Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/519

Rh follow Jesus in his demonstration. Ritualism and dogma tend to clip the pinions of Love. They materialize worship, hinder the Spirit, and keep man from demonstrating his power over error.

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 cannot exceed God in Love, and so atone for himself. Even Jesus could not reconcile Truth to error, for they are irreconcilable. 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.

Does scholastic theology regard the crucifixion of Jesus as providing a ready pardon for all sinners who ask for it, and are willing to be forgiven? Does Spiritualism find Jesus' death necessary only for the presentation, after death, of the personal Jesus, as a proof that spirits can return to earth? Then I must differ from both Orthodoxy and Spiritualism.

While respecting all that is good in the Church, or out of it, my later consecration to Christ has been on the ground of demonstration, not profession. In conscience, I cannot hold to my former beliefs. By understanding more of the Divine Principle of the deathless Jesus, I