that was soothing and ennobling in the idea of a union between Man and God, between a perfect man and a Divine life, between a human heart and an almighty strength.  Jesus as God was interwoven with all art and all beauty in religion; to break with the Deity of Jesus was to break with music, with painting, with literature; the Divine Babe in His Mother’s arms; the Divine Man in His Passion and His Triumph; the Friend of Man encircled with the majesty of the Godhead.  Did inexorable Truth demand that this ideal Figure, with all its pathos, its beauty, its human love, should pass away into the Pantheon of the dead Gods of the Past?

Nor was this all.  If I gave up belief in Christ as God, I must give up Christianity as creed.  Once challenge the unique position of the Christ, and the name Christian seemed to me to be a hypocrisy, and its renouncement a duty binding on the upright mind.  I was a clergyman’s wife; what would be the effect of such a step?  Hitherto mental pain alone had been the price demanded inexorably from the searcher after truth; but with the renouncing of Christ outer warfare would be added to the inner, and who might guess the result upon my life?  The struggle was keen but short; I decided to carefully review the evidence for and against the Deity of Christ, with the result that that belief followed the others, and I stood, no longer Christian, face to face with a dim future in which I sensed the coming conflict.

One effort I made to escape it; I appealed to Dr. Pusey, thinking that if he could not answer my questionings, no answer to them could be reasonably hoped for.  I had a brief correspondence with him, but was referred only to lines of argument familiar to me—­as those of Liddon in his “Bampton Lectures”—­and finally, on his invitation, went down to Oxford to see him.  I found a short, stout gentleman, dressed in a cassock, looking like a comfortable monk; but keen eyes, steadfastly gazing straight into mine, told of the force and subtlety enshrined in the fine, impressive head.  But the learned doctor took the wrong line of treatment; he probably saw I was anxious, shy, and nervous, and he treated me as a penitent going to confession and seeking the advice of a director, instead of as an inquirer struggling after truth, and resolute to obtain some firm standing-ground in the sea of doubt.  He would not deal with the question of the Deity of Jesus as a question for argument.  “You are speaking of your Judge,” he retorted sternly, when I pressed a difficulty.  The mere suggestion of an imperfection in the character of Jesus made him shudder, and he checked me with raised hand.  “You are blaspheming.  The very thought is a terrible sin.”  Would he recommend me any books that might throw light on the subject?  “No, no; you have read too much already.  You must pray; you must pray.”  When I urged that I could not believe without proof, I was told, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed”; and my further questioning was