Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/382

330 helping her to give some sort of clearness and consistency to her theology. In her chapter on the Atonement (1884) Mrs. Eddy says:

The glorious spiritual signification of the life and not death of our Master—for he never died—was laying down all of earth to instruct his enemies the way to Heaven, showing in the most sublime and unequivocal sense how Heaven is obtained. The blood of Jesus was not as much offered on the cross as before those closing scenes of his earth mission. The spiritual meaning of blood is offering sacrifice, and the efficacy of his life offering was greater than that of his blood spilled upon the cross. It was the consecration of his whole being upon the altar of Love, a deathless offering to Spirit. O, highest sense of human affections and higher spiritual conceptions of our Infinite Father and Mother, show us what is Love!

Mr. Wiggin's revision of this passage reads:

The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin, when it was shed upon the "accursed tree," than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father's business. His spiritual flesh and blood were his Life; and they truly eat his flesh and drink his blood, who partake of that Life. The spiritual meaning of blood is sacrifice. The efficacy of Jesus' spirit-offering was infinitely greater than can be expressed by our mortal sense of human life. His mission was fulfilled. It reunited God and man by his career. His offering was Love's deathless sacrifice; for in Jesus' experience the human element was gloriously expanded and absorbed into the divine.

Besides granting subjects to participles, antecedents to pronouns, introducing the subjunctive mode in conditions contrary to fact, and giving consistency to the tenses of the verbs, Mr. Wiggin largely rearranged the matter in each chapter and gave the book its first comprehensible paragraphing. Out of his wide reading he introduced many illustrative quotations into the text (not always to its advantage), and used many more as chapter-headings. He prevailed upon Mrs. Eddy to omit a very libellous chapter on "mesmerists," and here and there