Have you ever seen a scapegoat? There are a lot of them around, but you may not know when you meet one. As we think of them today, they are not usually animals but people—children or grownups—though a scapegoat could occasionally be some kind of animal, a dog or a cat, perhaps, if we accuse it of being responsible for a bad thing someone else has done. The word "scapegoat" is now generally applied to someone who takes or is given the blame for another person who has in some way been at fault.

If you have ever been put in a position of being condemned for something wrong you didn't do, you have been made a scapegoat for the person who really did it. If someone else—or perhaps one of your pets—is blamed for a bad thing you did, he is acting as a scapegoat for you and may be punished in your place.

"But," you may say, "that's not fair." And, of course, it isn't. We have to pay our own debts and be punished for our own sins until we give them up. We can't let others suffer for the wrong things we have done. We are responsible for our own behavior.

Yet years ago the scapegoat was used to take away people's feeling of guilt. If they were really sorry for their wickedness, and determined not to repeat it, this was good. So we can find a lesson here on the way to find true forgiveness for our sins today.

We first hear of the scapegoat quite early in the Bible. The children of Israel had left Egypt, and God had given them through Moses the Ten Commandments to show how they should live. But often they sinned against God by breaking the Commandments. Then they felt they had to be purified and forgiven. So as part of their religious ceremony on what they called the Day of Atonement, as a symbol of repentance, Aaron, the priest, had to take a goat "and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat." ^{Lev. 16:21;} Afterward, the goat was driven away into the wilderness carrying the sins, never to be seen again. In this way the children of Israel believed they got rid of their sins and could start afresh as innocent, sinless people.

Wouldn't all of us at some time or another like to feel we could put all our sins on the back of a goat and be rid of them forever? And we can be free of feeling guilty if we will stop blaming someone else and honestly face up to what we have done wrong. Then, if we make amends as far as possible for any damage done and see clearly that we don't like doing this thing and will never do it again, we can be sure we will be relieved of all condemnation and punishment for past wrongdoing. Because we have changed our ways, we can start again with a clear conscience.

The Bible makes it possible to do all this because it shows that it is really not our nature to be bad. It tells us that God made man perfect in His likeness. Christ Jesus knew this could be proved. He said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." ^{Matt. 5:48;}

Christian Science explains that every one of God's children is always perfect. They all forever express the goodness of divine Principle. They never sin. If we stay awake to the fact that we are really God's perfect children, we can never stray into bad ways of believing we want to do wrong things. If we always keep in thought that our Father-Mother is infinite Love and that He is giving us every day an abundance of good, we will only express good to others. We will never be tempted to harm anyone, take anything from another, or be unkind. We will find it natural to want to keep all the Commandments.

If we don't stay awake to these truths and in an unguarded moment break a commandment, we can have our own Day of Atonement as the Israelites did in the wilderness. We can face up to our mistaken belief of ourselves. We can see that because we are at one with God it is not our nature to do wrong. Then, if we are truly honest in turning away from what is wrong and loving to do right, we're free. The whole belief and sin of wrongdoing has been overcome just as surely as if a scapegoat had taken it away into the wilderness, never to return.

This is the right way to earn forgiveness for wrongdoing. We should see the sin's unreality because we know God made us perfect. Then we should see that we will never do it again. After that no bad feelings will remain. We will be free from guilt—and punishment—according to God's law.

Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts." ^{Science and Health, p. 497.}

Naomi Price