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sin, and make man like to God. This is the true atonement! Not, indeed, a reconciliation of sin-stained
humanity to an angry and holy God, purchased by the sacrifice of His sinless son, but a higher and truer
atonement in the ennobling of the nature, the purifying of the spirit; the making of the human and the
divine, ONE in aim and purpose: the drawing of man s spirit, even whilst incarned, up nearer and
nearer to the Divine.
This was the mission of Christ. In this He was a manifestation of God: the son of God: the Saviour of
man: the Reconciler: the Atoner: and herein we perpetuate His work, we carry on His mission, we work
under His symbol, we fight against the enemies of His faith, against all who ignorantly or wilfully
dishonour Him, even though it be under the banner of orthodoxy and under the protection of His Name.
Much that we teach must still be new and strange even to those who have progressed in knowledge; but
the days shall come when men shall recognise the oneness of Christ s teaching on earth with ours; and
the human garb, gross and material, in which it has been shrouded, shall be rent asunder, and men shall
see the true grandeur of the life and teaching of Him whom they ignorantly worship. In those days they
shall worship with no less reality, but with a more perfect knowledge; and they shall know that the sign
under which we speak is the symbol of purity and self-sacrificing love to them and to their brethren for
all time. This end it is our earnest endeavour to attain. Judge of our mission by this standard, and it is of
God, godlike: noble as He is noble: pure as He is pure: truthgiving as He is true: elevating, and saving,
and purifying the spirit from the grossness of earthly conceptions and raising it to the very atmosphere
and neighbourhood of the spiritual and the divine.
Ponder our words: and seek for guidance, if not through us, then through Him who sent us, even as, in
earlier days, He sent that exalted spirit of purity, charity, and self-sacrifice, whom men called Jesus, and
who was the Christ.
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Him we adore even now. His Name we reverence.
His words we echo. His teaching lives again in ours.
He and we are of God: and in His Name we come.
+ IMPERATOR.
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[I was not content, and took time to consider what had been written. It was very contrary to any
opinions I then held, but I was conscious of an extremely powerful and elevating influence during the time
the writing was going on. I wished to get rid of the influence before I replied.
On the following day I had an opportunity of resuming my argument. I objected to what had been said,
that such a creed would not be acknowledged as Christian by any member of a Christian Church, that it
was contradictory to the plain words of the Bible; and that such views appeared even to be the subject
of special denunciation as those of Anti-Christ. Moreover, I suggested that such vaguely beautiful views,
as I admitted them to be, had a tendency to take the backbone out of faith. It was replied: ]
Friend, you have opened points on which we shall be glad to speak with you. As to our authority, we
have touched on that point before. We claim it to be devine, and we await with confidence the
acceptance of our mission when the times are ripe for our teaching. That time must come after much
steady preparation, and we are quite prepared to find that none can yet accept in full the teaching which
we promulgate, save the little band to whom it is given to precede in progressive knowledge the rest of
their fellows. We say that this does not strike us with surprise. For, think! has it ever been that a fuller
revelation has found acceptance among men at once? The ignorant cry has always been raised against
progress in knowledge that the old is sufficient: that it has been proven and tried; whilst of the new, men
say that they know nothing save that it is new and contradictory of the old. It was the self-same cry that
assailed Jesus. Men who had laboriously elaborated the Mosaic theology, which had served its time, and
was to give place to a higher and more spiritual religion: men who had drawn out the minutiae of this
system until they had reduced it to an aimless mass of ritual, a body without a spirit, aye, a corpse
without life: these cried out that this blasphemer (so they impiously called the Saviour of man s religion)
would destroy the law and dishonour God. The Scribes and Pharisees, the guardians of orthodox
religion, were unanimous in their disbelief of Him and of His pretentions. It was they who raised the howl
which finally led the Great Teacher to the Cross. You know now that He did not dishonour God: and
that He did but demolish man s glosses on God s revealed law in order that He might refine and
spiritualise its commands, and raise if from the dead by infusing into it spiritual life and power, by
breathing into it vitality and giving it renewed vigour.
In place of the cold and cheerless letter of the law which prescribed outward duty to a parent a duty
discharged without love, with scanty dole grudgingly offered, He taught the spirit of filial affection
springing from a loving heart, and offering the unbought and ungrudged tribute of affection to earthly
parents and to the Great Father. The formalism of mere external conventionality He replaced by the
free-will offering of the heart. Which was the truer, the nobler creed? Did the latter override the former,
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