We shall leave the ceremonial law when we gain the truer sense of following Christ in spirit, and we shall no longer venture to materialize the spiritual and infinite meaning and efficacy of Truth and Love, and the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, by commemorating his death with a material rite.  Jesus said:  “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”  They drink the cup of Christ and are baptized in the purification of persecution who discern his true merit,—­the unseen glory of suffering for others.  Physical torture affords but a slight illustration of the pangs which come to one upon whom the world of sense falls with its leaden weight in the endeavor to crush out of a career its divine destiny.

The blood of Christ speaketh better things than that of Abel.  The real atonement—­so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy—­needs to be understood.  The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned.  Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity,—­this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ.  Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus’ life, purchasing the freedom of mortals from sin and death.

This blood of Jesus is everything to human hope and faith.  Without it, how poor the precedents of Christianity!  What manner of Science were Christian Science without the power to demonstrate the Principle of such Life; and what hope have mortals but through deep humility and adoration to reach the understanding of this Principle!  When human struggles cease, and mortals yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death.  He who pointed the way of Life conquered also the drear subtlety of death.

It was not to appease the wrath of God, but to show the allness of Love and the nothingness of hate, sin, and death, that Jesus suffered.  He lived that we also might live.  He suffered, to show mortals the awful price paid by sin, and how to avoid paying it.  He atoned for the terrible unreality of a supposed existence apart from God.  He suffered because of the shocking human idolatry that presupposes Life, substance, Soul, and intelligence in matter,—­which is the antipode of God, and yet governs mankind.  The glorious truth of being—­namely, that God is the only Mind, Life, substance, Soul—­needs no reconciliation with God, for it is one with Him now and forever.