ll its pathos, its beauty, its human
love, should pass away into the Pantheon of the dead Gods of the Past?

Nor was this all. If I gave up belief in Christ as God, I must give up
Christianity as creed. Once challenge the unique position of the
Christ, and the name Christian seemed to me to be a hypocrisy, and its
renouncement a duty binding on the upright mind. I was a clergyman's
wife; what would be the effect of such a step? Hitherto mental pain
alone had been the price demanded inexorably from the searcher after
truth; but with the renouncing of Christ outer warfare would be added
to the inner, and who might guess the result upon my life? The
struggle was keen but short; I decided to carefully review the
evidence for and against the Deity of Christ, with the result that
that belief followed the others, and I stood, no longer Christian,
face to face with a dim future in which I sensed the coming conflict.

One effort I made to escape it; I appealed to Dr. Pusey, thinking that
if he could not answer my questionings, no answer to them could be
reasonably hoped for. I had a brief correspondence with him, but was
referred only to lines of argument familiar to me--as those of Liddon
in his "Bampton Lectures"--and finally, on his invitation, went down
to Oxford to see him. I found a short, stout gentleman, dressed in a
cassock, looking like a comfortable monk; but keen eyes, steadfastly
gazing straight into mine, told of the force and subtlety enshrined in
the fine, impressive head. But the learned doctor took the wrong line
of treatment; he probably saw I was anxious, shy, and nervous, and he
treated me as a penitent going to confession and seeking the advice of
a director, instead of as an inquirer struggling after truth, and
resolute to obtain some firm standing-ground in the sea of doubt. He
would not deal with the question of the Deity of Jesus as a question
for argument. "You are speaking of your Judge," he retorted sternly,
when I pressed a difficulty. The mere suggestion of an imperfection in
the character of Jesus made him shudder, and he checked me with raised
hand. "You are blaspheming. The very thought is a terrible sin." Would
he recommend me any books that might throw light on the subject? "No,
no; you have read too much already. You must pray; you must pray."
When I urged that I could not believe without proof, I was told,
"Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed"; and my
further questioni