Put in undecorated language, this is about the sum and substance of a state of feeling which all intelligent evangelical Christians recognize perfectly in those who have preempted for themselves the claims belonging to what are called the liberal faiths.
On the other hand, one who is regarded as a little of a heretic from the sterner sects, may make the warmest friendships of a lifetime among "the world's people"—whom far be it from me to seem to dispossess of any of their manifold charms.
This brings me closely to a question which I am so often asked, either directly or indirectly, that I cannot easily pass this Andover chapter by without some recognition of it.
What was, in very truth, the effect of such a religious training as Andover gave her children?
Curious impressions used to be afloat about us among people of easier faiths; often, I think, we were supposed to spend our youth paddling about in a lake of blue fire, or in committing the genealogies to memory, or in gasping beneath the agonies of religious revivals.
To be quite honest, I should say that I have not retained all the beliefs which I was taught—who does? But I have retained the profoundest respect for the way in which I was taught them; and I would rather have been taught what I was, as I was, and run whatever risks were involved in the process, than to have been taught much less, little, or nothing.
An excess of religious education may have its unfortunate aspects. But a deficiency of it has worse.
It is true that, for little people, our little souls were a good deal agitated on the question of eternal salvation. We were taught that heaven and hell followed life and death; that the one place was "a desirable location," and the other too dreadful to be mentioned in ears polite; and that what Matthew Arnold calls "conduct" was the deciding thing. Not that we heard much, until we grew old enough to read for ourselves, about Matthew Arnold; but we did hear a great deal about plain behaviour—unselfishness, integrity, honor, sweet temper—the simple good morals of childhood.
We were taught, too, to respect prayer and the Christian Bible. In this last particular we never had at all an oppressive education.
My Sunday-school reminiscences are few and comfortable, and left me, chiefly, with the impression that Sunday-schools always studied Acts; for I do not recall any lessons given me by strolling theologues in any other—certainly none in any severer—portions of the Bible.