this lack of entire science in the advent of Jesus, produced its discord, and met its fate in death. Had his origin and birth, however, been wholly apart from mortal belief, Jesus would not have been recognized by mortal man; and “he was the light that was to lighten every man that cometh into the world;” therefore he must be the mediator, or interpreter of Truth to error that destroyed error and rebuked personal sense with the Principle of being.
Jesus never ransomed man, by paying the debt sin incurs; whosoever sins must suffer. This Christian martyr suffered for the Truth, that destroyed error, and while it blessed the whole world, was that for which it hated him; even the sinner must learn Truth, by the things he suffers. Love is no compromise with sin, and pays no debt of its contracting; but it can and does point out the way to escape from it and reach the harmony and science of being. The blood of that righteous man shed by sinners, was a crime that affords no ground for further sin or a belief of its pardon, it was an injustice to humanity that the best man should be sacrificed by the worst men. Jesus taught the way of escape from sin, but that all that sinneth shall die, in other words, that sin must be destroyed. Wisdom punishes, instead of pardons, sin. The terrible effect of our false views regarding the atonement, is to make a sinner less fearful to sin, believing a tear or a prayer will secure its pardon; this heightens hypocrisy and suffocates conscience. The time is not far distant when our theological views of atonement will undergo as radical a change as those have already done regarding a bottomless pit, burning with fire and brimstone, and the
