says: a For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on Him may not perish but have everlasting life." From this it is evident that God, the Father is the source or spring from whence the salvation of man proceeds, and instead of the son inducing the Father to; be gracious to the sinner, the gift of the son is a manifestation of the Father's great heart of love. It was Jesus of Nazareth who first clearly apprehended the great Truth that God is love, and that love is not simply an attribute of God, but it is the very being or nature of God; He is Love and can never be anything else. Apprehend- ing this divine principle of Life, Truth and Love as con- OF THE A TONEMENT. j 7 stituting God, "Our Father." Jesus made it known to humanity by His words, acts, and daily life; He showed us what the Father was, hence He said : " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Whatever we see in Jesus, of Life triumphant over death, holiness over im- purity, love over hate, intelligence over ignorance, and spirit over matter, we see in the Father, for it was not a vain declaration when He said: "land the Father are one," but the Truth speaking through the personal Jesus. Jesus did not create this love ot God to man, but by His superior spiritual perception He saw what existed al- ready, and so made it known to us, that we might attain a similar perception of the same blessed Truth, and by it become in due time conscious of our oneness, or " at-one- ment" with God. Thus we can see how Jesus is the Light and Saviour of the world, and that whoever follows Him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Edison did not create electricity and its illumin- ating power, but he did by study, research, and experi- ment discover what it was and what could be done with it, and as a result of his findings it is possible for every city and town in the country to have the darkness of night transformed into daylight and beauty. So it has been with the blessed Jesus. He found out that sin was a belief of the carnal man ; that it had no reality any more than darkness, and as Edison by the ap- plication of electricity puts out the darkness of the darkest night, so Jesus puts out the belief of sin by the application of the Truth that God is love, and God is everywhere ; consequently in the realm of reality there is no such thing as sin. He saw, also, that what we call sickness was simply a belief of the mortal man. That sickness, in whatever form it might appear, whether as palsy, fever, jS A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION rheumatism, epilepsy, insanity, lameness, or blindness was only a claim of the mortal mind, an appearance with no reality or truth as its basis of support, hence he spoke the Truth which he perceived and knew, and with the dying echo of his spoken words, the apparently real and formid- able diseases faded away into their native nothingness. And so it w r as with what humanity calls " death." He knew that it also was a belief without a believer ; that no such cruel tyrant had a real existence ; that God, his Father and " Our Father," was the ever conscious, and every- where principle of Life, leaving no point of space in the vast immensity where the supposed monster, death, could erect a throne, and subject the children of God to the cruel scepter of his power. Death to Him was a mere illusion of belief, which His understanding of the principle of Life put out with a single spoken sentence of the Truth which He perceived and knew. "Lazarus come forth." And he that had been dead came forth. Why? Simply because there is no power but the power of an endless Life, which is God. OF THE A TONEMENT. j? SEVENTH LECTURE. The next proposition we shall consider in the general summary of the atonement is: " Christ yesus does not have to plead with God in order to ?nake him zvilling to pardon the sinner, but God by his ininisters beseeches the sinner to make him willing to be pardoned" This is the clear and oft repeated statement of scrip- ture, and how we have got it turned around the other way is a mystery we have given over trying to account for. 'Let us cite some passages (2nd of Cor. 18-20,) reads as follows : " And all things are from God, who hath reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation: Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and hath committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating by us; we beseech you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." In Rom. 12 and 1, we read: " I exhort you there- fore, brethren, by the tender mercies of God, to present your bodies unto God, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, which is your reasonable service." Many others similar might be cited, but these will probably suffice to show that God is already reconciled, no anger burns in his bosom to be quenched by what is called the blood of atonement. He needs no Jesus Christ to plead with Him to be gracious and loving, neither is it necessary for the sinner, groaning under a sense of guilt to cry unto God in a prostrate condition of body and with 60 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION bitter tears for God to have mercy upon him, as though God had not already done for the sinner all that he could do, for God can do no more. He has manifested the Truth (which puts out the beliefs of sin) in the person of Jesus the Christ, and through him, his ministers, and the " light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," He is appealing like a loving Father. " Wisdom crieth without ; she uttereth her voice in the streets ; she crieth in the chief places of concourse, in the openings of the gates ; in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowl- edge? Turn you at my reproof; behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you." What could be more earnest, tender and loving, than the voice of Truth speaking through the lips of Jesus. " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Through Isaiah the same blessed voice of Truth is heard: " Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Does all this look as if God needed to be prayed unto by Jesus, or by the sinner to induce him to pardon sin ? No indeed! The scripture everywhere, when properly interpreted, represents God as knocking at our door, just as the risen sun is supposed to be saying to the sleepy, dreamy tenant of a room, " Wake up ! Wake up ! the OF THE A TOXEMENT. 61 night is past, roll up the blinds, open the shutters, let me in, and I will scatter the darkness, and soon put out the horrible dreams and nightmares of your sleep." " Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and sup with him, and he with me." The next proposition reads: " The atonement is ?wt to propitiate God, but man, not to make God favorably disposed toward man, but to make his already existing favor known to man" This statement is truly Scientific, Mortal man has been in ignorance of God. God, to him, has been mis- represented from the first. He has been lied about, and the natural man has believed the lie, the first record of which we have in the 3rd chapter of Genesis — let us see : " Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And tne woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden ; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil." If we should speak according to the common lan- guage of men, we must say, that a bigger lie of God was never told, and yet the natural man has believed it. It forms part of what is called orthodox theology. We have been educated from our infancy into the belief of its Truth, and from the belief of that lie as Truth, has come all of our beliefs of sin, sickness and death. 62 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION Now let us unmask this lie and see if our statement is not true. In the first place: The Lord God, and this Lord God we have been taught is "Our Father," is charged with creating a serpent more subtle than any beast •of the field, investing that serpent, not only with an intel- ligence more than human, for he is represented as knowing more than Adam and Eve, but with a capacity to talk, and to talk with such intelligence, subtlity and eloquence as to utterly deceive the " mother of all living." Now if this serpent is the same as Satan, or Devil, only under another name, and the testimony of Jesus can be relied on as ex- pressed in John 8 and 44, then the serpent is a foul mur- derer, an unqualified liar, and his own originator, yet in the record before us, the Lord God is charged with being the father of this horrible thing. Who tells the Truth, the writer of the record, or Jesus of Nazareth? Surely there is a mistake somewhere. For our own part we must accept the testimony of Jesus, not simply because it is his, but it carries to our spiritual perception the conviction of its Truth. It is impossible for us to conceive the author of all things, whom we can not but recognize as absolutely good, to be the producer of a liar and murderer. We are glad to see, however, that this monstrous lie is not predicated of GW, but of the Lord God, who he is, we do not know, and do not care to know, if he manufactures serpents who lie about " our Father" the Good. It is enough for us to know, that God, being absolute Truth can not by any pos- sibility become the originator of a lie. Further, this ser- pent charges God, by insinuation, with being arbitrary, vindictive, incapable or cruel. Arbitrary in laying upon Adam and Eve a restriction by which they are deprived of the fruit of a tree, which OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 63 according to the testimony of the serpent is capable of giv- ing them more knowledge and happiness than all else; vindictive, in threatening them with an awful punishment if they gratify an innate desire to partake of the forbidden fruit, and either incapable of conferring upon them the highest possible good, or cruel in withholding from them that knowledge which the serpent says will exalt them to the condition of Gods. In this latter charge is involved another lie, and that is, that God himself knows evil, and that it is an advantage for any one else to know it, and the forbidden tree (matter) is invested by the serpent with an intelligence and power, to open their blind eyes, thus im- plying that God had been the Father of blind children, and the serpent would improve upon God's work, by directing them to a tree, the fruit of which would not only give them sight, but wonderfully improve their condition in every respect. Here is the hydra-headed lie, which for ages has been handed down to us as the Truth, and the carnal man has believed it, with its results of sin, sickness and death. This error, or misrepresentation of God and man, went on through the ages ^for man was held to be a com- pound of mind and matter, and matter was believed to be a reality with intelligence and power of causation) with every now and then, some one rebuking the error by his spiritual apprehension of the Truth, that God was Spirit, one, an absolute unit, incapable of division, and that man, his offspring, must be spiritual, till Jesus came, who by rea- son of His superior spiritual perception, unmasked the lie. exposed the falsity, and showed by word and deed that the real, and only man there is, was not a compound of mind and matter, controlled by its supposed laws, a sinful, sick- ening, dying creature; but that man was the image and 64 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION likeness of Spirit, God, Good ; consequently sinless, whole, healthy, harmonious, incapable of discord, decay or death, and manifesting in all things the mind of the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving and eternal God. All who accepted His teaching as the Truth, proved the same as He did, by their victory over sin and sickness, and in proportion to their understanding even over death. If no other passage of scripture existed but John 3rd and 16 " For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on Him, may not perish, but have everlasting life," to prove that God is already reconciled to man, and needs no suffering, death, or pleading of His son to be favorable to the human race, that of itself is quite sufficient. But we pass on to notice the next proposition, — viz : " Christ ( fesus} did not die as our substitute, but as our companion and associate / not instead of man, but with him and for him" This affirms, that the work of Jesus Christ, whatever that work may be, is not a work of substitution, that is, a something done by Him to excuse us from doing it, but a work done by Him, for the purpose of showing us how to do it, that by doing as He did, we may be able to extricate ourselves from the dominion of sin, sickness and death. In order to show us how to overcome the claims of our personality, it became necessary for Him to take upon Him- self our nature, that is, for the true selfhood of Jesus, who apprehended the Christ or Divine principle of Life, Truth and Love, to assume in belief, pro tern (for in the realm of spirit, there never was a personal or material Jesus) through the conception of Mary a material form, or per- sonality, in which He did just as we do, being subject to all that we are subject to, yet without sin, and by means of OF THE A TOXEMENT. 65 that personality showing us the real from the unreal, the true from the false ; exposing thereby the utter fallacy of those beliefs concerning matter, its supposed laws and power of control. It was as if He said to the natural man, u You think that sin, sickness and death are from God, that it is a necessity of your being, that you must patiently submit to its supposed laws, until eventually you are over- come by death, and return to the earth from whence you were taken. That is not so, you are not material beings, you are not a product of dust or matter, you are entirely spiritual, the offspring of God, He is your Father, " in Him you live, by Him you are moved and through Him you have your being." This personality is not yon, if you would enter into life, that is, attain the consciousness of your being, and come after me, you must deny yourself, and all the claims of the five personal senses." This Jesus proved to be the Truth by healing the sick and raising the dead. Furthermore, it was as if He said, " you hold the be- lief that this material world with its atmosphere, moun- tains, valleys, plains, seas, lakes, rivers, the animal and vegetable kingdoms are realities, with laws supposed to be the expressions of God's will, that they are immutable, that you are subject to them, that they possess a power to which you must submit, that, in short, matter with all its supposed forces are your masters, that they have power to control you. You think that matter, in the shape of food sustains life, that man can not live without food, that your life is at the mercy of accident, disease, the malice of others, that storms and material force can destroy you. That there is a malicious principle of evil constantly seek- ing to hurt you." This is not true. He showed in His dav and generation, that all these 66 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION beliefs of human kind had no basis in Truth, that not one of them expressed an Ego or principle, for there was not one which He did not destroy. Even the most powerful of all these beliefs, the law of death, he completely disan- nulled. This was His atoning work, done for us, but not instead of our doing it. He said " the works that I do, shall ye do also." It is readily admitted that Jesus did these works by His knowledge of God, the omnipotence of Truth, the power of the Spirit. By the same knowledge and Truth which He taught and demonstrated, each one for himself must do the like things, and by doing them, we too, shall put out our personality and its claims, and there will stand revealed in due time the other, (for Jesus was only the first born among many brethren) mani- fested sons of God, spiritual and not material. While writing, the following illustration comes to me, which of course you will not make to run on all fours, that is, apply in every detail, but simply use as a guide to the Truth we are all desirous to reach. Your child is playing with other children, when a thoughtless boy, for the sake he says, of fun, rushes in among them with a horrible mask upon his face, and other things upon his person which effectually conceal him, throws up his arms, and goes through other threatening gestures till your little one is almost terrified to death. The cry for help soon brings you to the spot, the situation is perceived in a moment, you do not stop to punish the neighbor's boy for his reck- less folly, but picking up your little one, you take it home, whisper words of comfort, tell it not to be afraid, for there is nothing to hurt it. Your words of comfort seem to have but little effect, the sobs and terrified look, still show the power of fear, and all your words of explanation and assurances of there being nothing to fear are apparently OF THE A TOXEMENT. 67 lost. At length a novel idea strikes you, you go out, and get from the neighbor the mask used by the boy, and with this you go to your child, show him what it is, you let him handle it, you then put it on in his presence, and let him take it off, and put it on his own face, you put it on again, with other things, and try to imitate the boy who caused the fear; at length your work is successful, the smile comes back to your child, the terrified look takes its departure, and though the physical shock to the child may not imme- diately disappear, you know the danger is past for the fear is killed. We will leave you to apply the illustration in full, but would just suggest a thought or two. Personality is the mask, its beliefs are the manipulations of sense, which keeps per- sonalities in constant fear in which fear all the disease that are incident to the flesh grow and flourish, for without fear disease could not live. The blessed Jesus takes that mask of personality, with all its terrifying beliefs, puts it on, and takes it off at pleasure, shows it, with all its possible states and conditions to be nothing, that is, in the sense of its having a principle or Truth to support it, and thus, by destroying its claims to be a reality, He becomes the Savior of the world, (as the mother became the savior of her child) and " delivers those who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage." 68 A CHRIS TIA AT SCIENCE EXPOSITION EIGHTH LECTURE. The next proposition of our friend which we regard as in accord with the teachings of Christian Science is: " Christ did not die to save us from the penalty of sin, but from sin itself" This affirmation comes to us as truth; at least, if it is not, something within tells us that it ought to be true, for if a person sins, and that willfully, they ought to suffer, and any one who would deliver them from the suffering of sin, and not from the sin itself, would be giving a license to sin, and doing the sinner an actual injustice. Scripture declares, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." (Ezek. 18 and 20.) This word soul cannot refer to that "life" which John says was "the light of men, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," which must be the real man, the son of God "who was born not of blood, nor by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but of God." For we cannot conceive of the infinitely wise and holy God, giving expression to an idea, called "His son," because begotten of Him, and investing that son with a capacity to commit sin, and die as a consequence. The only just interpretation then, which we can put upon the passage is: "The carnal, or material man that sins, shall die." If he, the error, the false man, sets him- self up against the Truth, and claims to be the real spirit- ual man, he shall die; the error shall be put out, and if the carnal or mortal man, the personality will not allow itself to be denied and put out by the Truth, the suffering which its own resistance to the Truth, will be sure to bring on, shall ultimately extinguish, utterly annihilate everything that appertains in belief to the personal or OF THE A TONEMEKT. 6g mortal man. The passage in Ezekiel is simply another form of the one in Genesis, "In the day thou eatest there- of, thou shalt surely die." That is, the moment mortal man sets himself up as being the real man, possessing Life, Sub- stance and Intelligence, that moment he shall die, — he will at once lose the knowledge of God who only is Life, Substance and Intelligence, and the loss of that knowledge is death, and the gain of it is life, as the blessed Jesus said, "This is Life eternal, that they might know thee, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." To bring this knowledge to man was the atoning work of Jesus, when it comes to us, the false beliefs of mortal man are dissipated, and we find ourselves, "at-one-ment" with God our Father and mother, no longer afar off, but made nigh by the blood of Christ, which is the life and power of Truth. It will, we think, be clearly seen then that the atoning work of "Jesus the Christ" was never intended to lessen for one moment the suffering which is inherent in the violation of law, if it did that, the belief of pleasure in sin would be perpetuated, and instead of man being brought to a speedy knowledge of God by the atonement, it would only keep him that much the longer from his father. The atonement of "Jesus the Christ" is more a w r ork of preventing the suffering by a saving from the sin, which if indulged in is sure to bring it, hence, it verifies the old saying, that, "prevention is better than cure. The next proposition is: " Christ did not die, that we might not die, but deliver us out of a death in which we were already involved, " Such is the condition of the world, or mortal man at the present time. He thinks he is alive and active, but in 7 o A CHRISTIAN' SCIENCE EXPOSITION reality the mortal man is dead while he thinks he lives. Jesus emphatically affirms this Truth, when he called upon a certain man to follow Him. The man was not ready, or just then willing to obey the command,but excused himself by saying "Suffer me first to go and bury my father." Jesus says, "Let the dead bury their dead, come thou and follow me." It is evident from this, that Jesus considered those that knew not God as dead. Paul expresses the same idea in his letter to the Ephesians 2, 1-10. The whole is so beautiful and explanatory of the point under consideration that we give you the quotation in full : "And He hath quickened you that were dead, in trespasses and sin, wherein ye formerly walked, according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience ; among them also we all formerly had our conversation, in the desires of the flesh, doing the will of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the others. But God, being rich in mercy, through his great love, wherewith he loved us, hath quickened even us together with Christ, who were dead in trespasses; (by grace are ye saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places through Christ Jesus; that he might show in the ages to come the exceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace ye are saved through faith ; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not by works, lest any one should boast. For we are his workmanship, created through Christ Jesus unto good works, which God before had prepared, that we might walk in them." There is another passage in this same letter (Chap. 5 and 14. ) which we must not overlook, " Awake thou that OF THE A TONEMENT. 7 r sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. " From these, and many other portions of scripture that might be quoted, it will be seen, that death according to Bible teachings, (which is proved by human experience) is not the cessation, of physical activities, ceasing to breathe, but a state of mental sleep, unconsciousness, or more pro- perly speaking ignorance of God, mental darkness, no perception that w r e are spiritual and not material. That is the scriptural idea of death, out of which we have to be awakened, and out of which many are awake, and in turn, they are following the example of Jesus, Paul and others, and crying, "Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light." Another proposition: " The sinner is not redee?ned because he repents, but he is called upon to repent because he has been redeemed" There is more Truth logically deducible from this proposition, than perhaps our brother .would admit. In Christian Science, however, w r e accept it as Truth with all its logical deductions, because it is self evident or prova- ble. It affirms that the salvation of man, (that is, the mortal man,) is already complete, and nothing which he can do can make it more so. He may shed an abundance of tears, and be subject to pangs of inexpressible sorrow, he may mortify the body by much fasting, pray many prayers, and give all his possessions to feed the poor, but he cannot change the purpose of God, or make Him one particle more loving to us than He is already, for He is love, and that loving nature can never change. But as the doctrine of repentance is so intimately connected with that of the atonement it may be necessary for us to look a lit- tle more minutely into it. j 2 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION Repentance is not a first cause, but is itself an effect of an antecedent cause which is a spiritual perception and conviction of the Truth. This conviction is produced by the spirit of Truth, who reveals to, or pours upon the human mind the light that reveals its false beliefs, shows the error and inspires the disposition to put them all away. Jesus said of this spirit of Truth, " And he coming will convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of •judgment." When that conviction takes place, then comes pangs of sorrow for having ever sinned, but this sorrow is not repentance, until the sin, error, is given up, entirely put out, then comes the consciousness of salvation, which is nothing more, than the removal of these beliefs, which, up to that time, had veiled the smiling face of our Father God, and kept back the consciousness of our being His child, spiritual and not material. It will be seen, that repentance does not change God, or remove any difficulty on his part, but it does remove our difficulty by rending the veil, breaking down the middle wall of partition between us, which is sin, and then we step into the holy of Holies, and the very audience chamber of Deity, where we become conscious of our at-one-ment with Him, and the out-flowings of His love, by which we are constrained to sing with John Wesley, when he passed the rent veil: " O that the world would taste and see, The riches of His grace ; The arms of love that compass me, Would all mankind embrace. " Another proposition of our friend is : " The atonement is not the cause of GooTs love to man but the effect or flowing out of that loveP This statement is in harmony with Christian Science, OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 7 j as we shall now try to show. In the record which John gives us of the midnight interview of Nicodemus with Jesus, he represents the Teacher as saving to his visitor, k *As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so/////.s7 the son of man be lifted up." This must implies a clear necessitv, which almost involuntarily suggests the ques- tion "Why must Jesus die? What necessitv can possibly exist for a sacrifice so great? Does it arise from the unrelenting Tustice of God ? Must that be satisfied before God can pardon sin ?" If it is meant by the "satisfaction of justice," that the vicarious suffering of another, and his perfect conformitv thereto, then we must demur, for we hold it impossible for another, who lives in perfect har- mony with, and meeting every requirement of the eternal law of right to suffer for my violation of that law, and equally impossible for him to perform the least work of supererogation that could be placed to my account, as every individual is under momentary obligation to love God with all his heart and his neighbor as his himself, and more than that Jesus of Xazareth could not do. Justice, which is nothing more nor less than right, demands that / shall be right and do right, the being right and doing right of another can never be transferred to me. So we see that justice, is the very being of God, he cannot relent, or give up its claim for right a single moment. The necessity, therefore, for what is called the " sacrifice of Christ " could not originate from that source. Again, on this line: Does the necessitv for the so- called death of Christ exist in the supposed fact that, God saw the sin, awful suffering, and consequent death of the human race, and that man's utter helplessness excited His compassion, and moved him to devise a way for man's 74 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION escape, by means of the incarnation, sufferings and death of His well-beloved son? This we know has been the teaching of the so-called orthodox church, and presents to the Christian Scientist a question of great importance which must not be treated with indifference or brushed away by the saying that " vicarious atonement is a relic of barbarism." We pro- pose to examine it carefully, and if w r e find it to contain a basis of truth, we shall certainly accept it, even if it should demolish our new position, but let us see. Our first dif- ficulty in accepting this theory of the church is: That it is contrary to the direct teachings of Jesus. His w r ords do not allow the least inference, that the demands of justice, or the terrible sin and consequent suffering of the human race was the exciting, or moving cause of man's redemption. He attributes what we call "the atoning work of Christ" to a natural manifestation of the love of God. An exhibition of that which is inher- ent in the very nature of love, a something which love could not help doing, any more than the sun can help putting out the darkness, or water can prevent itself from finding its own level. It is in its very nature so to do and cannot do otherwise. So it is with the love of God, it flows out, expresses itself, it has no dams to keep it back, which are opened or closed by objects or considerations external to itself. Such, however, is the characteristic of human love, and man thinks that God's love is like his, but hear what Jesus says, " For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever be- lieveth on Him, may not perish, but have everlasting life." You may examine these words as closely as you please, and it will puzzle you to find the least reference to substi- tution, or vicarious sacrifice. The salvation of man, then. OF THE A TOXEMEXT. 7S according to this statemeut of Jesus, is made to hinge on two things: (1) The giving of God's only begotten son. Can that "giving" mean more than this, than that Jesus of Nazareth, that is, the real or individual Jesus, the being that existed independent of the body ; or personal Jesus r which Mary by spiritual apprehension (because of the Ho!v Ghost coming upon her,) perceived, conceived, and materialized through her body, as the ideal man, that is God's idea of man, spiritual, and not material. Inasmuch as that ideal man, personated in the form of Jesus, was, "not born of blood, nor by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but of God." He was the only begotten or manifested son of God, because up to that time He was the only man born into this world whose production was not according to the natural process of generation. Hence He is very properly called the only begotten son of God, and also the first born among many brethren, which indicates, that other sons of God are to be manifested in like manner, and scripture further intimates that when they are mani- fested, the whole creation, which is now subject to vanity, and waiting for the revelation of the sons of God, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. See Rom. 8, 19- 25. That %i only begotten son of God," which we identify with Jesus of Nazareth, is called by Jesus Himself in accommodation to human understanding, the r< gift of God," because by it God's idea of man is made known. Just as a gift from a friend reveals his mind to us, so Jesus makes known the love of our Father and mother God. From this, we think it will be seen, that man's salvation from sin, sickness and death is secured, not bv a belief 76 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION in certain theological dogmas, but a belief on the Lord Jesus Christ, "that whosoever believeth on Him, may not perish, but have everlasting life." This belief, which brings the consciousness of salvation, certainly cannot mean a mere intellectual assent, or credit which we give to an historical record concerning a man, called Jesus, who is reported to have lived, said and done many wonderful things, in the land of Palestine, about two thousand years ago. It must mean more than that, nothing less than a spiritual apprehension, like that which Peter expressed, when asked what he thought of Jesus, "Thou art the Christ Ihe son of the living God." Whosoever believes on Him that is, clearly perceives the Divine Principle of Life, Truth and Love, as expressed and made manifest by fesus in so many ways during His life and ministry, such an one shall not perish, but he shall have everlasting life, for through this Jesus he gets to know that God is Life, and that he (the believer) lives, moves, and has his being in God, therefore he can- not die, because he is spiritual and not material. This seems to be the way of salvation as taught by Jesus, whose teachings we feel constrained to accept before any other, because they are not only reasonable, but they meet and satisfy the deepest wants of our being. Furthermore, if it be true that God sees and knows this sinning, sickening and dying man, then it must follow (a) that He has always known him or He is not the om- niscient God we take Him to be. For God to see or know a thing is to be conscious that that thing is, that it has a real being, and if He is the only, and all being, then whatever being there is, it must be in Him, or He is not "all in all." Now if God is the source and sus- tainer of all being and this sinning man derives his being OF THE A TONEMENT. 77 and sustenance from God, and God knows all about him, then it must follow that such a man is an eternal being, for if such a man should go out of being, then God would lose a part of his conscious being, and that moment he would become less than w r hatweknow by our spiritual per- ception he must be, viz., an absolutely perfect being from which nothing can be taken or added to. Therefore we are constrained to conclude, that the old belief as expressed in the following popular hymn is not true: " Plunged in a gulf of dark despair, We wretched sinners lav, Without one cheerful beam of hope, Or spark of glimmering day. With pitying eyes the Prince of peace, Beheld our helpless grief; He saw, and — oh, amazing love! He ran to our relief." God seeing sin and misery, and saving us therefrom, is the human sense interpretation put upon our spiritual perception of the Truth, by which the beliefs of the per- sonal man, as expressed in sin and sickness, are utterly destroyed. 7<? A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION NINTH LECTURE. The last of the twelve propositions of our friend is as follows: " Thejinal outcome of the atoning scheme is not a partial success, but a perfect, absolute and universal triumph" Christian Science confirms this statement, and in that it differs widely from the so-called teaching of orthodoxy, which recognizes sin, not simply as a belief of mortal man, but an entity, a reality which is to be, and will be ever- lastingly punished in hell. We know that within the last few years, many of our leading ministers, say but little about this fundamental doctrine of the churches, for in the light of modern Science, yea of common sense, the doctrine as set forth in the " Westminster Confession of Faith" is so hideous, and repulsive to the feelings of human nature, that even the defenders of that " Confession," are waking up to see the necessity of, and are asking for a review, that the objectionable dogma may be expunged and not before time, for if there is one thing in the whole system of the- ology which has produced a sense of alienation from God, fear, sickness and premature death, it is the doctrine of "Endless Punishment . " The position Christian Science takes is: (a) That sin is not a reality. It has no inherent quality of perpetuity, its very nature is suicidal. God never made it, He does not support it, and he has no govern- mental arrangement for its continuance. Yea, He does not even know that there is a belief of sin, if He did, He must always have known it, and would continue to know it through all eternity, for He is immutable, hence can OF THE A TOXEMENT. yg never lose the knowledge that He has now. The prophet Habakkuk was right when he said, " Thou art of purer eves than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity/' land 13. Sin then is simply a belief of mortal man, his wrong thought, an error, a seeming to be, a claim of reality, with no fact, Ego, Principle or Truth as its basis of support. It is a mere illusion — a " will-o-wisp, " a promise of some- thing, without a promiser, an appearance to material sense, which says, " lam something," but when caught, or rather indulged in, is like the floating soap bubble, catching by its brilliancy the eye of the child, who pursues it under the impression that it is a beautiful thing, that the possession of it will give him pleasure, so he runs after it, and finally grasps it, when to his great disappointment, it is not even as much as a butterfly, it is simply nothing ; so is sin. It seems to be a something, and promises much, but who, that has pursued the phantom does not know that it is an illusion, a cheat, a lie, and does God know anything of a lie? Is there anything to a lie? Has God excavated, in his vast domains, somewhere, an immense pit, and started a fire of sulphur to consume a lie, a nothing? What is there to burn or consume? O what nonsense we have believed! Surely we have been dreaming, under the influence of a horrible nightmare, which human folly has invested with a reality. Well may the seraphic Paul cry out to the dreamers: Azvake thou that sleepest^and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (b) We affirm in Science, that the only man there is, is not a sinner, who needs to be saved, because he is spiritual, not material, for he is made in the image and likenesss of his Father, and Jesus told the woman at the So A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION well of Samaria that " God is spirit. " Science says, if God is spirit, man the expression of Spirit, must be spiri- ual, and can never be anything else, for man can no more change his nature than God can change His. It is written "I am the Lord, I change not." So man can say, "I am spiritual, the offspring of immutable Spirit, therefore I cannot change." This being the Truth, it will be seen, the only man, there is, is not a sinner, hence he can never be lost. Just think of it, if you can, a lost child of God. Preposterous ! Is it true, that we live, move and have our being in God? and is God as Augustine used to say, of the nature of God, "that it was a circle, whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere," how then is it possible for a child of God to be lost when he cannot get away from the presence of his Father, and if alw r ays in the presence of his Father, he can never go to hell, or the sweet singer of Israel did not tell the Truth when he said, " In thy presence is fulness of joy and at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore." Psalm 16 and 11. Right here, you will doubtles meet us with the question, "What about this personal or mortal man? Is he nothing?" Simply nothing, so say the scriptures. They inform us that he had his origin in dust, which signifies nothing, and whatever that dust in a supposed state of organization may claim to be, the same scriptures affirm of the personal man, " Dust, (nothing) thou art, and unto dust (nothing) shalt thou return. " Hear, w r hat the prophet Isaiah says about this mortal man. "The voice said, cry. And he said, w^hat shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and the good- liness thereof is as the flower of the field, the grass wither- eth the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. " The apostle James in speaking of this mortal or personal man, OF THE A TONEMENT. 8r whose claims are so pretentious, says, a For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." We need no confirmation of this truth, other, than the graveyard, to which this mortal man is being rapidly and irresistibly pushed by his own beliefs. How then can this man be a child of God, an offspring of omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent Spirit? It can- not be. From this it will be seen, that in Christian Sci- ence we make an important and necessary distinction between the true and false man. We affirm, that the- ology has greatly erred in giving to this dust or false man a reality, by confounding him with the spiritual or real, or so identifying him with the real man as to make the spiritual and material man one and the same. By the light of Christian Science we are led to see that spirit and matter cannot mix, any more than light and darkness, or Truth and error. Error may seem to clothe itself in the beautiful garments of Truth, but it can never become Truth or identical w T ith Truth, neither can Truth clothe itself with error, and thus appear to be, what by its very na- ture it cannot be, and yet in theology we have been taught, that the spiritual man is clothed with the material man,, that the outer is essential to the inner, and that without the outer or fleshly man, the real spiritual man could never make himself known. As well might you say, that error is essential for the expression of Truth, that the in- visible and immortal man finds it is necessary to formulate a mortal man, to give expression to immortal thoughts. It cannot be. It is impossible for a unit to express itself by or through a cipher. As long as God is one, an absolute Unit, incapable of division, He cannot make His nature known by that man which is a sinner, gets sick and 82 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION dies, neither can he identify himself with such a false representation of himself, any more than an honest man can fraternize with a man whom he knows to be a thief. Vice and virtue will not mix, no more can the real spiritual man mix with the unreal and material. Species never change in what is called the material world, the fish never becomes a bird, nor the bird a fish. Neither can gold become silver, there is no power that can change the one to the other. Jesus said, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit. " " A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruft, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt," which is equivalent to saying, the quality of one, cannot by any possibility produce or be transformed to the quality of the other. In Christian Science we do not deny the doctrine of the atonement, we simply, w^hile in the light of Truth, find ourselves unable to accept that interpretation which is put upon it, by what is called orthodox theology. To us, the work of the atonement is the spiritual perception and understanding of the Truth, taught and demonstrated by Jesus the Christ, by which the beliefs of the carnal man, concerning sin, sickness and death are completely destroyed, and upon their destruction we wake up, or attain to the consciousness of our being at-one-ment with God, spiritual and not material, that " I and the Father are one, " and until that does take place, we shall be obliged to Tceep company with David, who said, "I shall be satisfied when I awaken in thy likeness, and never till then. " In conclusion, Christian Science endorses the belief of our brother to the full, viz., that the final outcome of OF THE A TOXEME. the atoning scheme as it is called by theology, will not be .//but a complete - n of Adam, claiming to be a son of God, will bv the atoning work of Jesus Christ, be made to disappear before the manifested S d of God, who is not a material being, subject to sin, sickness and death, but a spiritual being, expressing the image and likeness of his Father from all eternity; a being who never for one moment of his existence had a - sin, sickness, or death, for his life has been hid with Christ in God, it has never been out of God, and never can be, for there is but one Mind and power, and that is whose nature is love which renders it impossible for Him to cast off one of His children, but the counterfeits, the personalities, which have claimed to be His children, but who have never borne the likeness of God and never can, although they have called God Father, they shall be utterly destroyed by the appearing of the Christ , thev are of their father the devil (evil . Concerning whom J suss t€ Hc was a murderer from the begin- ning, and abode not in the Truth ; for there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own ; for he is a liar, and the father of ::." When, by follow- ing the teachings, example and demonstrations of Jes ch one for himself shall have destroyed the beliefs personal sense, there will cometoeach, the full conscious: . which Jesus himself had, when he at will be the completion of the atonement, i such a glorious ultimate must be reached, for the mouth of the Lord, — the word of Truth hath declared ::. There is no Intelligence, or Power his hand, or say unto Him, What doest th In conclusion we will cite for the encouragement of the timid and fearful, a few prophetic utterances, which 84 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION must be fulfilled, that is realized, because the thing pre- dicted already exists in the realm of reality, and it only waits the waking up of the sleeper to the consciousness that the good he dreams of as being afar off is nigh him, even in his mouth and in his heart. I may illustrate it, by what a brother said to me and some others a short time since, "I will tell you," He said, "how this life of sense appears to me. It is as if my son had fallen asleep in my arms, and in the sleep he dreams of being away from me and home, he is destitute and sick, having a terrible exper- ience, all of which seems real to him, and as though it would never come to an end. By and by, however, he wakes up and finds to his surprise and delight that he is folded in my arms, encompassed by my love, that he is still at home, that he has never been away, the horrible experience, which seemed to him so real, he never had, it was the dream's experience, not his, there was no reality to it, for it all vanished when he woke up." This beautiful illustration carries its own application, we must now cite the passages. "As in Adam all die, even so through Christ shall all be made alive." 1st of Cor. 15, 22. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me." John 12 and 32. "And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, the deliverer shall come out of Zion, and shall turn away iniquity from Jacob." Rom. 11 and 26. "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ." 1st of Thess. 5 and 9. Who can think for one moment, that God's appoint* ment will not stand ? It must stand, his purpose will be accomplished. The Good Shepherd will continue to seek His sheep until all are folded, not a lamb will be left to OF THE A TONEMENT. 85 wander or perish on the dark mountain of ignorance and sin. The spiritual apprehension of Isaiah saw what actually existed in the realm of spirit, and that apprehen- sion he expressed in human language and figures of speech that mortals might get a glimmer of that kingdom of the Christ which was never to have an end, and could not, simply because it had no beginning. Read what he says, in chapter 11 to verse 9 "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: "And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord: "And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears. "But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth : and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. "And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. "And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. "And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cock- atrice's den. £6 A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EXPOSITION "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain : for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord) as the waters cover the sea. " That knowledge (the blessed Jesus said) shall make you free. "Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." If it don't mean free from sin, sickness and death, then what does it mean? W W Kii^ W-" ( ^ VM? V. ITS?* < / ^ li y at- ^ /fr^ mmm