e of the world, the craving for delicious rest,
stirred and spoke in those moving strains--round a quiet minor air,
sung by a deep grave voice of a velvety softness, a hundred mellow
pipes wove their sweet harmonies: it told assuredly of a hope and of a
truth far off; it drew the soul into a secret haven, where it listened
contentedly to the roar of the surge outside. But the error seemed to
be that one desired to rest there, like the Lotos-eaters in the
enchanted land, and not to fare forth as a soldier of God. It spoke of
delight, not of hardness; of acquiescence, not of effort.

XXXII

Strange that the sight of a man being guillotined should inspire me
with a burning desire to inflict the very thing which I see another
suffer! What a violent metaphor for a very minute matter! It is only a
review which I have been reading, in which a pompous, and I imagine
clerical, critic comes down with all his might on a man whom I gather
to be a graceful and mildly speculative writer. The critic asks
ponderously. What right has a man who seems to be untrained in
philosophy and theology to speculate on philosophical and religious
matters? He then goes on to quote a passage in which the writer attacks
the current view of the doctrine of the Atonement, and he adds that a
man who is unacquainted with the strides which theology has made of
late years in the direction of elucidating that doctrine ought not to
presume to discuss it at all. No doubt, if the writer in question made
any claim to be discussing the latest theological position on the
subject of the Atonement, in a technical way, he would be a mere
sciolist; but he is only claiming to discuss the Current conception of
the Atonement; and, as far as I can judge, he states it fairly enough.
The truth is that the current conceptions of old theological doctrines
tend to be very much what the original framers of those doctrines
intended them to be. All that later theologians can do, when the old
doctrine is exploded, is to prove that the doctrine can be modified and
held in some philosophical or metaphysical sense, which was certainly
not in the least degree contemplated by the theologians who framed it;
but they are quite unable to explain to the man in the street what the
new form of the doctrine is; and their only chance of doing that is to
substitute for an old and perfectly clear doctrine a new and perfectly
clear doctrine. The tone adopted by this critic reminds me of