The other longer marked article on “Revivalism” is a fine sermon by a sound Unitarian clergyman who does not believe in special revivals of religion, as gotten up for the occasion, and to fill churches, but thinks religion, as being the best part of man’s nature, will revive itself like all else in nature, and feels that God does not need to be implored to save from endless pain and loss the poor creatures He has made, but believes that if we do our best to enlighten and elevate those around us we do all we are called upon to do in the way of their salvation.
But read it well and carefully for yourself, or read it again with Ida and “reason together” about it and see if you can find in your own convictions some justification for the course you are taking with the S.S. There is much to be read, before you decide, much to learn and consider; take time and do it and don’t either fall into a trap nor be driven into one.—Selah!
She retained to the end of her life a high regard for the church of her fathers, the Universalist Church. Of it she wrote to Mrs. Jennie S. M. Vinton at Oxford:
I am glad to learn by your valued letter of September 5th that the old church of our fathers is about to be refitted and I thank you for the information. It is thoughtful of you to name the facts of the early history of the church which I am happy to corroborate, both by tradition and recollection. My father was present at the ordination sermon of Hosea Ballou (a white-headed boy he seemed). He was one of the pillars of the church. His family came over the hills of extreme North Oxford, five miles every Sunday, to sit in its high pews. When I was a grown young woman it was decided to build the present church, and no body of church people ever worked harder than we. We held fairs, public and home, begged, and gave all but the clothes we wore; we cleaned windows and scrubbed paint after workmen, bought and nailed down carpets, fitted up the parsonage, and received the bride of the Reverend Albert Barnes, our first settled pastor. And I carried their first baby to the christening.
There are few people there who have memories of harder church work and better church love than I.
Think this over, dear sister, and remember that I have never lost my love for the old church of my fathers, my family, and my childhood.
She believed whole-heartedly in immortality. Not only so, but she believed that her friends were near. She never recovered from the impression that came to her, after the death of her brother Stephen, that he was an influence, a living influence, for good in her life. That influence was exerted directly. As she woke in the morning while it was yet dark, and faced the duties of the day, she was able to think and plan with such clarity of vision that she felt that she was helped by the presence of those whom she had loved and who had counseled her in life. Through Stephen she felt the influence of her mother, as she believed, and, less directly, that of her father. She said, “I do not believe I am a Spiritualist,” but she could not shake off, and did not desire to shake off, the conviction that those whom she had loved were near her.
The latest, and in some respects the most satisfactory, statement of her faith, was written a year before her death, to Judge A. W. Terrell, of Austin, Texas:
I suppose I am not what the world denominates a church woman. I lay no claim to it. I was born to liberal views, and have lived a liberal creed. I firmly believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Jesus of Nazareth; in His life and death of suffering to save the world from sin, so far as in His power to do. But it would be difficult for me to stop there and believe that this spark of divinity was accorded to none other of God’s creation, who, like the Master, took on the living form, and, like him, lived the human life.