o be nothing more than that the Crucifixion offers
Christ a needed opportunity for the instruction of His disciples to
triumph over the grave. But since in another connection we are told He
never died at all (chapter Atonement and Eucharist, paragraph "Jesus in
the tomb") even this dissolves into unreality. Moreover the "eternal
Christ in His spiritual selfhood never suffered."[54] Whichever road she
takes here Mrs. Eddy reaches an impasse. It ought to be said, in justice
to Mrs. Eddy, that her treatment of the atonement reflects the
difficulty she found in the theology in which she had been trained as a
girl and that there are many true insights in her contentions. She was
at least seeking a vital and constructive interpretation and doubtless
her observations, confused as they are, have been for her followers a
real way out of a real difficulty. Here, as in so many other regions,
"Science and Health" is best understood by its backgrounds.

[Footnote 54: A curious and far-off echo of early Docetism which also in
its own way reduced Christ's suffering to a simple seeming to suffer.]

As a matter of fact there is in Christian Science absolutely no soil in
which to plant the Cross as the Cross is understood in Christian
theology. There is no place in Christian Science for vicarious
atonement, whether by God or man; there is little place in Christian
Science for redemptive suffering; there is a rather narrow region in
which suffering may be considered as instructive, a guide, perhaps, to
lead us out of unhappy or shadowed regions into the regions of physical
and, maybe, spiritual and moral well-being, and to quench the love of
sin.[55] Mrs. Eddy sometimes speaks of Christ as the Saviour but if her
system be pressed to a logical conclusion she must empty the word of all
the associations which it has hitherto had and make it simply the
equivalent of a teacher or demonstrator.

[Footnote 55: Page 36. But this is to recognize the reality of
suffering. Mrs. Eddy is here on the threshold of a great truth--that
suffering is an aspect of education--but she goes no further.]

_Sin an Error of Mortal Mind_

Sin along with sickness and death are the projections of mortal error,
the creations of mortal mind; sin, sickness and death are to be
classified as effects of error. Christ came "to destroy the belief of
sin." All this is to root sin simply in the mind. No intimation at all
here of the part which a perverted will may play i