nth century, Christian
Science is reasonably intelligible, but as a system of doctrine built
upon the hitherto accepted bases of Christian fact and teaching, it is
not intelligible at all and the long controversy between the Christian
theologian and the Christian Science lecturer would best be ended by
recognizing that they have so little in common as to make attack and
counter-attack a movement in two different dimensions. The one thing
which they have in common is a certain set of words and phrases, but
these words and phrases have such entirely different meanings on the one
side and the other as to make the use of them hopelessly misleading.

_The Atonement. The Cross of Christian Science and the Cross of
Theology_

There are passing references to the Cross in "Science and Health," but
the word is used generally in a figurative and sentimental way. Mrs.
Eddy's cross is simply the pain of being misunderstood and criticised in
the preaching and practice of Christian Science, though indeed the Cross
of Jesus was also the outcome of hostilities and misunderstandings and a
final and terribly fierce method of criticism. One feels that mainly she
is thinking of her own cross as a misunderstood and abused woman and for
such suggestion she prefers the Cup as a figure to the Cross. As for the
Atonement "every pang of repentance and suffering, every effort for
reform, every good thought and deed will help us to understand Jesus'
Atonement for sin and aid its efficacy."[53] "Wisdom and Love require
many sacrifices of self to save us from sin." All this seems to be in
line with the moral theory of the atonement until we see that in such a
line as this there is no recognition of the fact that again and again we
suffer and that largely for others, and when she adds that "Its [the
atonement] scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of
sinful sense which Truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and
suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love" (page 23), those
passages cancel one another, for if suffering be "an error of sinful
sense" it is hard to see how any pang of it can help us to understand
Jesus' atonement unless His suffering be also "an error of sinful
sense," and this is to reduce the atonement to a like error.

[Footnote 53: Page 19.]

In another connection Mrs. Eddy finds the efficacy of the Crucifixion
"in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind."
But this turns out t