dream of martyrdom, and cannot bear a few short years of pain!" A rush
of shame swept over me, and I flung the bottle far away among the
shrubs in the garden at my feet, and for a moment I felt strong as for
a struggle, and then fell fainting on the floor. Only once again in all
the strifes of my career did the thought of suicide recur, and then it
was but for a moment, to be put aside as unworthy a strong soul.

My new friend, Mr. D----, proved a very real help. The endless torture
of hell, the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, the trustworthiness of
revelation, doubts on all these hitherto accepted doctrines grew and
heaped themselves on my bewildered soul. My questionings were neither
shirked nor discouraged by Mr. D----; he was not horrified nor was he
sanctimoniously rebukeful, but met them all with a wide comprehension
inexpressibly soothing to one writhing in the first agonies of doubt.
He left Cheltenham in the early autumn of 1871, but the following
extracts from a letter written in November will show the kind of net in
which I was struggling (I had been reading M'Leod Campbell's work "On
the Atonement"):--

"You forget one great principle--that God is impassive, cannot suffer.
Christ, _quâ_ God, did not suffer, but as Son of _Man_ and in His
humanity. Still, it may be correctly stated that He felt to sin and
sinners 'as God eternally feels'--_i.e., abhorrence of sin, and love of
the sinner_. But to infer from that that the Father in His Godhead
feels the sufferings which Christ experienced solely in humanity, and
because incarnate is, I think, wrong.

"(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