Editorial January 13, 1912 Issue

THE ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE

John B. Willis

In studying the Old Testament one is impressed with the frequency with which sacrifice is referred to as a giving up of good for God. While the asserted requirement of Abraham that he slay his son is a striking individual instance, the whole sacrificial system of the Jews gives expression to this thought. The teaching of many of the prophets, as that of Christ Jesus, is opposed to such a concept, but it has nevertheless remained to affect religious habit and history during all the years. It accounts for the asceticism which filled the cliffs of Egypt and Palestine with hermit caves where unnumbered thousands both of the superstitious and the spiritually aspiring have suffered the slow torture of isolation and discomfort, and which still lingers in modified form to shape Christian conduct. St. Francis, so noble in his loving zeal as to warrant the statement of his biographer, Sabatier, that "the only weapon he would use against the wicked was holiness of life," would no doubt have classified both cleanliness and clothing as good and not evil; nevertheless, he thought it fitting to give up both, and to lie in nakedness upon the damp and dirty floor of his chapel at Portiuncula, while wrestling for the attainment of the Mind that was "in Christ Jesus."

The moment one is led in Christian Science to think of God as the infinite good whose constant giving constitutes and supports the life of man, that moment the thought that He demands the sacrifice of anything He has bestowed is necessarily dispelled, and we begin to see clearly that every true giving up for God means the surrender not of good but of evil, of the things which He abhors. Sacrifice is thus seen to effect an invariable gain for the real self, and this because it means the true fast, viz., abstinence from evil. It is an act in which we are making way for good, opening the channels for the inflow of "greater riches." No exercise of virtue can sap its own substance; on the contrary, the activity of good in us always brings about its increase or unfoldment in consciousness, and we are thereby attaining unto the "measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

There is, there can be, no divinely impelled sacrifice of any real good, since we are called of God to the continual increase of good. Said Jesus, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect;" and he contributed to the realization of this wholeness by those about him, in his every healing, or whole-making work. St. Paul related this teaching to present-day problems when he said, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service;" and yet in these words he expresses a thought for the espousal of which the Founder of Christian Science has been grievously misjudged by many. Mrs. Eddy taught that the presentday consent to decrepitude and death, as having place in the divine government, is wholly opposed to St. Paul's injunction, and it is one of the marvels of our day that the inspiring thought which she pressed upon the world's attention, namely, that heaven is to be reached by more and more perfect, more ideal living, and not in any sense by dying; by the way of health, and not sickness, has been met by questioning and reserve at the hands of Christian men.

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THE ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE

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