In the early autumn a ray of light broke the darkness.  I was in London with my mother, and wandered one Sunday morning into St. George’s Hall, where the Rev. Charles Voysey was preaching.  There to my delight I found, on listening to the sermon and buying some literature on sale in the ante-room, that there were people who had passed through my own difficulties, and had given up the dogmas that I found so revolting.  I went again on the following Sunday, and when the service was over I noticed that the outgoing stream of people were passing by Mr. and Mrs. Voysey, and that many who were evidently strangers spoke a word of thanks to him as they went on.  Moved by a strong desire, after the long months of lonely striving, to speak to one who had struggled out of Christian difficulties, I said to Mr. Voysey, as I passed in my turn, “I must thank you for very great help in what you said this morning,” for in truth, never having yet doubted the existence of God, the teaching of Mr. Voysey that He was “loving unto every man, and His tender mercy over all His works,” came like a gleam of light across the stormy sea of doubt and distress on which I had so long been tossing.  The next Sunday saw me again at the Hall, and Mrs. Voysey gave me a cordial invitation to visit them in their Dulwich home.  I found their Theism was free from the defects that had revolted me in Christianity, and they opened up to me new views of religion.  I read Theodore Parker’s “Discourse on Religion,” Francis Newman’s works, those of Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and of others; the anguish of the tension relaxed; the nightmare of an Almighty Evil passed away; my belief in God, not yet touched, was cleared from all the dark spots that had sullied it, and I no longer doubted whether the dogmas that had shocked my conscience were true or false.  I shook them off, once for all, with all their pain and horror and darkness, and felt, with joy and relief inexpressible, that they were delusions of the ignorance of man, not the revelations of a God.

But there was one belief that had not been definitely challenged, but of which the rationale was gone with the orthodox dogmas now definitely renounced—­the doctrine of the Deity of Christ.  The whole teaching of the Broad Church school tends, of course, to emphasise the humanity of Christ at the expense of His Deity, and when eternal punishment and the substitutionary atonement had gone there seemed no reason remaining sufficient to account for so tremendous a miracle as the incarnation of the Deity.  In the course of my reading I had become familiar with the idea of Avataras in Eastern creeds, and I saw that the incarnate God was put forward as a fact by all ancient religions, and thus the way was paved for challenging the especially Christian teaching, when the doctrines morally repulsive were cleared away.  But I shrank from the thought of placing in the crucible a doctrine so dear from all the associations of the past; there was so much