‘As regards your conception of inspiration, I think it requires correction; claims have been made for the Bible which it never made for itself. Holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit; but the literal dictation of every word we are not taught.
‘But I cannot attempt to answer piecemeal. I have gone through all these questionings, but I think my faith strengthens from year to year,—if I dare say so. So that it seems to me marvellous that any one can fail to feel the divine, underlying all the superficial, the phenomenal which men verily call realities. Do you remember how Browning makes Lazarus feel “marvel that they too see not with his opened eyes!” That objection to the Israelites destroying the Canaanites seems to me so frightfully superficial. Are there not evils far worse than death? Would it not be enormously preferable to die than to live as many do? What should we say if we could see beyond the grave? We judge knowing only one side of the grave. And if God saw well that these people should die at once, would it not be part perhaps of the education of a nation chosen to do a particular work, that God should make them burn with indignation against the detestable, unspeakable, moral evils, and make them the executioners of His justice? It would not degrade them to do this, if they did it as a judge condemns the guilty, with no personal hatred. We cannot sit in judgment thus. In the world’s history we see God ever employing men to do the work He has to do. There may be necessities for this, of which we know nothing; I mean in the nature of things: certainly there is good as regards the moral training of men.
‘Go on wishing and praying and seeking all your life, never saying anything which you do not believe, and then the God of truth will hear you as you say, “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may see the wondrous things of Thy law.” “Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee!” Feeling must come in, as the Brethren rightly say. We must love, and desire, and know Him to be our Father; we must trust Him. We can’t understand even an earthly friend without trust, but we must use the powers He has given us, we dare not bury them. We shall have to wait for the solution of much hereafter; but we shall grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.
‘My poor child, would I could help you more, but God will help you. “Though He tarry, wait.” Use the means natural and supernatural. Tell me from time to time how you are getting on, and I will try to put you on a course of reading.’
To the same:—
‘1882.
‘My poor child, I do indeed feel for you in your loneliness, but remember him whose eyes were opened spiritually and he was therefore cast out of the synagogue,—but Jesus found him. Do not fear that because the disciples call down fire that the Lord will [send it]. “Come unto Me all that are heavy-laden,” He says to us now as then. To those who are “without guile,” i.e. sincerely seeking truth, He still promises that they shall see greater things than they have ever done.... No; we cannot and we would not believe that He who is infinitely wiser than man can be less good. He is not a Pharaoh to bid us make bricks without straw. He does not tell us to do what we cannot and then punish us for not doing it. “She hath done what she could” was the sentence of the Lord when others found fault. God is love, and if we pity and long to draw to our hands any suffering child of earth, must not He? If we pity those who suffer in a less degree, must not He those who are suffering the sorrow greatest of all, the loss in any degree of His presence, of that faith which makes all things possible? Go on, my poor child, looking up to Him, and trusting in His utter love who will not leave us, not when we cry, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” It is hard sometimes to believe we are not wrong, when we see the disciples, those who really want to do right, acting so differently from the way in which He acted. But we know that in all ages some of the most unchristian things have been done by those who thought they were doing God’s will.
‘I do not think from what you tell me that you can go on at the Meeting. If your father wishes it you might for a while abstain from going to church; but if so, let the time you would have spent in public worship be passed in private prayer and studying; just looking up with childlike spirit to the Father, feeling His presence, His love.
‘I do not think you should, however, absent yourself long from communion with some body of believers. All Scripture and our spiritual experience is against this. If you decide for St. Peter’s, I think I can tell you of a friend’s house where you would be welcome most Sundays; and we must have you among us for the Quiet Days at Christmas.
‘You know I do not want to proselytise; if with the Brethren you had found spiritual nourishment, I would have had you rest there; but now you are starving it is different, like that poor dove who found no rest for the sole of her feet, you need to be taken into an ark.