’August 6th.—­To-day there is no rain, for the first time for weeks.  It blew a heavy gale all night, and had done so with heavy rain for some days before.

’At 8 A.M. to-day I baptized 14 grown men, one an old bald man, and another with a son of sixteen or so, five women and six lads, taught entirely in George’s school.  Afterwards, at a different service, 7 infants and little children were baptized. 238 + 5 who have died have now been baptized since the beginning of July.  To-day’s service was very comforting.  I pray and trust that these grown-up men and women may be kept steadfast to their profession.  It is a great blessing that I could think it right to take this step.  You will, I know, pray for them; their position is necessarily a difficult one.

’It is 2 P.M., and I feel tired:  the crowds are gone, though little fellows are as usual sitting all round one.  I tell them I can’t talk; I must sit quietly, with Charlotte Yonge’s “Pupils of St. John the Divine.”  Dear me, what advantage young folks have nowadays, though indeed the dangers of these times far outweigh those of our young days.

’I suppose Lightfoot’s “Commentaries” hardly come in your way.  They are critical and learned on the Greek of St. Paul’s Epistles.  But there are dissertations which may be read by the English reader.  He seems to me to be a very valuable man, well fitted by his learning, and moderation, and impartiality, and uncontroversial temper to do much good.  His sympathies with the modern school of thought are, I fancy, beyond me.

’There is no doubt that Matthew Arnold says much that is true of the narrowness, bigotry, and jealous un-Christian temper of Puritanism; and I suppose no one doubts that they do misrepresent the true doctrine of Christianity, both by their exclusive devotion to one side only of the teaching of the Bible, and by their misconception of their own favourite portions of Scripture.  The doctrine of the Atonement was never in ancient times, I believe, drawn out in the form in which Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and others have lately stated it.

’The fact of the Atonement through the Death of Christ was always clearly stated; the manner, the “why,” the “how” man’s Redemption and Reconciliation to God is thus brought about, was not taught, if at all, after the Protestant fashion.

’Oxenham’s “History of the Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement” is a fairly-written statement of what was formerly held and taught.  Such words as “substitution,” “satisfaction,” with all the ideas introduced into the subject from the use of illustrations, e.g. of criminals acquitted, debts discharged, have perplexed it perhaps, rather than explained, what must be beyond explanation.

’The ultra-Calvinistic view becomes in the mind and language of the hot-headed ignorant fanatic a denial of God’s Unity.  “The merciful Son appeasing the wrath of the angry Father” is language which implies two Wills, two Counsels in the Divine Mind (compare with this John iii. 16).