Hearing that I was attending the meetings of another denomination, my church appointed three persons, at least one of whom was a deacon, to labor with me. They came to our house one evening, and, while my mother and I sat at our sewing, they plied me with questions relating to my duty as a church member, and arguments concerning the articles of belief; these I did not know how to answer, but my mother, who had had some experience in “religious” disputes, gave text for text, and I remember that, although I trembled at her boldness, I thought she had the best of it.
Meanwhile, I sat silent, with downcast eyes, and when they threatened me with excommunication if I did not go to the church meetings, and “fulfil my covenant,” I mustered up courage to say, with shaking voice, “I do not believe; I cannot go to your church, even if you do excommunicate me.”
When my Universalist friends heard of this threat of excommunication, they urged the preparation of a letter to the church, giving my reasons for non-attendance; and this was published in a Lowell newspaper, July 30, 1842. In this letter, which my elder brother helped me to prepare,—in fact, I believe wrote the most of it,—several arguments against the Articles of Belief are given; and the letter closes with a request to “my brothers and sisters,” to erase my name from “your church books rather than to follow your usual course, common in cases similar to my own, to excommunicate the heretic.”
This request was not heeded, and shortly after a committee of three was “then appointed to take farther steps;” and this committee reported that they had “visited and admonished” me without success; and in November, 1842, the following vote was passed, and is recorded in the church book:—
“Nov. 21, 1842.
Whereas, it appears that Miss Harriet Hanson has violated her covenant with this church,—first, by repeated and regular absence from the ordinances of the gospel, second, by embracing sentiments deemed by this church heretical; and whereas, measures have been taken to reclaim her, but ineffectual; therefore,
Voted, that we withdraw our fellowship from the said Miss Hanson until she shall give satisfactory evidence of repentance.”
And thus, at seventeen years of age, I was excommunicated from the church of my ancestors, and for no fault, no sin, no crime, but simply because I could not subscribe conscientiously to doctrines which I did not comprehend. I relate this phase of my youthful experience here in detail, because it serves to show the methods which were then in use to cast out or dispose of those members who could not subscribe to the doctrines of the dominant church of New England.
For some time after this, I was quite in disgrace with some of my work-mates, and was called a “heretic” and a “child of perdition” by my church friends. But, as I did not agree, even in this, with their opinions, but went my “ain gait,” it followed that, although I remained for a time something of a heretic, I was not an unbeliever in sacred things nor did I prove to be a “child of perdition.” But this experience made me very unhappy, and gave me a distaste for religious reading and thinking, and for many years the Bible was a sealed book to me, until I came to see in the Book, not the letter of dogma, but rather the spirit of truth and of revelation. This experience also repressed the humorous side of my nature, which is every one’s birthright, and made me for a time a sort of youthful cynic; and I allowed myself to feel a certain contempt for those of my work-mates who, though they could not give clear reason for their belief, still remained faithful to their “covenant.”
There were two or three little incidents connected with this episode in my life that may be of interest. A little later, when I thought of applying for the position of teaching in a public school, I was advised by a well-meaning friend not to attempt it, “for,” the friend added, “you will not succeed, for how can a Universalist pray in her school?”