but he and prayed there seemed no prospect of his son's life poured out his soul as if he would not be denied, till at length he got an assurance that his son would not only live, but be converted; and not only this one, but his whole family would be converted to God. He came into the house, and told his family his son would not die. They were astonished at him. 'I tell you,' says he, he won't die. And no child of mine will ever die in his sins.' That man's children were all converted years ago." That is fanaticism, ready for any wildest freak, and bordering on religious insanity; and this theory is calculated to drive any one into such extravagances, whose theological system is narrow, and whose feelings are too strong for his reflective powers. Moreover, how can one exercise a truly submissive spirit while offering this prayer of faith? One's liability to mistake God's will, or his own real good, must be overlooked; the favor sought must be specified, as in an order, and the certainty of receiving it must be absolute. For "this kind of faith always obtains the object." Where is the place left for one to feel and say: "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done!" That glorious and gracious condition, which leaves all the responsibility of granting or denying with God, and gives us such a bold refuge from our errors in judgment or feeling, is thrown out. The suppliant, trusting spirit is supplanted by a self-sufficiency; the only will recognized is the man's will, and the faith exercised is the faith that the man has in himself that he is right, and is sure of gaining his end. It is not at all the sweet faith that trusts God, the Infinite, to do as he pleases, and leaves the place of secret prayer in a cheerful, triumphant uncertainty as to what it may please God to do. There is no tender yielding of our most cherished desires or sacred interests, as when "Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son." According to this prayer, the man and all his projects do not enter into and disappear in the unknown will of God, leaving this voice only to be heard: "Father, glorify thy name." It precludes the rich experience of those eminent saints whose prayers were almost turned to praises before they came to the gates of pearl, so little of their own will had they left. In contrast with such the prayer of faith is business-like, and they who offer it are apt to manifest an easy familiarity with God, and at times a spirit almost exacting and demanding. Such prayers do not remind us of Abraham's intercession for Sodom, and David's for his sick child, and Paul's over the thorn in the flesh, and our Saviour's in Gethsemane. We have yet to remark only on the depressing influences of this doctrine on some minds. A tender, sensitive, prayerful heart, if once gained over by this doctrine, would not soon or easily escape the power of it. We have met many on whom its effects were most painful and distressing, till the truth as to the real prayer of faith relieved them. For they felt pressed by the teaching to ask and expect mercies of a definite and specified kind, while they could find no scriptural warrant for such definiteness in expectation. They felt that there was an alarming and sinful deficiency in their faith, if they did not feel certain of obtaining the favors sought, while they could find no basis for such certainty. While they were conscious that their hearts often deceived them, they felt that in the prayer of faith they must make no allowance for error in feeling or judgment, and so shade the certainty of the answer with a doubt. They felt that the doctrine gave no leeway for the unknown and overruling will of God, and discouraged that submissive spirit in prayer which leaves the answer contingent and uncertain. In brief, they found that the doctrine pressed them to offer an impossible prayer. After years of depression and struggle, they have escaped from the entangling error, and come into the joyous liberty of having faith in God. They can now be joyous in a filial confidence. They can press their desires warmly, perseveringly, and with a struggle at the throne of grace, sometimes most earnestly, "being in an agony," and then with a Christ-like contentment leave their garden of Gethsemane saying, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." ARTICLE II. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough. With a Memoir, by CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. Boston Ticknor & Fields. 1862. THE thoughts of a rare, choice spirit lie entombed in these pages. Clough was one of those men who leave a marked impression upon the circle in which they move. He had the magnetism of personal influence. He could charm by word, by cheer, by the indefinable air of intellectual superiority, those among whom he familiarly lived. To these his poems, the truthful revelations of the man, have more than ordinary attraction. Memory gives each of them a special meaning. To us who never knew him, until this little volume came to hand, they have a charm, as they reveal a singularly honest and earnest nature. And more, they are instructive, as showing the intellectual spirit of the times. It was given to Clough, as to Sterling and to Blanco White, to pass through the region of modern doubt. Each of these men came to nearly the same conclusion; each threw aside hereditary opinions; each pushed out into great vagueness of speculation; each, after a long flight, like a bird spent of its strength, fluttered to the ground; each is now learning for himself those secrets which to mortal eyes are not revealed. Hence Clough, aside from his merely literary character, is a representative man in religious thought. He would not be called a religious thinker. In this respect, he only claims our notice as one who rejected, at much personal loss, his ancestral faith, and tried to solve the problems of our spiritual nature. His minor poems are mainly occupied with suggestions upon these. They touch upon doubt, necessity, duty, fidelity to truth; they show fully the longing for peace and hope; but they set forth only that contentment which arises from baffled purpose. They ex hibit a negation of warm religious belief; they are sad from a want of Christian faith. The man is 'representative' because he tried the pathway of religious doubt, with intellectual gifts and scholarly endowments which ought to insure success, if it were possible. Because he did not succeed, he is worthy of notice in these pages. He had a stronger mind than Sterling; he had a stronger grasp of truth than Blanco White; but his splendid powers were of no avail in the solitary march for peace and rest, away from Christ. We honor the noble honesty of Clough, but we regret the misuse of his religious nature. It is too common that the whole influence of a university education is to undermine one's faith in Christianity. The spirit of doubt is not confined to the young men of Oxford and Cambridge. It is in our own universities. It is a strong undercurrent at Harvard and Yale, at Amherst and Brown and Williams. The young men who are first in intellectual power, are weakest in their belief in religious truth. Clough is the very type and leader of these. He is honest, as they are; he tries to explore the whole realm of religious thought, as they do; he frankly gives up the church, as they do; he fritters away fine powers of thought, as they do; and the golden season of manhood is spent in doubt, when under a more genial sky, it would have been spent in service to Christ. Our finest minds engage, as the work of life, in occupations which are far below them, perhaps chiefly because they have no settled religious faith. Yet where is the remedy? It seems to be a necessity for these men to prove their belief. But they are readiest to do it, when they have least fitness for it. And besides, the intellectual leaven of this age is at work in nearly every ingenuous mind. It was the spirit of Arnold which gave the impulse to Clough's mind; and then the Tractarian movement only helped to spur it on when he came to Oxford. His eminence there made him perhaps a sort of leader among radical young men. And it is not strange that, when the Oxford honors were all in his hands, and life looked bright before him, he should feel compelled to resign his Fellowship and bid Alma Mater adieu. And he does this in the following sonnet, which is also a good sample of his shorter poems: "Well, well- Heaven bless you all from day to day! I owe all much, much more than I can pay; Let me go commune; under thy sweet gloom, His mind was But he never returned to the Oxford cloisters. too radical for that. The pupil of Arnold had gone beyond him. And so has the spirit which Arnold aroused gone beyond the bounds which he would have assigned to it. Its legitimate fruit is the "Essays and Reviews," which has made an epoch in theological literature. Now the real value of all this writing and thinking is slight; it is negative; it would not be worth writing about, did not these men win the ear of those whose minds are yet unformed. Here is precisely their evil influence. Men, like Arnold, and Carlyle, and Sterling, and White, and Clough, and Jowett, are the very ones who have intellectual raciness and zest for the young men in our colleges. Their spirit is noble, earnest, winning. But however honest they may be with themselves, their principles are unsound. He who follows them will soon feel his Christian beliefs giving away. The men themselves feel their religious unsoundness. Here are some passages from Clough's "Amours de Voyage" which reveal his religious condition. "Had he been writing in his own name," says Mr. says Norton, in his charming memoir, "he could not have uttered his inmost conviction more distinctly, or have given the clue to his interior life more openly, than in the following verses": "I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them: Fact shall be Fact for me; and the Truth the Truth, as ever, Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform and doubtful.' * 'Ah, the key of our life that passes all wards, opens all locks, |