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 of himself, nor count that his mind which they would despise in a man of his making.

Across the sea, along the shore, In numbers more and ever more, From lonely hut and busy town, The valley through, the mountain down, What was it ye went out to see, Ye silly folk of Galilee?  The reed that in the wind doth shake?  The weed that washes in the lake?  The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?—­ young man preaching in a boat.

  What was it ye went out to hear
  By sea and land, from far and near? 
  A teacher?  Rather seek the feet
  Of those who sit in Moses’ seat. 
  Go humbly seek, and bow to them,
  Far off in great Jerusalem. 
  From them that in her courts ye saw,
  Her perfect doctors of the law,
  What is it came ye here to note?—­
  A young man preaching in a boat

  A prophet!  Boys and women weak! 
    Declare, or cease to rave: 
  Whence is it he hath learned to speak? 
    Say, who his doctrine gave? 
  A prophet?  Prophet wherefore he
    Of all in Israel tribes?—­
  He teacheth with authority,
    And not as do the Scribes.

Here is another from one who will not be offended if I class him with this school—­the finest of critics as one of the most finished of poets—­Matthew Arnold.  Only my reader must remember that of none of my poets am I free to choose that which is most characteristic:  I have the scope of my volume to restrain me.

  THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID.

  He saves the sheep; the goats he doth not save! 
  So rang Tertullian’s sentence, on the side
  Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried: 
  “Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,
  Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave!”
  So spake the fierce Tertullian.  But she sighed,
  The infant Church:  of love she felt the tide
  Stream on her from her Lord’s yet recent grave. 
  And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs,
  With eye suffused but heart inspired true,
  On those walls subterranean, where she hid
  Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs,
  She her Good Shepherd’s hasty image drew;
  And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.