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 Avatâras 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 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