Man will be forgiven.  But there is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of God—­there is a confusion of good with evil, of light with darkness—­which goes deeper down than this.  When a nation has lost the faculty of distinguishing love from hatred, the spirit of falsehood and hypocrisy from the spirit of truth, God from the Devil—­then its doom is pronounced—­the decree is gone forth against it.  As the doom of Judaism, guilty of this sin, was then pronounced.  As the decree against it had already gone forth.  It is a national warning, not an individual one.  It applies to two ages of this world, and not to two worlds.  All its teaching was primarily national, and is only thus to be rightly read—­ if not all, rather most of it.  If you would be sure of this and understand it, see the parables, etc., explained in Maurice’s ’Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven’ (a commentary on S. Luke).  I can only indicate briefly in a letter the line to be taken on this question.

“With regard to the [Greek:  elui, elui, lama sabbachthani].  I don’t believe that the Father even momentarily hid his face from Him.  The life of sonship was unbroken.  Remark:  (1) It is a quotation from a Psalm. (2) It rises naturally to a suffering man’s lips as expressive of agony, though not exactly framed for his individual agony. (3) The spirit of the Psalm is one of trust, and hope, and full faith, notwithstanding the 1st verse. (4) Our Lord’s agony was very extreme, not merely of body but of soul.  He spoke out of the desolation of one forsaken, not by his divine Father but by his human brothers.  I have heard sick and dying men use the words of beloved Psalms in just such a manner.

“The impassibility of God (1) With regard to the Incarnation, this presents no difficulty.  Christ suffered simply and entirely as man, was too truly a man not to do so. (2) With regard to the Father, the key of it is here.  ‘God is love.’  He does not need suffering to train into sympathy, because his nature is sympathy.  He can afford to dispense with hysterics, because he sees ahead that his plan is working to the perfect result.  I am not quite sure whether I have hit upon your difficulty here, as I have destroyed your last letter but one.  But the ’Gospel of the Kingdom’ is a wonderful ’eye-opener’.”

Worst of all the puzzles, perhaps, was that of the existence of evil and of misery, and the racking doubt whether God could be good, and yet look on the evil and the misery of the world unmoved and untouched.  It seemed so impossible to believe that a Creator could be either cruel enough to be indifferent to the misery, or weak enough to be unable to stop it:  the old dilemma faced me unceasingly.  “If he can prevent it, and does not, he is not good; if he wishes to prevent it, and cannot, he is not almighty;” and out of this I could find no way of escape.  Not yet had any doubt of the existence of God crossed my mind.