he was merely "emitting what he derived directly, by special favour, from God!"
"The Spirit of God," he says on another occasion, "was so sensibly poured out upon me, and to such a degree, that I was thereby made to see things done in secret, and came to find things lost, and knew where to go to find those things which were lost!"
This second sight, if I may so call it, set our author upon drawing aside the veil from the prophetic writings; and his view of their mystical sense is diffused over the indigested and rambling works bearing the following titles:
"A View of the Glory of the Messiah's Kingdom." 1763.
"Remarks upon the Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy."
"A Practical Treatise on Regeneration." 1764.
"The Mystery of God opened," &c. Edinburgh. 1768.
"An Emblematical Representation of the Paradise of God, showing the Nature of Spiritual Industry in the Similitude of a Garden, well ordered, dressed, and kept, with Sundry Reflections on the Nature of Divine Knowledge, 1779."
In his Address to the Friendly Society of Gardeners, Clark gives some account of his worldly condition; of his early training in religious habits; his laborious and industrious devotion to his profession, with which he seems to have been greatly enamoured, although poorly paid, and often in straits. Subsequently to the great event of his life—his vision—our subject appears to have come south, and to have been in the employment of Lord Charles Spencer at Hanworth in Middlesex. Like most of the prophets of his day, Clark was haunted with the belief that the last day was approaching; and considering himself called upon to announce to his acquaintance and neighbours that this "terrible judgment of God was at hand," he got but contempt and ridicule for his pains:—more than that, indeed, for those raising the cry that he was a madman, they procured the poor man's expulsion from his situation. Under all these discouraging circumstances, he maintained his firm conviction of the approaching end of time: so strongly was his mind bent in this direction, that "I opened the window of the house where I then was," says he, "thinking to see Christ coming in the clouds!"
"I was three days and three nights that I could not eat, drink, nor sleep; and when I would close my eyes, I felt something always touching me; at length I heard a voice sounding in mine ears, saying 'Sleep not, lest thou sleep the sleep of death:' and at that I looked for my Bible, and at the first opening of it I read these words, which were sent with power, 'To him that overcometh,'" &c.
Poor Clark, like his prototype Thomas Newans, laboured hard to obtain the sanction of the hierarchy to his predictions:
"I desire no man," he says, "to believe me without proof; and if the Reverend the Clergy would think this worth their perusal, I would very willingly hear what they had to say either for or against."
The orthodoxy of the "Reverend the Clergy" was not, however, to be moved; and Alexander Clark and his books now but serve the end of pointing a moral. With more real humility and less presumption, there was much that was good about him; but letting his heated fancies get the better of the little judgment he possessed, our amiable enthusiast became rather a stumbling-block than light to his generation.
J. O.