Here are the usual intellectual difficulties.  To whom is the sacrifice offered?  To God or to the Devil?  If it be to the Devil, then the Devil is a greater power than God.  If it be to God, then how can a God who demands a sacrifice of blood be Love?  And in either case how can guilt be transferred from one person to the other?

Now as a matter of fact none of these questions arise.  They are beside the real point at issue, which is:  How can we so combine the Personal action of the Word with the Impersonal action of the Law, as to make the Law become to us the Law of Life instead of the Law of Death (Rom. viii, 2)?

Let us recur to the principles which we have worked out.  The Law flows from the Word and not vice versa—­it acts for good or ill according to the Quality of the Word which calls it into action.  Therefore to get the Law of Life we must speak the Word of Life.  Then, on the principle of “Omne vivum ex vivo,” the Word of Fundamental Basic Life, which is not subject to conditions because it is antecedent to all conditions, can only be spoken through consciousness of participating in the Eternal Life which is the “fons et origo” of all particular being.  Therefore, to be able to speak this Word we must have a foundation of assurance that we are in no way separated from the Eternal Life, and since this foundation is required for all men, it must be broad enough to accommodate all grades of perceptions.

Theologically the separation from the Eternal Life is said to be caused by “Sin.”  But what do we mean by “Sin”?

We can only judge of what a thing is by what it does; and so, if “Sin” is that which prevents the inflowing of the Eternal Life, which we know is the root of our individual being, then it must be the transgression of the inherent Law of our own Being.  The truth is that we live simultaneously in two worlds, the visible and the invisible, just as trees draw their life from the earth beneath and from the air and light above, and the transgression consists in limiting ourselves only to the lower world, and thereby cutting ourselves off from the essential part of our own life, that which really lives.

We do not realize the true function of the three lower principles of our nature, viz.:  Vital Spirit, etheric body, and outward form; the function of which is to give concentration to the current of spiritual life flowing from the Eternal Spirit, and thus enable the undifferentiated Life to differentiate itself into Individual Consciousness, which will be able to specialize the action of the Law into higher manifestations than it can produce without the co-operation of Personality.