True Sacrifice

Ella W. Hoag

The psalmist had a clear understanding of what true sacrifice meant when he wrote: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." From the beginning of time, mankind, in the realization of their sins against God, have recognized that in some way the sense of separation from God—brought about by these sins—must be overcome, and they have always glimpsed the fact that this could only be done by some form of sacrifice on their part; or in other words, by their giving up something, although they did not know exactly what that something might be.

In the earliest days of Bible history men began this process by bringing to God all sorts of material offerings, and these offerings were supposed to be acceptable in the ratio of the value to the givers of the things relinquished by them. This custom continued for many ages; but because the effort began in the supposed value of material possessions, as time went on the claims of selfishness and greed, of hypocrisy and dishonesty in connection with such giving, continually increased. These offerings, therefore, became farther and farther removed from true sacrifice and were an offense rather than a right acknowledgment of obligation to God,—as witness the testimony of Isaiah: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me...Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well."

Still mankind went on sinning; still they went on looking for the possibility of reaching God by this sacrificing of material objects. The prophets were calling upon men again and again to awaken to the fact that God would be satisfied only by their obedience to Him. When finally Jesus came declaring, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me," he presented a new idea of sacrifice. Many righteous men since then have been seeking to know just what this idea included. No one, however, could understand it sufficiently to teach fully its demonstrable nature until the revelation of Christian Science was given to Mrs. Eddy. This revelation shows that true sacrifice does not mean what the ordinary religious teaching has presented; namely, something more or less ascetic in its tendency. The schools have taught that material desires must be denied, but they have denied them from the standpoint that in giving them up they were yielding something real; that they were sacrificing something valuable, something it was difficult to go without. Such sacrifice almost inevitably resulted in a state of self-righteousness, since the mortal considered himself praiseworthy in yielding that which he very much wanted, that which he thought was real, but which he believed, nevertheless, God did not desire him to have.

From the standpoint of Christian Science it is easy to discern how mistaken this position was; for while it left mortal man thinking that material desires were real and good, it also left him believing that God was little more than a tyrant who was depriving His children of that which was desirable. On the other hand, Christian Science takes the opposite view; for it teaches in the first place that God is infinite divine Love. Now this God made all good and could not possibly take away any good He had created, which must be as eternal and infinite as He Himself. Nothing, therefore, which is good can ever be sacrificed, or denied. From this it inevitably follows that the denial Jesus referred to must have a different and at the same time a larger meaning than that which any teaching other than Christian Science has ever given to it.

Then true sacrifice, according to Christian Science, means to give up all that is not of God, good; to deny all reality, power, or presence to matter and its claims; to relinquish all the beliefs that man has ever been separated from God or that he has ever been less than the perfect, spiritual child of divine Spirit. Now who would not give up "nothing" to gain everything; evil to gain good; sickness for health; sin for holiness; that which is transitory for that which is permanent and indestructible; the belief in a mortal, sick, sinning, dying existence for the understanding of unity with Life eternal, with all that is of God, perfect, harmonious?

When Mrs. Eddy tells us (Science and Health, p. 11), "If we desire holiness above all else, we shall sacrifice everything for it," the Christian Scientist sees that to the human sense there must still be the relinquishment of all material desires. When he begins to understand, however, the joy of letting go of the false in order that he may gain the true, he comes to recognize that true sacrifice has in it nothing but happiness and security. He loses the sense of giving up anything, but finds that in yielding that which is not of God he wins all of good. What a wonderful sense of sacrifice is this! To learn so to love spiritual things that all material desires shall be quenched. Let us day by day, hour by hour, lay down the beliefs in a selfhood apart from God, until we shall have indeed given Him our whole heart.

In Science and Health (p. 314) Mrs. Eddy writes: "Jesus waited until the mortal or fleshly sense had relinquished the belief of substance-matter, and spiritual sense had quenched all earthy yearnings. Thus he found the eternal Ego, proved that he and the Father were inseparable as God and His reflection or spiritual man." Christian Science, therefore, reveals the way whereby every individual may follow, step by step, the blessed Master in his demonstration of true sacrifice, until each one shall have proved man's unity with God, the All-good!

Ella W. Hoag

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Among the Churches

December 27, 1919

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