The portrait prefacing this book was taken in 1871, when Miss Ellis was thirty-six years old,—perhaps the saddest period in her life. Youth, health, fortune, hearing, dear friends, had gone one after another. The future looked dark indeed. She felt within herself capacities for which there seemed no earthly opportunity. The face wears a sadder expression than that characterizing it in later life, when at last she had found her real work.[2]
Rev. Charles Noyes was settled as Unitarian pastor in Cincinnati in 1872. To him Miss Ellis always attributed her first missionary impulse.
In a letter to Rev. W. C. Gannett, July 28, 1885, she said:—
"Yes, it is a great source of comfort to have started the 'good seed,' and now to see so many stronger people taking up the work and doing so much better than I. A great deal is due to dear Mr. Charles Noyes. He won me by his kind heart while here, and was so kind in lending me his manuscripts always, and books, that he kept me along with the religion of the day. Then Mr. Weudte furthered the matter by putting me on the Missionary Committee, and finally started me out with the 'Pamphlet Mission.' You know the rest."
In her diary was a copy of a letter written Mr. Noyes on his departure from Cincinnati, dated June 23, 1875, a portion of which is here given.
"I cannot say 'so be it' to your departure without returning thanks for the many pleasant hours you have afforded me through your manuscripts, the books and papers you have so kindly lent me from time to time. You have given me something to think about for a long time, so I can do without any sermons for a while. I do not expect to find so kind a pastor very soon.
"From your first text, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Take heed, therefore, how ye hear,' I accepted you as a teacher learning more from God than from man. I have followed you from beginning to the end, and I have worked with you and for you to the best of my ability, my strength, and my means. Would I had been a more efficient worker! I have taken heed as to how I have heard. You have not changed my views so much as brought out more clearly what was already in my own mind. The best lesson I have learned from you is a firmer trust in God. You have brought me to the 'Source of all Truth, whence Jesus drew his life.' Here you leave me. An essential point to have reached, in my view; a firm rock on which to rest, and one that can never be taken from me. Some people are not satisfied with a faith so simple. They need more to rest on; as if there could be a stronger, better support than the 'voice in the soul.' From loss of hearing, the 'voice within' has spoken more clearly to me perhaps.... It is a very great disappointment to me to part with you and your family, for I have become very much attached to you all; for even little G—— has learned to look upon me as a friend. It is not every one who wins me; and when one does, it is all the harder to separate from him. Still, we are often compelled to give up our preferences, as I have learned before now.... The benediction I ask is the one you have so often asked for us (Mary——ears to me, and a reliable authority): 'May the Heavenly Father bless, preserve, and guide you all. May he give you wisdom to know and strength to do his holy will forevermore.'"
Mr. Noyes, being asked for his recollections of Miss Ellis, writes:—
"Sallie had a very true, deep, strong religious nature, and a leaning to religious, not to say theological, studies. Alone in Cincinnati when I first went there, I was often a guest at Mr. Ellis's Sunday table. Sallie borrowed my sermons. She liked to talk over the subject of the sermon, and this led to my recommending to her many books for her reading, and loaning to her what I had in my library. She became familiar with the writings of most of our Unitarian writers,—with Channing, Clarke, Hedge, Dewey, Norton, Furness, and many others. She was no careless reader, but a student of the writer's thought.... She had great breadth of mental outlook, and a great heart of charity and love for all. She admired the diversity of opinion in our body, and had faith in the unity of the Spirit that would fuse us into one.... If Sallie ever expressed wonder and surprise, it was that Unitarianism did not grow as fast as it ought, and that those who accepted its teachings did not identify themselves with it. We had our Mission School of about three hundred pupils, and our Sewing School.... The time had not come for the Pamphlet Mission or the Post Office; yet Miss Ellis was making the best preparation possible for her after-work, and in due time the door of best usefulness stood wide open. You know, as we all know, how well she filled her office.... Her letters were sermons,—tracts in themselves, best adapted to her correspondents, and, I am persuaded, did a grand work of their own. She heard with difficulty, she was not an easy talker, but she wrote with great clearness.... More than the books she sent out, she was to many a one the blessed missionary of our faith.... In her early studies the miracle question was a stumbling-block to Sallie. The old-time interpretation of miracle she could not accept; neither could she take up with the mythical theory of Strauss. Miracle must be in harmony with law. Jesus must be to her the natural flower of human nature, the perfect blossom of human development. Nature and the supernatural must be in harmony. Hence the delight she took in Dr. Furness's works. His works helped her, as they have so many others, out of her difficulties about the supernatural. And more than that, they fed her religious life, pure and simple, and let her into the heart of Christ. She often alluded to her debt to Dr. Furness, whom she admired and loved."
Miss Ellis little expected or would have desired to figure as a Unitarian saint. Her estimate of herself was lowly. Whatever her faults and limitations, however, they were only those natural to a strong nature driven in upon itself, beating in vain against the stern walls that everywhere surrounded it. Bravely did she strive to resist what she clearly perceived to be the natural tendencies of her peculiar troubles, and bravely did she succeed. The prayers, the tears, the struggles of those lonely, baffled years are known only to God, and are only hinted at here and there in the diary kept during a large part of her life. An unique diary it is, showing, as nothing else could, the passion of religious devotion which burned in her soul. Each day's record, no matter how brief, ends with passages of Scripture, or sometimes a hymn, appropriate to the day's mood or experience. In reading it, one realizes afresh the richness of the Bible in comfort and strength. The diary furnishes a complete history of the Unitarian Church of Cincinnati for many years. All the individual joys and sorrows of its members, their birthdays and their death-days, are here recorded with loving sympathy. Also, a complete record of every Sunday's service for many years is given, with always a full abstract of the sermon, sometimes filling several pages of fine, close writing. Occasionally it happened that the minister failed to hand Miss Sallie his sermon after delivery,—a grievous disappointment, almost too great to bear, as the diary testifies. Each year the personal matter grows less, the religious meditations and quotations consume more and more space, until of the journal in the last years her sister writes: "It seems to have been kept mainly to give vent to her pure, spiritual nature, which was ever longing for some expression of itself." A very few extracts are here given from the diary,—a glimpse only of the struggles and longings that unconsciously to herself were all fitting her for her work.