[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 easily to throw light on what to many has been, and is still, impenetrable darkness.  I have been a preacher for some years, and I thought the Testament was old and familiar to me; but you have made it a new and marvellous book full of most precious meanings, and I hope I may be able to impart to those whom it is my duty to instruct, something of the great consolation and hope your writing has filled me with.

“Believe me,