e; the pain here reaching on into eternity
unhealed; these, while I yet believed, drove me desperate, and I believed
and hated, instead of like the devils, "believed and trembled". Next, I
challenged the righteousness of the doctrine of the Atonement, and while
I worshipped and clung to the suffering Christ, I hated the God who
required the death sacrifice at his hands. And so for months the turmoil
went on, the struggle being all the more terrible for the very
desperation with which I strove to cling to some planks of the wrecked
ship of faith on the tossing sea of doubt.

After Mr. D---- left Cheltenham, as he did in the early autumn of 1871,
he still aided me in my mental struggles. He had advised me to read
McLeod Campbell's work on the Atonement, as one that would meet many of
the difficulties that lay on the surface of the orthodox view, and in
answer to a letter dealing with this really remarkable work, he wrote
(Nov. 22, 1871):

"(1) The two passages on pp. 25 and 108 you doubtless interpret quite
rightly. In your third reference to pp. 117, 188, you forget one great
principle--that God is impassive; cannot suffer. Christ, qua _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
if he does not, he places a book in their hands which threatens what he
does not mean to inflict. But how utterly this seems to me opposed to the
gospel of Christ. All Christ's reference to eternal punishment may be
resolved into reference to the Valley of Hinnom, by way of imagery; with
the exception of the Dives parable, where is distinctly inferred a moral
amendment beyond the grave. I speak of the unselfish desire of Dives to
save his brothers. The more I see of the controversy the more baseless
does the eternal punishment theory appear. It seems, then, to me, that
instead of feeling aggrieved and shaken, you ought to feel encouraged and
thankful that God is so much better than you were taught to believe him.