ow; but
they know enough already to know further, that it is from the hills and
not from the mines their aid must come. They know that a perfect
intellectual proof would leave them doubting all the same; that their
high questions cannot be answered to the intellect alone, for their whole
nature is the questioner; that the answers can only come as questioners
and their questions grow towards them. Hence, growing hope, blossoming
ever and anon into the white flower of confidence, is their answer as
yet; their hope--the Beatific Vision--the _happy-making sight_, as Milton
renders the word of the mystics.

It is strange how gentle a certain large class of the priesthood will be
with those who, believing there is a God, find it hard to trust him, and
how fierce with those who, unable, from the lack of harmony around and in
them, to say they are sure there is a God, would yet, could they find
him, trust him indeed. "Ah, but," answer such of the clergy and their
followers, "you want a God of your own making." "Certainly," the doubters
reply, "we do not want a God of your making: that would be to turn the
universe into a hell, and you into its torturing demons. We want a God
like that man whose name is so often on your lips, but whose spirit you
understand so little--so like him that he shall be the bread of life to
_all_ our hunger--not that hunger only already satisfied in you, who take
the limit of your present consciousness for that of the race, and say,
'This is all the world needs:' we know the bitterness of our own hearts,
and your incapacity for intermeddling with its joy. We

have another mountain-range, from whence
Bursteth a sun unutterably bright;

nor for us only, but for you also, who will not have the truth except it
come to you in a system authorized of man."

I have attributed a general utterance to these men, widely different from
each other as I know they are.

Here is a voice from one of them, Arthur Hugh Clough, who died in 1861,
well beloved. It follows upon two fine poems, called _The Questioning
Spirit_, and _Bethesda_, in which is represented the condition of many of
the finest minds of the present century. Let us receive it as spoken by
one in the foremost ranks of these doubters, men reviled by their
brethren who dare not doubt for fear of offending the God to whom they
attribute their own jealousy. But God is assuredly pleased with those who
will neither lie for him, quench their dim vision