Broadly defined, Christian Science is the living, the bringing out in practical demonstration, of the Christlife. Christian Science does away with the doctrine of a vicarious atonement, in so far as it discards the commonly accepted doctrine that the shedding of Jesus' blood on the cross paid the penalty of man's transgression, without work or effort of man's own. In other words, Christian Science holds with James, that "faith without works is dead." It declares the Life, and not the death of Jesus of Nazareth, to be the open way of man's redemption.
Jesus came as the Desire of the People. His mission was to reconcile man to God, not God to man.
To this end he must enter upon this Adam-dream as a little child. His birth must be after a manner which should bring again to man, lost in the sensuous beliefs of that Roman age, the thought of man's purity and perfection, as he came forth from the hand of his Maker. Jesus was not conceived in sin nor shapen in iniquity. He set at naught the law of human generation, and declared God the only Life-giver, the only Creator.
