bling you, I am, Madam,

"Yours truly,

"H. B."

[Once more I may repeat that the idea of a sacrifice to appease God's
anger is purely JEWISH, and has nothing whatever to do with
Christianity according to Christ. He Himself says, "I am the WAY, the
Truth, and the Life; no man cometh to the Father but BY ME." Surely
these words are plain enough, and point unmistakably to a MEANS OF
COMMUNICATION through Christ between the Creator and this world.
Nowhere does the Divine Master say that God is so furiously angry that
he must have the bleeding body of his own messenger, Christ, hung up
before Him as a human sacrifice, as though He could only be pacified by
the scent of blood! Horrible and profane idea! and one utterly at
variance with the tenderness and goodness of "Our Father" as pictured
by Christ in these gentle words--"Fear not, little flock; it is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." Whereas that Christ
should come to draw us closer to God by the strong force of His own
Divinity, and by His Resurrection prove to us the reality of the next
life, is not at all a strange or ungodlike mission, and ought to make
us understand more surely than ever how infinitely pitying and
forbearing is the All-Loving One, that He should, as it were, with such
extreme affection show us a way by which to travel through darkness
unto light. To those who cannot see this perfection of goodness
depicted in Christ's own words, I would say in the terse Oriental maxim:

"Diving, and finding no pearls in the sea,
Blame not the ocean, the fault is in THEE."
AUTHOR.]

LETTER IX.

"DEAR MADAM,

"I have lately been reading your remarkable book, 'A Romance of Two
Worlds,' and I feel that I must write to you about it. I have never
viewed Christianity in the broadly transfigured light you throw upon
it, and I have since been studying carefully the four Gospels and
comparing them with the theories in your book. The result has been a
complete and happy change in my ideas of religion, and I feel now as if
I had, like a leper of old, touched the robe of Christ and been healed
of a long-standing infirmity. Will you permit me to ask if you have
evolved this new and beneficent lustre from the Gospel yourself? or
whether some experienced student in mystic matters has been your
instructor? I hear from persons who have seen you that you are quite
young, and I cannot understand how one of your sex and age seems able
so