" There is
no austerity in its piety, no levity in its gladness. It shows that
"virtue in herself is lovely," but if "goodness" is ever "awful," it is
not here in the company of this young happy Christian heart.
We have heard, sometimes, that a strictly religious education has a
tendency to restrict the intellectual growth of the young, and to mar
its grace and freedom. We have been told that it was not well that our
sons and daughters should commit to memory texts and catechisms, lest
the free play of the fancy should be checked and they be rendered
mechanical and constrained in their demeanor, and dwarfish in their
intellectual stature. We see nothing of this exemplified in this memoir.
One may look long to find an instance of more lady-like and graceful
accomplishments, of more true refinement, of more liberal and varied
cultivation, of more thorough mental discipline, of more pliable and
available information, of a more winning and wise adaptation to persons
and times and places, than the one presented in these pages. And yet
this fair flower grew in a cleft of rugged Calvinism; the gales which
fanned it were of that "wind of doctrine" called rigid orthodoxy. We
know the soil in which it had its root. We know the spirit of the
teachings which distilled upon it like the dew. The tones of that pulpit
still linger in our ears, familiar as those of "_that good old bell_,"
and we are sure that there is no pulpit in all New England more
uncompromising in its demands, more strictly and severely searching in
its doctrines.
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