April 8, Good Friday. Passion Week has been a revelation to me of the divine history made real. It has seemed to me as if I really followed and faltered with the disciples, in Gethsemane, at the mock trial of Pilate, and through the terrible scenes of the Crucifixion. It is so much to the world, that the Church has kept up the Christian year, with these awful and glorious anniversaries. How often their reality has faded out, when men are left to themselves.
I could thank the Church, almost, for having impressed them so upon her history, that they sometimes seem hardened into it! She has never let them become mere idle tales; the life and death of Christ, held so close to her heart, have kept her alive, through all her formalisms.
In the worship, the part taken by the congregation, in responsive readings, prayers, versicles, and Litany, appealed to her. She felt that she was not being preached at through the disguise of a prayer, but that all—minister and people—joined in the praises to God, each with a phrase on his lips and a meditation in his heart. The dignity and orderly arrangement of the services, together with the use of the stately words of the Prayer Book, made her appreciate the beautiful formality of such devotional customs.
Her affections were strengthened by an act which seemed to open a new set of experiences to her. This act was the partaking of the Holy Communion early on Easter Day, in 1887. Mr. Brooks had given notice, inviting to the Lord’s Supper any persons who might desire to come, though they belonged to some other branch of the Church of Christ. A friend of Miss Larcom urged her to accept the invitation. The generosity of it fascinated her; the thought of all who loved Jesus, loving Him perhaps in different ways, meeting around the Father’s table, was in thorough accord with her own feelings. Going to the service, and taking her place at the altar rail, she received the bread and wine administered in the reverent manner of the Episcopal Church. This one act, in the early morning of Easter day, revealed to her the spiritual meaning of the worship, and seemed to bring her in closest touch with the Master; and afterwards the Church became a different place to her; she was becoming one with it, though she yet had no right to call herself a member. Referring to this Communion, she said, “How free the Lord’s table ought to be! and how beautiful it was at that early Communion; the church fragrant and fresh, and glowing with flowers! It seemed like meeting Christ with Mary in the Garden, just as he had risen from the Grave! I do think the Communion service of the church most inreaching and uplifting in its earnestness, its simplicity, its spirituality.”
“As I remember this service in the Congregational church, that method seems almost formal in comparison with this. Perhaps there is something in the very movement required,—the person going forward to the table to share the bread and wine, each with the rest, yet each of us receiving them directly from Christ—His own life, to be transfused into ours. There is certainly a clearer meaning in it all to me, whenever I join in the service at Trinity Church.
“The crowd in the church afterwards, who came to the later services and sermon, was also most impressive, filling in even every smallest space in the chancel, among the flowers. The sermon was strong and deep, impressing the thought that life is the one reality, and death and sorrow and sin only partial experiences. Life the ocean, and all these things but ripples on the surface.
“The last thought for the day,—in the evening,—was that injustice never does triumph, however it may seem.”
April 22. Emeline’s birthday,—the dearest of my sisters—more than a mother to me—now three-score and ten. But I live my child-life over again with her, and our two lives make a glad harmony all through. How much shall we keep of ourselves and our human relations, forever? All that has been real, surely. And so we are mature women and little children together, at once, in the immortal life.
The past week has been one of rather unpleasant experiences, in some ways. The Beverly Farms bribery investigation at the State House has occupied me. Whether bribery or not, great injustice is attempted on my native town, which I love and will defend, so long as I know her to be unmistakably in the right, as she is now.
I have done the little I could, so far; have written for the newspapers,—have sent a letter of request for veto to the governor,—and joined the women of Beverly in a petition to him, to the same effect, and I shall hold myself ready to do more, if needed. But I do trust that our legislature will, of themselves, make the matter right.
April 25. Spring is in the air, even in Boston, although just a week ago to-day we had one of the worst snowstorms of the season.
Yesterday’s experience is something not to be forgotten, though unrecordable. There are no words to repeat the spirit’s story, when it is taken possession of by the highest influences, and lifted up into the heaven of aspiration and consecration; when the way is open through sympathy with human souls, and with the Eternal Son, into the Father’s heart.
How easy the spiritual life seems, when material things fall into their subordinate places! If it might always be so!
May 20. Still in Boston, interested in many things. People are trying to help each other. I have been at the Woman’s Industrial Union, have heard Miss Leigh talk of her work in Paris, have talked over the possibilities of better influences for girl-workers in Boston, have listened to Miss Freeman’s report of her Student’s Aid work at Wellesley College—all so suggestive—so hopeful! What should not the woman of the future be? What may she not be?
“I saw all women of our race
Revealed in that one woman’s face!”
June 6. Canon Wilberforce and the great temperance meeting at Tremont Temple. A most eloquent man, and he goes to the very root of the matter,—no real temperance without spirituality. “Not drunken with wine, but filled with the Holy Ghost,”—he made that infinite contrast clear. His sermon yesterday was most impressive,—from the text, “What seest thou?” It was a Trinity Sunday sermon, and the thought was that in Jesus we see God most perfectly. But emphasis was placed upon the attitude and condition of the soul, for the seeing. It was Canon Wilberforce’s first sermon in Boston, and I think this is his first visit to America. It is good to have such neighbors come to see us.
In the afternoon Mr. Brooks spoke from the text, “He that hath the Son hath life.” I have seldom heard him speak with more fervor, of what life is, and of the dreadful thing it is to lack life, the life that comes to us and is in us through Christ,—the life of God in human souls. It is his last sermon for the summer, and the text itself is one to keep close at heart all through the year. “Not merely the knowledge of Christ, but Christ Himself with us, we must have,” he said: and with the thought comes the suggestion of all true relations of spirit with spirit, the human and the divine interblended, God the soul of our souls and the children one with the Father through the Son. I thank God for what I have found at Trinity Church this winter: I begin to know more what the true Church is,—nothing exclusive or separating, but the coming together of all souls in Christ.
June 12. In Beverly, but not yet acclimated to the stronger sweep of the east winds. They give rheumatic twinges. But the birds sing, and the fresh foliage is shaken out into greenness, the rose acacia and the bridal-wreath spirea run wild in the garden, and the freedom of nature’s life revives mine. The thrill of the oriole,—what a jubilation it is, through the Sabbath stillness; it is better than the city in summer time.
Read this morning Phillips Brooks’ sermon on “Visions” and “Tasks,” and several others—among them, the “Church of the Living God.”
With reference to doctrines, she understood the Church’s position. The great facts of Christianity as set forth in the Apostles Creed, she did not doubt; and she liked the comprehensiveness of a Church, admitting those who accept these facts and desire to live a Christian life, and permitting a private opinion on many complicated questions of theology. And yet, with her appreciation for the Church, she could not make up her mind to enter it. There were objections difficult for her to overcome.
These objections were not of a devotional or theological, but of an ecclesiastical character. High-Churchism, including in that term Sacerdotalism, offered a barrier. She felt that, by joining the Church, she would seem to approve of this teaching, and while she was willing to admit the historical fact of Apostolical continuity, she could not accept a theory of Apostolical succession which in any way seemed to exclude from good standing, as Churches, the various religious denominations which she had known and loved. She said, “In the broad idea of Christ’s Church, Episcopacy at times seems to me no less sectarian than other ‘isms.’” She had too much of the Puritan in her to make any such admissions about the Episcopal Church that would seem to indicate that she felt it was the only Church. Her position, as late as 1890, is very well put, in a letter to Mrs. S. I. Spalding, of Newburyport.