You will have discovered by this time, in Maurice's 'What is Revelation'
(I suppose you have the 'Sequel' too?) that God's truth _is_ our truth,
and his love is our love, only more perfect and full. There is no
position more utterly defeated in modern philosophy and theology, than
Dean Mansel's attempt to show that God's justice, love, etc., are
different in kind from ours. Mill and Maurice, from totally alien points
of view, have shown up the preposterous nature of the notion.
"(3) A good deal of what you have thought is, I fancy, based on a strange
forgetfulness of your former experience. If you have known Christ (whom
to know is eternal life)--and that you have known him I am certain--can
you really say that a few intellectual difficulties, nay, a few moral
difficulties if you will, are able at once to obliterate the testimony of
that higher state of being?
"Why, the keynote of all my theology is that Christ is loveable because,
and _just_ because, he is the perfection of all that I know to be noble
and generous, and loving, and tender, and true. If an angel from heaven
brought me a gospel which contained doctrines that would not stand the
test of such perfect loveableness--doctrines hard, or cruel, or unjust--I
should reject him and his trumpery gospel with scorn, knowing that
neither could be Christ's.
"Know Christ and judge religions by him; don't judge him by religions,
and then complain because you find yourself looking at him through a
blood-colored glass....
"I am saturating myself with Maurice, who is the antidote given by God to
this age against all dreary doubtings and temptings of the devil to
despair."
On these lines weary strife went on for months, until at last brain and
health gave way completely, and for weeks I lay prostrate and helpless,
in terrible ceaseless head-pain, unable to find relief in sleep. The
doctor tried every form of relief in vain; he covered my head with ice,
he gave me opium--which only drove me mad--he used every means his skill
could dictate to remove the pain, but all failed. At last he gave up the
attempt to cure physically, and tried mental diversion; he brought me up
books on anatomy and persuaded me to study them; I have still an analysis
made by me at that time of Luther Holden's "Human Osteology ". He was
wise enough to see that if I were to be brought back to reasonable life,
it could only be by diverting thought from the currents in which it had
been running t
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