WHAT enlightenment floods the individual consciousness when the true meaning of atonement is learned! In the first sentence of the second chapter of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 18), "Atonement is the exemplification of man's unity with God, whereby man reflects divine Truth, Life, and Love." On subsequent pages she amplifies its meaning by referring to atonement as at-one-ment with God.
When we ponder this word "at-one-ment," the purpose of all being becomes clarified; the tangled uncertainty and frustration that were once accepted as life are seen to be no part of divine Life, and a purposeful new pattern unfolds. The old theological decree, presenting a depressing vista of painful reparation for sin and of eternal punishment, is replaced by the promise of glorious adventure in the discovery of man's real selfhood in God and of the unreality of sin.
Had Job walked the earth in this era, his ode of lamentation might have been transformed into a psalm of rejoicing, for in the same chapter of Science and Health is to be found the answer to his dilemma. The seeming affliction by God of the innocent as well as the guilty has heretofore puzzled even the greatest theologians. Mrs. Eddy's explanation of atonement reveals the liberating fact that God afflicts neither the guilty nor the innocent, for God afflicts not at all, and sin causes suffering only so long as it is indulged.
