"I hope you will not think it great presumption my writing to you. My
excuse must be that I so much want to believe in he great Spirit that
'makes for righteousness,' and I cannot! Your book puts it all so
clearly that if I can only know it to be a true experience of your own,
it will go a long way in dispersing the fog that modern writings
surround one with. ...
"Apologizing for troubling you, I am faithfully yours,
"C.M.E."
LETTER VIII.
"MADAM,
"I trust you will pardon the liberty I take in writing to you. My
excuse must be the very deep interest your book, 'A Romance of Two
Worlds,' has excited in me. I, of course, understand that the STORY
itself is a romance, but in reading it carefully it seems to me that it
is a book written with a purpose. ... The Electric Creed respecting
Religion seems to explain so much in Scripture which has always seemed
to me impossible to accept blindly without explanation of any kind; and
the theory that Christ came to die and to suffer for us as an Example
and a means of communication with God, and not as a SACRIFICE, clears
up a point which has always been to me personally a stumbling-block. I
cannot say how grateful I shall be if you can tell me any means of
studying this subject further; and trusting you will excuse me for
troubling you, I am, Madam,
"Yours truly,
"H. B."
[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,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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