“(2) I felt strongly inclined to blow you up for the last part of your letter.  You assume, I think quite gratuitously, that God condemns the major part of His children to objectless future suffering.  You say that if He does not, He places a book in their hands which threatens what He does not mean to inflict.  But how utterly this seems to me opposed to the gospel of Christ!  All Christ’s references to eternal punishment may be resolved into references to the Valley of Hinnom, by way of imagery; with the exception of the Dives parable, where is distinctly inferred a moral amendment beyond the grave.  I speak of the unselfish desire of Dives to save his brothers.  The more I see of the controversy, the more baseless does the eternal punishment theory appear.  It seems then, to me, that instead of feeling aggrieved and shaken, you ought to feel encouraged and thankful that God is so much better than you were taught to believe Him.  You will have discovered by this time in Maurice’s ‘What is Revelation?’ (I suppose you have the ‘Sequel,’ too?), that God’s truth is our truth, and His love is our love, only more perfect and full.  There is no position more utterly defeated in modern philosophy and theology than Dean Mansel’s attempt to show that God’s love, justice, &c., are different in kind from ours.  Mill and Maurice, from totally alien points of view, have shown up the preposterous nature of the notion.

“(3) A good deal of what you have thought is, I fancy, based on a strange forgetfulness of your former experience.  If you have known Christ—­(whom to know is eternal life)—­and that you have known Him I am certain—­can you really say that a few intellectual difficulties, nay, a few moral difficulties if you will, are able at once to obliterate the testimony of that higher state of being?

“Why, the keynote of all my theology is that Christ is lovable because, and just because, He is the perfection of all that I know to be noble and generous, and loving, and tender, and true.  If an angel from heaven brought me a gospel which contained doctrines that would not stand the test of such perfect lovableness—­doctrines hard, or cruel, or unjust—­I should reject him and his trumpery gospel with scorn, knowing that neither could be Christ’s.  Know Christ and judge religions by Him; don’t judge Him by religions, and then complain because they find yourself looking at Him through a blood-coloured glass.”

“I am saturating myself with Maurice, who is the antidote given by God to this age against all dreary doublings and temptings of the devil to despair.”