e mystery, into
which we ought not to look.--The matter being thus forced on my
attention, I certainly saw that to establish the abstract moral
_right_ and _justice_ of vicarious punishment was not easy, and that
to make out the fact of any "compensation"--(_i.e._ that Jesus really
endured on the cross a true equivalent for the eternal sufferings
due to the whole human race,)--was harder still. Nevertheless I had
difficulty in adopting the conclusions of this gentleman; FIRST,
because, in a passage of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the sacred
writer, in arguing--"_For_ it is impossible that the blood of bulls
and goats can take away sins," &c., &c....--seems to expect his
readers to see an inherent impropriety in the sacrifices of the Law,
and an inherent moral fitness in the sacrifice of Christ. SECONDLY:
I had always been accustomed to hear that it was by seeing the
moral fitness of the doctrine of the Atonement, that converts to
Christianity were chiefly made: so said the Moravians among the
Greenlanders, so Brainerd among the North American Indians, so English
missionaries among the negroes at Sierra Leone:--and I could not at
all renounce this idea. Indeed I seemed to myself to see this fitness
most emphatically; and as for the _forensic_ difficulties, I passed
them over with a certain conscious reverence. I was not as yet ripe
for deeper inquiry: yet I, about this time, decidedly modified my
boyish creed on the subject, on which more will be said below.

Of more immediate practical importance to me was the controversy
concerning Infant Baptism. For several years together I had been more
or less conversant with the arguments adduced for the practice; and
at this time I read Wall's defence of it, which was the book specially
recommended at Oxford. The perusal brought to a head the doubts which
had at an earlier period flitted over my mind. Wall's historical
attempt to trace Infant Baptism up to the apostles seemed to me a
clear failure:[1] and if he failed, then who was likely to succeed?
The arguments from Scripture had never recommended themselves to
me. Even allowing that they might confirm, they certainly could not
suggest and establish the practice. It now appeared that there was no
basis at all; indeed, several of the arguments struck me as cutting
the other way. "Suffer little children to come unto me," urged as
decisive: but it occurred to me that the disciples would not have
scolded the little children away,