The deep significance of the blood of Christ

When I came to the following passage in Mary Baker Eddy’s Prose Works (other than Science and Health), the thought came that we do not have to find the word Easter to be able to speak about the idea of Easter. Could it be that the whole story of the New Testament, of Jesus the Christ, is the Easter story? Here’s the passage:

The blood of Christ speaketh better things than that of Abel. The real atonement — so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy — needs to be understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity, — this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus’ life, purchasing the freedom of mortals from sin and death.

This blood of Jesus is everything to human hope and faith. Without it, how poor the precedents of Christianity! What manner of Science were Christian Science without the power to demonstrate the Principle of such Life; and what hope have mortals but through deep humility and adoration to reach the understanding of this Principle! When human struggles cease, and mortals yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death. He who pointed the way of Life conquered also the drear subtlety of death.

It was not to appease the wrath of God, but to show the allness of Love and the nothingness of hate, sin, and death, that Jesus suffered. He lived that we also might live. He suffered, to show mortals the awful price paid by sin, and how to avoid paying it. He atoned for the terrible unreality of a supposed existence apart from God. He suffered because of the shocking human idolatry that presupposes Life, substance, Soul, and intelligence in matter, — which is the antipode of God, and yet governs mankind. The glorious truth of being — namely, that God is the only Mind, Life, substance, Soul — needs no reconciliation with God, for it is one with Him now and forever.
No and Yes, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 34:18–23 (np)

 I find now that the Easter theme begins at the outset of the Essay Is There no Sacrificial Atonement – see page 33 which opens with: “Self-sacrifice is the highway to heaven.” [Ed. Readers are encouraged to read the entire article/sermon.]

So. I wonder where this line of reasoning will take me.

By the way, isn’t this a wonderful truth?—

The glory of human life is in overcoming sickness, sin, and death.  (No and Yes 33:23-24)

I should add that so far I have only gained a tiny bit in the understanding of Mrs. Eddy teaching in this passage.

Joyce Voysey