Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/287

Rh Again: evil, as mind, is doomed, already sentenced, punished; for suffering is commensurate with evil, and lasts as long as the evil. As mind, evil finds no escape from itself; and the sin and suffering it occasions can only be removed by reformation.

According to divine law, sin and suffering are not cancelled by repentance or pardon. Christian Science not only elucidates but demonstrates this verity of being; namely, that mortals suffer from the wrong they commit, whether intentionally or ignorantly; that every effect and amplification of wrong will revert to the wrong-doer, until he pays his full debt to divine law, and the measure he has meted is measured to him again, full, pressed down, and running over. Surely “the way of the transgressor is hard.”

In this law of justice, the atonement of Christ loses no efficacy. Justice is the handmaid of mercy, and showeth mercy by punishing sin. Jesus said, “I came not to destroy the law,” — the divine requirements typified in the law of Moses, — “but to fulfil it” in righteousness, by Truth's destroying error. No greater type of divine Love can be presented than effecting so glorious a purpose. This spirit of sacrifice always has saved, and still saves mankind; but by mankind I mean mortals, or a kind of men after man's own making. Man as God's idea is already saved with an everlasting salvation. It is impossible to be a Christian Scientist without apprehending the moral law so clearly that, for conscience' sake, one will either abandon his claim to even a knowledge of this Science, or else make the claim valid. All Science is divine. Then, to be Science, it must produce physical and moral harmony.