Chapter VII

THE ATONEMENT

We will now proceed to study certain
aspects of the Christ-Life, as they appear
among the doctrines of Christianity. In
the exoteric teachings they appear as at-
tached only to the Person of the Christ ; in
the esoteric they are seen as belonging in-
deed to Him, since in their primary, their
fullest and deepest meaning they form part
of the activities of the Logos, but as being
only secondarily reflected in the Christ, and
therefore also in every Christ-Soul that
treads the way of the Cross. Thus studied
they will be seen to be profoundly true,
while in their exoteric form the}7 often be-
wilder the intelligence and jar the emotions.

Among these stands prominently forward
the doctrine of the Atonement; not only has
it been a point of bitter attack from those
outside the pale of Christianity, but it has
wrung many sensitive consciences within

192

The Atonement

that pale. Some of the most deeply Chris-
tian thinkers of the last half of the nine-
teenth century have been tortured with
doubts as to the teaching of the churches on
this matter, and have striven to see, and to
present it, in a way that softens or explains
away the cruder notions based on an unin-
telligent reading of a few profoundly mysti-
cal texts. Nowhere, perhaps, more than in
connection with these should the warning
of S. Peter be borne in mind: "Our beloved
brother Paul also, according to the wisdom
given unto him, hath written unto you — as
also in all his epistles — speaking in them of
these things; in which are some things
hard to be understood, which they that are
unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do
also the other scriptures, unto their own de-
struction. " 1 For the texts that tell of the
identity of the Christ with His brother-men
have been wrested into a legal substitution
of Himself for them, and have thus been
used as an escape from the results of sin, in-
stead of as an inspiration to righteousness.

1 2 S. Peter iii. 15, 16.
13 193

Esoteric Christianity

The general teaching in the Early Church
on the doctrine of the Atonement was that
Christ, as the Eepresentative of Humanity,
faced and conquered Satan, the represent-
ative of the Dark Powers, who held humanity
in bondage, wrested his captive from him,
and set him free. Slowly, as Christian
teachers lost touch with spiritual truths, and
they reflected their own increasing intoler-
ance and harshness on the pure and loving
Father of the teachings of the Christ, they
represented Him as angry with man, and the
Christ was made to save man from the wrath
of God instead of from the bondage of evil.
Then legal phrases intruded, still further
materialising the once spiritual idea, and the
"scheme of redemption" was forensically
outlined. " The seal wras set on the 6 redemp-
tion scheme ' by Anselm in his great work,
Cur Deus Homo, and the doctrine which had
been slowly growing into the theology of
Christendom was thenceforward stamped
with the signet of the Church. Eoman
Catholics and Protestants, at the time of
the Reformation, alike believed in the vicar-
ious and substitutionary character of the

194

The Atonement

atonement wrought by Christ. There is no
dispute between them on this point. I pre-
fer to allow the Christian divines to speak
for themselves as to the character of
the atonement. . . . Luther teaches that
6 Christ did truly and effectually feel for all
mankind the wrath of God, malediction,
and death.' Flavel says that ' to wrath, to
the wrath of an infinite God without mix-
ture, to the very torments of hell, was
Christ delivered, and that by the hand of
his own father.' The Anglican homily
preaches that ' sin did pluck God out of
heaven to make him feel the horrors and
pains of death,' and that man, being a fire-
brand of hell and a bondsman of the devil,
' was ransomed by the death of his only and
well-beloved son ' ; the ' heat of his wrath,'
6 his burning wrath,' could only be Opaci-
fied ' by Jesus, ' so pleasant was. -the sacrifice
and oblation of his son's death.' Edwards,
being logical, saw that there was a gross in-
justice in sin being twice punished, and in
the pains of hell, the penalty of sin, being
twice inflicted, first on Jesus, the substitute
of mankind, and then on the lost, a portion
195

Esoteric Christianity

of mankind; so he, in common with most
Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict
the atonement to the elect, and declared that
Christ bore the sins, not of the world, but of
the chosen out of the world; he suffers ' not
for the world, but for them whom thou hast
given me.' But Edwards adheres firmly to
the belief in substitution, and rejects the
universal atonement for the very reason that
' to believe Christ died for all is the surest way
of proving that he died for none in the sense
Christians have hitherto believed. 5 He de-
clares that ' Christ suffered the wrath of
God for men's sins ' ; that ' God imposed his
wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the
pains of hell for,' sin. Owen regards
Christ's sufferings as ' a full valuable com-
pensation to the justice of God for all the
sins ' of the elect, and says that he under-
went ' that same punishment which . . .
they themselves were bound to undergo.'

To show that these views were still
authoritatively taught in the churches, I
wrote further: " Stroud makes Christ drink

1 A. Besant. Essay on the Atonement.
196

The Atonement

' the cup of the wrath of God. ' Jenkyn says
i He suffered as one disowned and reprobated
and forsaken of God.' Dwight considers
that he endured God's 'hatred and con-
tempt. 5 Bishop Jeune tells us that 6 after
man had done his worst, worse remained
for Christ to bear. He had fallen into his
father's hands.' Archbishop Thomson
preaches that ' the clouds of God's wrath
gathered thick over the whole human race :
they discharged themselves on Jesus only. '
He 6 becomes a curse for us and a vessel of
wrath. ' Liddon echoes the same sentiment :
' The apostles teach that mankind are slaves,
and that Christ on the cross is paying their
ransom. Christ crucified is voluntarily
devoted and accursed ' ; he even speaks of
' the precise amount of ignominy and pain
needed for the redemption,' and says that
the ' divine victim ' paid more than was
absolutely necessary."1

These are the views against which the
learned and deeply religious Dr. McLeod
Campbell wrote his well-known work, On
the Atonement, a, volume containing many

1 Ibid.
197

Esoteric Christianity

true and beautiful thoughts ; F. D. Maurice
and many other Christian men have also
striven to lift from Christianity the burden
of a doctrine so destructive of all true ideas
as to the relations between God and man.

None the less, as we look backwards over
the effects produced by this doctrine, we find
that belief in it, even in its legal — and to
us crude exoteric— form, is connected with
some of the very highest developments of
Christian conduct, and that some of the
noblest examples of Christian manhood and
womanhood have drawn from it their
strength, their inspiration, and their com-
fort. It would be unjust not to recognise
this fact. And whenever we come upon a
fact that seems to us startling and incon-
gruous, we do well to pause upon that fact,
and to endeavour to understand it. For if
this doctrine contained nothing more than is
seen in it by its assailants inside and outside
the churches, if it were in its true meaning
as repellent to the conscience and the intel-
lect as it is found to be by many thoughtful
Christians, then it could not possibly have
exercised over the minds and hearts of men

198

The Atonement

a compelling fascination, nor could it have
been the root of heroic self-surrenders, of
touching and pathetic examples of self-
sacrifice in the service of man. Something
more there must be in it than lies on the
surface, some hidden kernel of life which
has nourished those who have drawn from
it their inspiration. In studying it as one
of the Lesser Mysteries we shall find the
hidden life which these noble ones have un-
consciously absorbed, these souls which were
so at one with that life that the form in
which it was veiled could not repel them.

When we come to study it as one of the
Lesser Mysteries, we shall feel that for its
understanding some spiritual development
is needed, some opening of the inner eyes.
To grasp it requires that its spirit should be
partly evolved in the life, and only those
who know practically something of the
meaning of self -surrender will be able to
catch a glimpse of what is implied in the
esoteric teaching on this doctrine, as the
typical manifestation of the Law of Sacrifice.
We can only understand it as applied to the
Christ, when we see it as a special manifest-
199

Esoteric Christianity

aiion of the universal law, a reflection
below of the Pattern above, showing us in
a concrete human life what sacrifice means.

The Law of Sacrifice underlies our system
and all systems, and on it all universes are
builded. It lies at the root of evolution,
and alone makes it intelligible. In the doct-
rine of the Atonement it takes a concrete
form in connection with men who have
reached a certain stage in spiritual develop-
ment, the stage that enables them to realise
their oneness with humanity, and to become,
in very deed and truth, Saviours of men. ■

All the great religions of the world have
declared that the universe begins' by an act
of sacrifice, and have incorporated the idea
of sacrifice into their most solemn rites. In
Hinduism, the dawn of manifestation is said
to be by sacrifice,1 mankind is emanated
with sacrifice,2 and it is Deity who sacrifices
Himself ; 3 the object of the sacrifice is mani-
festation; He cannot become manifest un-
less an act of sacrifice be performed, and in-

1 Brihaddranyakopanisliai, X. i. 1.

2 Bhagamd GUd, iii, 10.

3 Briliaddranyalwpanisliat, I. ii. 7.

200

The Atonement

asmuch as nothing can be manifest until He
manifests/ the act of sacrifice is called "the
dawn " of creation.

In the Zoroastrian religion it was taught
that in the Existence that is boundless, un-
knowable, unnameable, sacrifice was per-
formed and manifest Deity appeared ; Ahura-
mazdao was born of an act of sacrifice.2

In the Christian religion the same idea is
indicated in the phrase: "the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world,"3 slain at
the origin of things. These words can but
refer to the important truth that there can
be no founding of a world until the Deity
has made an act of sacrifice. This act is
explained as limiting Himself in order to
become manifest. "The Law of Sacrifice
might perhaps more truly be called The Law
of Manifestation, or the Law of Love and of
Life, for throughout the universe, from the
highest to the lowest, it is the cause of
manifestation and life."4

1 MundakopanisJiat, II. ii. 10.

2 Haug. Essays on the Parsis, pp. 12-14.

3 Rev. xiii. 8.

4W. Williamson. The Great Law, p. 406.
201

Esoteric Christianity

" Now, if we study this physical world, as
being the most available material, we find
that all life in it, all growth, all progress,
alike for units and for aggregates, depend
on continual sacrifice and the endurance
of pain. Mineral is sacrificed to vegetable,
vegetable to animal, both to man, men to
men, and all the higher forms again break
up, and reinforce again with their separated
constituents the lowest kingdom. It is a
continual sequence of sacrifices from the
lowest to the highest, and the very mark of
progress is that the sacrifice from being in-
voluntary and imposed becomes voluntary
and self-chosen, and those who are recog-
nised as greatest by man's intellect and
loved most by man's heart are the supreme
sufferers, those heroic souls who wrought,
endured, and died that the race might profit
by their pain. If the world be the work of
the Logos, and the law of the world's pro-
gress in the whole and the parts is sacrifice,
then the Law of Sacrifice must point to
something in the very nature of the Logos ;
it must have its root in the Divine Nature

itself. A little further thought shows us

202

The Atonement

that if there is to be a world, a universe at
all, this can only be by the One Existence
conditioning Itself and thus making mani-
festation possible, and that the very Logos
is the Self-limited God; limited to become
manifest; manifested to bring a universe
into being; such self-limitation and mani-
festation can only be a supreme act of sacri-
fice, and what wonder that on every hand
the world should show its birth-mark, and
that the Law of Sacrifice should be the law
of being, the law of the derived lives.

" Further, as it is an act of sacrifice in
order that individuals may come into exist-
ence to share the Divine bliss, it is very
truly a vicarious act — an act done for the
sake of others; hence the fact already noted,
that progress is marked by sacrifice becom-
ing voluntary and self-chosen, and we real-
ise that humanity reaches its perfection in
the man who gives himself for men, and by
his own suffering purchases for the race
some lofty good.

"Here, in the highest regions, is the in-
most verity of vicarious sacrifice, and how-
ever it may be degraded and distorted, this
203

Esoteric Christianity

inner spiritual truth makes it indestructible,
eternal, and the fount whence flows the
spiritual energy which, in manifold forms
and ways, redeems the world from evil and
draws it home to God."1

When the Logos comes forth from "the
bosom of the Father" in that "Day" when
He is said to be "begotten,"2 the dawn of
the Day of Creation, of Manifestation, when
by Him God "made the worlds," 3 He by His
own will limits Himself, making as it were
a sphere enclosing the Divine Life, coming
forth as a radiant orb of Deity, the Divine
Substance, Spirit within and limitation, or
Matter, without. This is the veil of matter
which makes possible the birth of the Logos,
Mary, the World-Mother, necessary for the
manifestation in time of the Eternal, that
Deity may manifest for the building of the
worlds.

That circumscription, that self -limitation,
is the act of sacrifice, a voluntary action done
for love's sake, that other lives may be born
from Him. Such a manifestation has been

1 A. Besant. Nineteenth Century, June, 1895, " The
Atonement." 2Heb. i. 5. 3 Ibid. } 2.

204

The Atonement

regarded as a death, for, in comparison with
the unimaginable life of God in Himself,
such circumscription in matter may truly be
called death. It has been regarded, as we
have seen, as a crucifixion in matter, and
has been thus figured, the true origin of the
symbol of the cross, whether in its so-called
Greek form, wherein the vivifying of mat-
ter by the Holy Ghost is signified, or in its
so-called Latin, whereby the Heavenly Man
is figured, the supernal Christ.1

"In tracing the symbolism of the Latin
cross, or rather of the crucifix, back into the
night of time, the investigators had expected
to find the figure disappear, leaving behind
what they supposed to be the earlier cross-
emblem. As a matter of fact exactly the
reverse took place, and they were startled to
find that eventually the cross drops away,
leaving only the figure with uplifted arms,
No longer is there any thought of pain or
sorrow connected with that figure, though
still it tells of sacrifice ; rather is it now the
symbol of the purest joy the world can hold

1 C. W. Leadbeater, The Christian Creed, pp. 54-56.
205

Esoteric Christianity

— the joy of freely giving — for it typifies
the Divine Man standing in space with arms
upraised in blessing, casting abroad His
gifts to all humanity, pouring forth freely
of Himself in all directions, descending into
that ' dense sea ' of matter, to be cribbed,
cabined, and confined therein, in order that
through that descent we may come into
being." 1

This sacrifice is perpetual, for in every
form in this universe of infinite diversity
this life is enfolded, and is its very heart,
the " Heart of Silence " of the Egyptian
ritual, the " Hidden God." This sacrifice is
the secret of evolution. The Divine Life,
cabined within a form, ever presses out-
wards in order that the form may expand,
but presses gently, lest the form should
break ere yet it had reached its utmost limit
of expansion. With infinite patience and
tact and discretion, the divine One keeps up
the constant pressure that expands, without
loosing a force that would disrupt. In
every form, in mineral, in vegetable, in ani-
mal, in man, this expansive energy of the

lIUd.t pp. 56, 57.
206

The Atonement

Logos is ceaselessly working. That is the
evolutionary force, the lifting life within
the forms, the rising energy that science
glimpses, but knows not whence it comes.
The botanist tells of an energy within the
plant, that pulls ever upwards; he knows
not how, he knows not why, but he gives it
a name — the vis a f route — because he finds
it there, or rather finds its results. Just as
it is in plant life, so is it in other forms as
well, making them more and more express-
ive of the life within them. When the
limit of any form is reached, and it can
grow no further, so that nothing more can
be gained through it by the soul of it — that
germ of Himself, which the Logos is brood-
ing over — then He draws away His energy,
and the form disintegrates — we call it death
and decay. But the soul is with Him, and
He shapes for it a new form, and the death
of the form is the birth of the soul into fuller
life. If we saw with the eyes of the Spirit
instead of with the eyes of the flesh, w7e
should not weep over a form, which is a
corpse giving back the materials out of which
it was builded, but we should joy over the
207

Esoteric Christianity

life passing onwards into nobler form, to
expand under the unchanging process the
powers still latent within.

Through that perpetual sacrifice of the
Logos all lives exist ; it is the life by which
the universe is ever becoming. This life is
One, but it embodies itself in myriad forms,
ever drawing them together and gently
overcoming their resistance. Thus it is an
At-one-ment, a unifying force, by which the
separated lives are gradually made conscious
of their unity, labouring to develop in each
a self-consciousness, which shall at last
know itself to be one with all others, and its
root One and divine.

This is the primary and ever-continued
sacrifice, and it will be seen that it is an
outpouring of Life directed by Love, a vol-
untary and glad pouring forth of Self for
the making of other Selves. This is "the
joy of thy Lord " 1 into which the faithful
servant enters, significantly followed by
the statement that He was hungry, thirsty,
naked, sick, a stranger and in prison, in the

1 S. Matt. xxv. 21, 23, 31-45.
208

The Atonement

helped or neglected children of men. To
the free Spirit to give itself is joy, and it
feels its life the more keenly, the more it
pours itself forth. And the more it gives,
the more it grows, for the law of the growth
of life is that it increases by pouring itself
forth and not by drawing from without — by
giving, not by taking. Sacrifice, then, in
its primary meaning, is a thing of joy ; the
Logos pours Himself out to make a world,
and, seeing the travail of His soul, is satis-
fied.1

But the word has come to be associated
with suffering, and in all religious rites of
sacrifice some suffering, if only that of a
trivial loss to the sacrificer, is present. It is
well to understand how this change has
come about, so that when the word " sacri-
fice "is used the instinctive connotation is
one of pain.

The explanation is seen when we turn
from the manifesting Life to the forms in
which it is embodied, and look at the ques-
tion of sacrifice from the side of the forms.
While the life of Life is in giving, the life,

14

1 Is. liii. 11.
209

Esoteric Christianity

or persistence, of form is in taking, for the
form is wasted as it is exercised, it is dimin-
ished as it is exerted. If the form is to con-
tinue, it must draw fresh material from
outside itself in order to repair its losses,
else will it waste and vanish away. The
form must grasp, keep, build into itself
what it has grasped, else it cannot persist;
and the law of growth of the form is to take
and assimilate that which the wider uni-
verse supplies. As the consciousness identi-
fies itself with the form, regarding the form
as itself, sacrifice takes on a painful aspect ;
to give, to surrender, to lose what has been
acquired, is felt to undermine the persistence
of the form, and thus the Law of Sacrifice
becomes a law of pain instead of a law of
joy.

Man had to learn by the constant break-
ing up of forms, and the pain involved in
the breaking, that he must not identify
himself with the wasting and changing
forms, but with the growing persistent life,
and he was taught his lesson not only by ex-
ternal nature, but by the deliberate lessons
of the Teachers who gave him religions.

210

The Atonement

We can trace in the religions of the world
four great stages of instruction in the Law
of Sacrifice. First, man was taught to sac-
rifice part of his material possession in order
to gain increased material prosperity, and
sacrifices were made in charity to men and
in offerings to Deities, as we may read in
the scriptures of the Hindus, the Zoroas-
trians, the Hebrews, indeed all the world
over. The man gave up something he
valued to insure future prosperity to him-
self, his family, his community, his nation.
He sacrificed in the present to gain in the
future. Secondly, came a lesson a little
harder to learn ; instead of physical prosper-
ity and worldly good, the fruit to be gained
by sacrifice was celestial bliss. Heaven was
to be won, happiness was to be enjoyed on
the other side of death — such was the re-
ward for sacrifices made during the life led
on earth.

A considerable step forward was made
when a man learned to give up the things
for which his body craved for the sake of a
distant good which he could not see nor
demonstrate. He learned to surrender the
211

Esoteric Christianity

visible for the invisible, and in so doing; rose
in the scale of being; for so great is the
fascination of the visible and the tangible,
that if a man be able to surrender them for
the sake of an unseen world in which he
believes, he has acquired much strength and
has made a long step towards the realisation
of that unseen world. Over and over again
martyrdom has been endured, obloquy has
been faced, man has learned to stand alone,
bearing all that his race could pour upon
him of pain, misery, and shame, looking to
that which is beyond the grave. True,
there still remains in this a longing for
celestial glory, but it is no small thing to
be able to stand alone on earth and rest
on spiritual companionship, to cling firmly
to the inner life when the outer is all torture.

The third lesson came when a man, seeing
himself as part of a greater life, was willing
to sacrifice himself for the good of the whole,
and so became strong enough to recognise
that sacrifice was right, that a part, a frag-
ment, a unit in the sum total of life, should
subordinate the part to the whole, the frag-
ment to the totality. Then he learned to

212

The Atonement

do right, without being affected by the out-
come to his own person, to do duty, without
wishing for result to himself, to endure
because endurance was right not because it
would be crowned, to give because gifts
were due to humanity not because they
would be repaid by the Lord. The hero-
soul thus trained was ready for the fourth
lesson: that sacrifice of all the separated
fragment possesses is to be offered because
the Spirit is not really separate but is part
of the divine Life, and knowing no differ-
ence, feeling no separation, the man pours
himself forth as part of the Life Universal,
and in the expression of that Life he shares
the joy of his Lord.

It is in the three earlier stages that the
pain-aspect of sacrifice is seen. The first
meets but small sufferings; in the second
the physical life and all that earth has to
give may be sacrificed ; the third is the
great time of testing, of trying, of the
growth and evolution of the human soul.
For in that stage duty may demand all in
which life seems to consist, and the man,
still identified in feeling with the form,
213

Esoteric Christianity

though knowing himself theoretically to
transcend it, finds that all he feels as life is
demanded of him, and questions: "If I let
this go, what then will remain ? " It seems as
though consciousness itself would cease with
this surrender, for it must loose its hold on
all it realises, and it sees nothing to grasp
on the other side. An over-mastering con-
viction, an imperious voice, call on him to
surrender his very life. If he shrinks back,
he must go on in the life of sensation, the
life of the intellect, the life of the world,
and as he has the joys he dared not resign,
he finds a constant dissatisfaction, a con-
stant craving, a constant regret and lack of
pleasure in the world, and he realises the
truth of the saying of the Christ, that "he
that will save his life shall lose it,'51 and
that the life that was loved and clung to is
only lost at last. Whereas if he risks all in
obedience to the voice that summons, if he
throws away his life, then in losing it, he
finds it unto life eternal,2 and he discovers
that the life he surrendered was only death

1 S. Matt. xvi. 25. 2 S John xii, 25.

214

The Atonement

in life, that all he gave up was illusion, and
that he found reality. In that choice the
metal of the soul is proved, and only the
pure gold comes forth from the fiery fur-
nace, where life seemed to be surrendered
but where life was won. And then follows
the joyous discovery that the life thus won
is won for all, not for the separated self,
that the abandoning of the separated self
has meant the realising of the Self in man,
and that the resignation of the limit which
alone seemed to make life possible has
meant the pouring out into myriad forms,
an undreamed vividness and fulness, "the
power of an endless life." 1

Such is an outline of the Law of Sacrifice,
based on the primary Sacrifice of the Logos,
that Sacrifice of which all other sacrifices
are reflexions.

We have seen how the man Jesus, the
Hebrew disciple, laid down His body in glad
surrender that a higher Life might descend
and become embodied in the form He thus
willingly sacrificed, and how by that act He

1 Heb. vii. 16.
215

Esoteric Christianity

became a Christ of full stature, to be the
Guardian of Christianity, and to pour out
His life into the great religion founded by
the Mighty One with whom the sacrifice had
identified Him. We have seen the Christ-
Soul passing through the great Initiations-
born as a little child, stepping down into the
river of the world ?s sorrows, with the waters
of which he must be baptised into his active
ministry, transfigured on the Mount, led to
the scene of his last combat, and triumphing
over death. We have now to see in what
sense he is an atonement, how in the Christ-
life the Law of Sacrifice finds a perfect
expression.

The beginning of what may be called the
ministry of the Christ come to manhood is
in that intense and permanent sympathy
with the world's sorrows which is typified
by the stepping down into the river. From
that time forward the life must be summed
up in the phrase, "He went about doing
good " ; for those who sacrifice the separated
life to be a channel of the divine Life, can
have no interest in this world save the help-
ing of others. He learns to identify himself

216

The Atonement

with the consciousness of those around him,
to feel as they feel, think as they think, en-
joy as they enjoy, suffer as they suffer, and
thus he brings into his daily waking life
that sense of unity with others which he
experiences in the higher realms of being.
He must develop a sympathy which vibrates
in perfect harmony with the many-toned
chord of human life, so that he may link in
himself the human and the divine lives, and
become a mediator between heaven and
earth.

Power is now manifested in him, for the
Spirit is resting on him, and he begins to
stand out in the eyes of men as one of those
who are able to help their younger brethren
to tread the path of life. As they gather
round him, they feel the power that comes
out from him, the divine Life in the accred-
ited Son of the Highest. The souls that are
hungry come to him and he feeds them with
the bread of life ; the diseased with sin ap-
proach him, and he heals them with the
living word which cures the sickness and
makes whole the soul ; the blind with ignor-
ance draw nigh him, and he opens their eyes
217

Esoteric Christianity

by the light of his wisdom. It is the chief
mark in his ministry that the lowest and the
poorest, the most desperate and the most de-
graded, feel in approaching him no wall of
separation, feel as they throng around him
welcome and not repulsion ; for there radiates
from him a love that understands and that
can therefore never wish to repel. However
low the soul may be, he never feels the
Christ-Soul as standing above him but
rather as standing beside him, treading with
human feet the ground he also treads ; yet
as filled with some strange uplifting power
that raises him upwards and fills him also
with new impulse and fresh inspiration.

Thus he lives and labours, a true Saviour
of men, until the time comes when he must
learn another lesson, losing for awhile his
consciousness of that divine Life of which
his own has been becoming ever more and
more the expression. And this lesson is
that the true centre of divine Life lies with-
in and not without. The Self has its centre
within each human soul — truly is "the cen-
tre everywhere," for Christ is in all, and
God in Christ — and no embodied life, no-

The Atonement

thing " out of the Eternal "'can help him
in his direst need. He has to learn that the
true unity of Father and Son is to be found
within and not without, and this lesson can
only come in uttermost isolation, when he
feels forsaken by the God outside himself.
As this trial approaches, he cries out to
those who are nearest to him to watch with
him through his hour of darkness; and
then, by the breaking of every human sym-
pathy, the failing of every human love, he
finds himself thrown back on the life of the
divine Spirit, and cries out to his Father,
feeling himself in conscious union with
Him, that the cup may pass away. Having
stood alone, save for that divine Helper, he
is worthy to face the last ordeal, where the
God without him vanishes, and only the God
within is left. "My God, my God, wh}r
hast Thou forsaken me?" rings out the
bitter cry of startled love and fear. The last
loneliness descends on him, and he feels
himself forsaken and alone. Yet never is
the Father nearer to the Son than at the

1 Light on the Path, § 8.
219

Esoteric Christianity

moment when the Christ-Soul feels himself
forsaken, for as he thus touches the lowest
depth of sorrow, the hour of his triumph
begins to dawn. For now he learns that he
must himself become the God to whom he
cries, and by feeling the last pang of separ-
ation he finds the eternal unity, he feels the
fount of life is within, and knows himself
eternal.

None can become fully a Saviour of men
nor sympathise perfectly with all human
suffering, unless he has faced and conquered
pain and fear and death unaided, save by
the aid he draws from the God within him.
It is easy to suffer when there is unbroken
consciousness between the higher and the
lower; nay, suffering is not, while that con-
sciousness remains unbroken, for the light
of the higher makes darkness in the lower
impossible, and pain is not pain when borne
in the smile of God. There is a suffering
that men have to face, that every Saviour
of man must face, where darkness is on the
human consciousness, and never a glimmer
of light comes through ; he must know the
pang of the despair felt by the human soul

220

The Atonement

when there is darkness on every side, and
the groping consciousness cannot find a
hand to clasD. Into that darkness every
Son of Man goes down, ere he rises
triumphant; that bitterest experience is
tasted by evefry Christ, ere he is "able to
save them to the uttermost " 1 who seek the
Divine through him.

Such a one has become truly divine, a
Saviour of men, and he takes up the world-
work for which all this has been the prepar-
ation. Into him must pour all the forces
that make against man, in order that in
him they may be changed into forces that
help. Thus he becomes one of the Peace-
centres of the world, which transmute the
forces of combat that would otherwise crush
man. For the Chris ts of the world are
these Peace-centres into which pour all
warring forces, to be changed within them
and then poured out as forces that work for
harmony.

Part of the sufferings of the Christ not
yet perfect lies in this harmonising of the

1 Heb. vii. 25.
221

Esoteric Christianity

discord -making forces in the world. Al-
though a Son, he yet learns by suffering
and is thus "made perfect."1 Humanity
would be far more full of combat and rent
with strife were it not for the Christ-dis-
ciples living in its midst, and harmonising
many of the warring forces into peace.

When it is said that the Christ suffers
"for men," that His strength replaces their
weakness, His purity their sin, His wisdom
their ignorance, a truth is spoken ; for the
Christ so becomes one with men that they
share with Him and He with them. There
is no substitution of Him for them, but the
taking of their lives into His, and the pour-
ing of His life into theirs. For, having
risen to the plane of unity, He is able to
share all He has gained, to give all He has
won. Standing above the plane of separate-
ness and looking down at the souls immersed
in separateness, He can reach each while
they cannot reach each other. Water can
flow from above into many pipes, open to
the reservoir though closed as regards each

1 Heb. v. 8, 9.

222.

The Atonement

other, and so He can send His life into each
soul. Only one condition is needed in order
that a Christ may share His strength with
a younger brother : that in the separated life
the human consciousness will open itself to
the divine, will show itself receptive of the
offered life, and take the freely outpoured
gift. For so reverent is God to that Spirit
which is Himself in man, that He will not
even pour into the human soul a flood of
strength and life unless that soul is willing
to receive it. There must be an opening
from below as well as an outpouring from
above, the receptiveness of the lower nature
as well as the willingness of the higher to
give. That is the link between the Christ
and the man; that is what the churches
have called the outpouring of " divine
grace"; that is what is meant by the
" faith " necessary to make the grace effec-
tive. As Giordano Bruno once put it — the
human soul has windows, and can shut
those windows close. The sun outside is
shining, the light is unchanging; let the
windows be opened and the sunlight must
stream in. The light of God is beating

Esoteric Christianity

against the windows of every human soul,
and when the windows are thrown open,
the soul becomes illuminated. There is no
change in God, but there is a change in
man; and man's will may not be forced,
else were the divine Life in him blocked in
its due evolution.

Thus in every Christ that rises, all
humanity is lifted a step higher, and by
His wisdom the ignorance of the whole world
is lessened. Each man is less weak because
of His strength, which pours out over all
humanity and enters the separated soul.
Out of that doctrine, seen narrowly, and
therefore mis-seen, grew the idea of the
vicarious Atonement as a legal trans-
action between God and man, in which Jesus
took the place of the sinner. It was not-
understood that One who had touched that
height was verily one with all His brethren ;
identity of nature was mistaken for a
personal substitution, and thus the spirit-
ual truth was lost in the harshness of a
judicial exchange.

" Then he comes to a knowledge of his
place in the world, of his function in nature

224

The Atonement

— to be a Saviour and to make atonement
for the sins of the people. He stands in the
inner Heart of the world, the Holy of
Holies, as a High Priest of Humanity. He
is one with all his brethren, not by a vicar-
ious substitution, but by the unity of a com-
mon life. Is any sinful? he is sinful in
them, that his purity may purge them. Is
any sorrowful? in them he is the man of
sorrows; every broken heart breaks his, in
every pierced heart his heart is pierced. Is
any glad? in them he is joyous, and pours
out his bliss. Is any craving? in them he is
feeling want that he may fill them with his
utter satisfaction. He has everything, and
because it is his it is theirs. He is perfect ;
then they are perfect with him. He is
strong ; who then can be weak, since he is in
them? He climbed to his high place that
he might pour out to all below him, and he
lives in order that all may share his life.
He lifts the whole world with him as he
rises, the path is easier for all men, because
he has trodden it.

" Every son of man may become such a
manifested Son of God, such a Saviour of the
15 225

Esoteric Christianity

world. In each such Son is 6 God manifest
in the flesh, ' 1 the atonement that aids all
mankind, the living power that makes all
things new. Only one thing is needed to
bring that power into manifested activity in
any individual soul ; the soul must open the
door and let Him in. Even He, all-per-
meating, cannot force His way against His
brother's will; the human will can hold its
own alike against God and man, and by the
law of evolution it must voluntarily associ-
ate itself with divine action, and not be
broken into sullen submission. Let the will
throw open the door, and the life will flood
the soul. While the door is closed it will
only gently breathe through it its unutter-
able fragrance, that the sweetness of that
fragrance may win, where the barrier may
not be forced by strength.

"This it is, in part, to be a Christ; but
how can mortal pen mirror the immortal, or
mortal words tell of that which is beyond
the power of speech? Tongue may not ut-
ter, the unillumined mind may not grasp,
that mystery of the Son who has become

1 1 Tim. iii. 16.
226

The Atonement

one with the Father, carrying in His bosom
the sons of men." 1

Those who would prepare to rise to such
a life in the future must begin even now to
tread in the lower life the path of the
Shadow of the Cross. Nor should they
doubt their power to rise, for to do so is to
doubt the God within them. "Have faith
in yourself," is one of the lessons that comes
from the higher view of man, for that faith
is really in the God within. There is a way
by which the shadow of the Christ-life may
fall on the common life of man, and that is
by doing every act as a sacrifice, not for
what it will bring to the doer but for what
it will bring to others, and, in the daily
common life of small duties, petty actions,
narrow interests, by changing the motive
and thus changing all. Not one thing in
the outer life need necessarily be varied ; in
any life sacrifice may be offered, amid any
surroundings God may be served. Evolv-
ing spirituality is marked not by what a
man does, but by how he does it ; not in the

1 Annie Besant. Theosophical Review, Dec, 1898, pp.
344, 345.

227

Esoteric Christianity

circumstances, but in the attitude of a
man towards them, lies the opportunity of
growth. "And indeed this symbol of the
cross may be to us as a touchstone to disting-
uish the good from the evil in many of
the difficulties of life. 6 Only those actions
through which shines the light of the cross
are worthy of the life of the disciple, ' says
one of the verses in a book of occult max-
ims; and it is interpreted to mean that all
that the aspirant does should be prompted
by the fervour of self-sacrificing love. The
same thought appears in a later verse:
6 When one enters the path, he lays his
heart upon the cross; when the cross and
the heart have become one, then hath he
reached the goal.' So, perchance, we may
measure our progress by watching whether
selfishness or self-sacrifice is dominant in
our lives." 1

Every life which begins thus to shape
itself is preparing the cave in which the
Child -Christ shall be born, and the life shall
become a constant at-one-ment, bringing

1 C. W. Leadbeater. The Christian Creed, pp. 61, 62.
228

The Atonement

the divine more and more into the human.
Every such life shall grow into, the life of a
"beloved Son," and shall have in it the
glory of the Christ. Every man may work
in that direction by making every act and
power a sacrifice, until the gold is purged
from the dross, and only the pure ore re-
mains.

229