Page:Science and Health.djvu/313

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PRAYER AND ATONEMENT.
309

enemies, showing the Love, the Life and Truth, that is the at-one-ment with God.

First on the list of Christian duties, he taught his followers to heal the sick; he attached no importance to dead ceremonies; it was the living Christ, the Truth, that is Life, that made him the resurrection and Life to all who follow him. Thus keeping his precious precepts and following his demonstration in its understanding, we shall indeed drink his cup and be baptized with his purity, until we sit down with him anew in a fuller understanding of the Principle of that man, Jesus. “For as often as ye eat his bread and drink his cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death till he come.”

A belief can never show forth the works of understanding, and has never yet followed Jesus in his demonstration; to do this we must consecrate our lives to the Principle for which he was crucified, and be willing to drink of the cup it brings. “But for this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.”

Rites fetter the pinions of Soul, they materialize, and prevent the Spirit, by holding us to the body; for matter separates from Spirit. We speak of the atonement of Christ reconciling God to man; but Christ is God, and God propitiates not Himself, and there is nothing higher to conciliate. Again, Love and Truth are not irreconciled to the idea of God, and man is this idea. But man being the shadow of Almighty, cannot exceed Him in Love; or reconcile Truth to error. His students understood the sufferings, teachings, and demonstration of their glorious Master better than all this. When Jesus gave up the body material to