But she felt that that protest was no longer needed, at least to the same extent. She felt the waste of competing religious organizations. The Universalist Church was the church of her father, but the Congregational Church was the church of his fathers. She had more friends in the latter than in the former. She told me she would be glad to see the liberty of thought which Universalism had stood for sacredly preserved in a union of those denominations.
She said, “What I see in Oxford I see everywhere, a need that churches shall forget old and past disputes, and come into more compact organization, merging denominations, and preserving religious liberty.”
It is a hazardous thing to repeat, after years have gone by, the impressions left by oral conversations. Yet I am confident that in this meager outline I give her essential faith.
She did not talk glibly about her faith. But it was very real, and very definite, and it remained with her to the end.
Concerning revivals of religion she wrote to a niece who, in the widespread religious interest awakened by Mr. Moody in the seventies, had been asked by an evangelist to take a step which, as she looked back upon it, implied more than she had intended:
Thursday night
If one acts with good intentions, believing they are doing rightly, and later, concludes it was unwise or wrong—there is a mistake somewhere, or has been. It may have been in the act, or it may be in the later conclusion, but it is only a mistake, not a sin, you poor little chick.
Another time when you are requested in prayer meeting to act on a double question, the putter of it mixing up your desire or willingness to stand up before an audience and be made a subject for public prayers with an act of personal courtesy or discourtesy to himself as to whether you want to hear him or not, once leaves you free to vote as you like, and then comes and questions your decision, and asks your reason,—if you feel like answering him at all,—tell him to divide his questions, put one at a time and you will act on each separately. He put two questions together, as a dodge to get all up to be prayed for, thinking and knowing it put every one in a hard place, as all would see that it was a little impolite not to hasten to accept his offer to come and preach. Oh, how tricky.
You have done rightly in it all, my dear little girl. When he asked why you did not side with the Lord you answered that you did. That was right and all he could ask for. When he added, “Then why did you not rise and kneel,” you might tell him you did not understand that request as coming from the Lord, or you should certainly have done so.
I send you a “Banner of Light” to-day. You will find two articles bearing on your subject—the one a lecture by a good sturdy Briton on Mr. Moody’s sermon on “Hell.” I think you will read it with interest just now, and every time you get assaulted in public prayer meeting, and followed by men, I should advise you to run home and calm your hysterical nerves by re-reading that lecture from end to end.