"And when in the day?" was the next question. "Morning or night?"
"Just as you like, dearest," the mother answered.
But there is a religious liberty beyond this. To no one in America is it so readily, so sympathetically, given as to a child. We are all familiar with the difficulties which attend a grown person, even in America, whose convictions necessitate a change of religious denomination. Such a situation almost invariably means distress to the family, and to the relinquished church of the person the form of whose faith has altered. In few other matters is so small a measure of liberty understandingly granted a grown person, even in America. But when a child would turn from one form of belief to another, how differently the circumstance is regarded!
One Sunday, not long ago, visiting an Episcopal Sunday-school, I saw in one of the primary classes a little girl whose parents, as I was aware, were members of the Baptist Church.
"Is she a guest?" I asked her teacher.
"Oh, no," she replied; "she is a regular member of the Sunday-school; she comes every Sunday. She was christened at Easter; I am her godmother."
"But don't her father and mother belong to the Baptist Church?" I questioned.
"Yes," said the child's Sunday-school teacher. "But she came to church one Sunday with some new playmates of hers, whose parents are Episcopalians, to see a baby christened. Then her little friends told her how they had all been christened, as babies; and when she found that she hadn't been, she wanted to be. So her father and mother let her, and she comes to Sunday-school here."
"Where does she go to church?" I found myself inquiring.
"To the Baptist Church, with her father and mother," was the reply. "She asked them to let her come to Sunday-school here; but it never occurred to her to think of going to church excepting with them."