divines.  By means of this work, as well as by correspondence and an occasional visit, she exerted for a time a good deal of influence over Mrs. Prentiss.  At first this influence seemed to be stimulating and healthful, but it was not so in the end.  The points of sympathy and the points of difference between them will come out so plainly in Mrs. Prentiss’ letters that they need not be indicated here.  It would not be easy to imagine two women more utterly dissimilar, except in love to God, devotion to their Saviour, and delight in prayer.  These formed the tie between them.  Miss ——­’s last days were sadly clouded by mental trouble and disease.

A little book called “Holiness through Faith,” published about this time, was another disturbing influence in Mrs. Prentiss’ religious life.  This work and others of a similar character presented a somewhat novel theory of sanctification—­a theory zealously taught, and which excited considerable attention in certain circles of the Christian community.  It was, in brief, this:  As we are justified by faith without the deeds of the law, even so are we sanctified by faith; in other words, as we obtain forgiveness and acceptance with God by a simple act of trust in Christ, so by simple trust in Christ we may attain personal holiness; it is as easy for divine grace to save us at once from the power, as from the guilt, of sin.

For more than thirty years Mrs. Prentiss had made the Christian life a matter of earnest thought and study.  The subject of personal holiness in particular had occupied her attention.  Whatever promised to shed new light upon it she eagerly read.  Her own convictions, however, were positive and decided; and, although at first inclined to accept the doctrine of “Holiness through Faith,” further reflection satisfied her that, as taught by its special advocates, it was contrary to Scripture and experience, and was fraught with mischief.  Certain unhappy tendencies and results of the doctrine, both at home and abroad, as shown in some of its teachers and disciples, also forced her to this conclusion.  Folly of some sort is indeed one of the fatal rocks upon which all overstrained theories of sanctification are almost certain to be wrecked; and in excitable, crude natures, the evil is apt to take the form either of mental extravagance, perhaps derangement, or of silly, if not still worse, conduct.  But, while deeply impressed with the mischief of these Perfectionist theories, Mrs. Prentiss felt the heartiest sympathy with all earnest seekers after holiness, and was grieved by what seemed to her harsh or unjust criticisms upon them.

What were her own matured views on the subject will appear in the sequel.  It is enough to say here that “Holiness through Faith” and other works, in advocacy of the same or similar doctrines, meeting her as they did when under a severe mental strain, and touching her at a most sensitive point—­for holiness was a passion of her whole soul—­had for a time a more or less bewildering effect.  She kept pondering the questions they raised, until the native hue of her piety—­hitherto so resolute and cheerful—­became “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”