It would not be possible in our short space to follow all the steps in her soul’s progress and the degrees by which, under the guidance of her brother Edward, she gained at last a comfortable view of her relation to God. But a glimpse here and there may be allowed to us.
Above all things, Harriet could not understand how a God of infinite perfection could stand toward imperfect human beings in any but the most severe attitude. She could not see that One of infinite power and infinite wisdom must have infinite love; and toward a realization of this truth she moved but slowly. How far along she had come in 1828 is shown in the following passage from a letter to Edward. “After all,” she said, “God is a being afar off. He is so far above us that anything but the most distant reverential affection seems almost sacrilegious. It is that affection that can lead us to be familiar that the heart needs.... The language of prayer is of necessity stately and formal, and we cannot clothe all the little minutiæ of our wants and troubles in it.... I sometimes wish that the Saviour were visibly present in this world, that I might go to Him for a solution of some of my difficulties.”
Later on we see that she is making great progress though she herself may not realize that she is. She says in another letter: “It matters little what service He has for me.... I do not mean to live in vain. He has given me talents, and I will lay them at His feet, well satisfied, if He will accept them. All my powers He can enlarge. He made my mind, and He can teach me to cultivate and exert its faculties.”
At last in the character of Jesus Christ she finds a revelation of God as merciful and compassionate as He is powerful—in fact, she found in Him just such a God as she needed. The next summer she writes again to the same brother and says: “I cannot express to you, my brother, I cannot tell you, how that Saviour appears to me. To bear with one so imperfect, so inconsistent as myself, implied long-suffering and patience more than words can express. I love most to look on Christ as my teacher, as one who, knowing the utmost of my sinfulness, my waywardness, my folly, can still have patience, can reform, purify, and daily make me more like himself.”
In these three selections from her letters we see the passage of her mind from the attitude of fear to the attitude of love. In fact, she has come about again to that child-like mood that was hers when she ran to her father’s study and made the beautiful confession of her earliest conscious faith.
Now she began to realize that the very best cure for a disappointing religious condition within us is to put our religion into practice in the world without us by means of a kind spirit instantly made real in kindly acts. Harriet caught this good idea, perhaps from the example of her sister Catherine who in her great sorrow had done this at last.
In a different way Harriet felt that she must come out of herself more than she had. Not that she thought her love of solitude and of going her own way wrong in itself, but that she knew that if she indulged it too much she would miss the joy of knowing that she was helping to make others happy.
She noticed one of her companions engaged in being particularly attentive to a particularly disagreeable elderly man, and as a result Harriet conceived the idea that it was a proof of grace to say something to people who were not agreeable, and to manage to say something or other even if one had nothing to say. She resolved to follow the example of the friend who could sacrifice her own taste and comfort in order to make a “forlorn old daddy” happy and comfortable.
Writing to her great friend, Georgiana May, in 1832, Harriet told her of a sun-dial inscription that her Uncle Samuel Foote, who was sitting by her side as she wrote, has just been quoting for her benefit. It ran thus: Horas non numero nisi serenas—I count the fair hours only. This she said she was taking for her own motto. She had determined, she told her friend, to come out of herself more, to cultivate a general spirit of kindliness toward everybody, to hold out her hand to the right and to the left. To what good purpose she now put this resolution into effect is shown by the fact that her pupils at Hartford remember her to this day as one who took the greatest interest in each one’s affairs, laying aside her own matters and talking over the likes and aims of others. And perhaps she did not find it so hard after all to keep from shrinking into a corner. Perhaps she found a pleasure in meeting new and strange people and in trying to be friendly with them. She seems to have found that these social contacts, though not having any great meaning in themselves, yet could form a very pretty flower border to the way of life.
A wonderful discovery for one to make whose nature, did she but know it, was one great tide of loving impulses, whose heart was vast in its all-including kindliness!