VII.

On recovering from that prostrating physical pain, I came to a very definite decision.  I resolved that, whatever might be the result, I would take each dogma of the Christian religion, and carefully and thoroughly examine it, so that I should never again say “I believe” where I had not proved.  So, patiently and steadily, I set to work.  Four problems chiefly at this time pressed for solution.  I. The eternity of punishment after death.  II.  The meaning of “goodness” and “love” as applied to a God who had made this world with all its evil and its misery.  III.  The nature of the atonement of Christ, and the “justice” of God in accepting a vicarious suffering from Christ, and a vicarious righteousness from the sinner.  IV.  The meaning of “inspiration” as applied to the Bible, and the reconciliation of the perfection of the author with the blunders and the immoralities of the work.

Maurice’s writings now came in for very careful study, and I read also those of Robertson, of Brighton, and of Stopford Brooke, striving to find in these some solid ground whereon I might build up a new edifice of faith.  That ground, however, I failed to find; there were poetry, beauty, enthusiasm, devotion; but there was no rock on which I might take my stand.  Mansel’s Bampton lectures on “The Limits of Religious Thought” deepened and intensified my doubts.  His arguments seemed to make certainty impossible, and I could not suddenly turn round and believe to order, as he seemed to recommend, because proof was beyond reach.  I could not, and would not, adore in God as the highest Righteousness that which, in man was condemned as harsh, as cruel, and as unjust.

In the midst of this long mental struggle, a change occurred in the outward circumstances of my life.  I wrote to Lord Hatherley and asked him if he could give Mr. Besant a Crown living, and he offered us first one in Northumberland, near Alnwick Castle, and then one in Lincolnshire, the village of Sibsey, with a vicarage house, and an income of L410 per annum.  We decided to accept the latter.

The village was scattered over a considerable amount of ground, but the work was not heavy.  The church was one of the fine edifices for which the fen country is so famous, and the vicarage was a comfortable house, with large and very beautiful gardens and paddock, and with outlying fields.  The people were farmers and laborers, with a sprinkling of shopkeepers; the only “society” was that of the neighboring clergy, Tory and prim to an appalling extent.  There was here plenty of time for study, and of that time I vigorously availed myself.  But no satisfactory light came to me, and the suggestions and arguments of my friend Mr. D——­ failed to bring conviction to my mind.  It appeared clear to me that the doctrine of Eternal Punishment was taught in the Bible, and the explanations given of the word “eternal” by men like Maurice and Stanley,