was one of my first and dearest.It reminded me of the rolling of thunder through the sky;and,understood as little as the thunder itself,which my mother told me was God's voice,so that Ibent my ear and listened,expecting to hear it shaped into words,it still did give me an idea of the presence of One Infinite Being,that thrilled me with reverent awe.And this was one of the best lessons taught in the Puritan school,--the lesson of reverence,the certainty that life meant looking up to something,to Some One greater than ourselves,to a Life far above us,which yet enfolded ours.
The thought of God,when He was first spoken of to me,seemed as natural as the thought of my father and mother.That He should be invisible did not seem strange,for I could not with my eyes see through the sky,beyond which I supposed he lived.But it was easy to believe that He could look down and see me,and that He knew all about me.We were taught very early to say "Thou,God,seest me";and it was one of my favorite texts.Heaven seemed nearer,because somebody I loved was up there looking at me.Ababy is not afraid of its father's eyes.
The first real unhappiness I remember to have felt was when some one told me,one day,that I did not love God.I insisted,almost tearfully,that I did;but I was told that if I did truly love Him I should always be good.I knew I was not that,and the feeling of sudden orphanage came over me like a bewildering cloud.Yet I was sure that I loved my father and mother,even when I was naughty,Was He harder to please than they?
Then I heard of a dreadful dark Somewhere,the horror of which was that it was away from Him.What if I should wake some morning,and find myself there?Sometimes I did not dare to go to sleep for that dread.And the thought was too awful to speak of to anybody.Baby that I was,I shut my lips in a sort of reckless despair,and thought that if I could not be good,I might as well be naughty,and enjoy it.But somehow I could not enjoy it.Ifelt sorry and ashamed and degraded whenever I knew that I had been cross or selfish.
I heard them talk about Jesus as if He were a dead man,one who died a great while ago,whose death made a great difference to us,I could not understand how.It seemed like a lovely story,the loveliest in the world,but it sounded as if it were only a story,even to those who repeated it to me;something that had happened far away in the past.
But one day a strange minister came into the Sabbath-school in our little chapel,and spoke to us children about Him,oh!so differently!
"Children,"he said,"Jesus is not dead.He is alive:He loves you,and wants you to love Him!He is your best Friend,and He will show you how to be good."My heart beat fast.I could hardly keep back the tears.The New Testament,then,did really mean what it said!Jesus said He would come back again,and would always be with those who loved Him.
"He is alive!He loves me!He will tell me how to be good!"Isaid it over to myself,but not to anybody else.I was sure that I loved Him.It was like a beautiful secret between us two.Ifelt Him so alive and so near!He wanted me to be good,and Icould be,I would be,for his sake.
That stranger never knew how his loving word had touched a child's heart.The doors of the Father's house were opened wide again,by the only hand that holds the key.The world was all bright and fresh once more.It was as if the May sun had suddenly wakened the flowers in an overshadowed wayside nook.
I tried long afterward,thinking that it was my duty,to build up a wall of difficult doctrines over my spring blossoms,as if they needed protection.But the sweet light was never wholly stifled out,though I did not always keep my face turned towards it:and I know now,that just to let his lifegiving smile shine into the soul is better than any of the theories we can invent about Him;and that only so can young or old receive the kingdom of God as a little child.
I believe that one great reason for a child's love of hymns,such as mine was,is that they are either addressed to a Person,to the Divine Person,--or they bring Him before the mind in some distinct way,instead of being written upon a subject,like a sermon.To make Him real is the only way to make our own spirits real to ourselves.
I think more gratefully now of the verses I learned from the Bible and the Hymn-Book than of almost anything that came to me in that time of beginnings.The whole Hymn-Book was not for me then,any more than the whole Bible.I took from both only what really belonged to me.To be among those who found in the true sources of faith and adoration,was like breathing in my native air,though I could not tell anything about the land from which Ihad come.Much that was put in the way of us children to climb by,we could only stumble over;but around and above the roughnesses of the road,the pure atmosphere of worship was felt everywhere,the healthiest atmosphere for a child's soul to breathe in.
I had learned a great many hymns before the family took any notice of it.When it came to the knowledge of my most motherly sister Emilie,--I like to call her that,for she was as fond of early rising as Chaucer's heroine:--"Up rose the sun,and up rose Emilie;"and it is her own name,with a very slight change,--she undertook to see how many my small memory would contain.She promised me a new book,when I should have learned fifty;and that when I could repeat any one of a hundred hymns,she would teach me to write.Iearned the book when I was about four years old.I think it was a collection of some of Jane Taylor's verses."For Infant Minds,"was part of the title.I did not care for it,however,nearly so much as I did for the old,thumb-worn "Watts'and Select Hymns."Before I was five I bad gone beyond the stipulated hundred.
A proud and happy child I was,when I was permitted to dip a goose quill into an inkstand,and make written letters,instead of printing them with a pencil on a slate.
