Church, then
presided over by Rev. Henry Colman, one of the fathers of the
Unitarian heresy, she found peace and satisfaction to her spirit. Ten
years later, she spent a week in Hingham, visiting friends and
reviving, as she says, the memory of the "first awakening of my mind
to high and holy thoughts and resolves." The crisis which, elsewhere,
we read of at the age of ten, was a subordinate affair. This Hingham
experience, at the age of sixteen, was really the moral event in her
history.

As hers was a type of religion,--she would have said "piety",--a blend
of reason and sentiment, peculiar to the Unitarianism of that
generation, hardly to be found in any household of faith to-day, we
must let her disclose her inner consciousness. One Saturday morning,
she writes a long letter to one of her teachers saying that she feels
it a duty and a privilege "to be a member of the Church of Christ,"
but she fears she does not understand what the relation implies, and
says, "Tell me if you should consider it a violation of the sacredness
of the institution, to think I might with impunity be a member of it.
I am well aware of the condemnation denounced on those who _partake_
unworthily." She refers to the Lord's Supper. It is to be hoped that
her teacher knew enough to give the simple explanation of that dark
saying of the apostle about eating unworthily. At all events, she
connected herself with the church, received the communion, and was
very happy. "From the moment I had decided what to do, not a feeling
arose which I could wish to suppress; conscious of pure motives, all
within was calm, and I wondered how I could for a moment hesitate.
They were feelings I never before experienced, and for once I realized
that it is only when we are at peace with ourselves that we can enjoy
true happiness.... I could not sleep, and actually laid awake all
night out of pure happiness."

After a few months, sooner than she expected, she returns to Boston
and sits under the ministrations of Dr. Channing, to her an object of
veneration. She writes that her heart is too full for utterance: "It
will not surprise you that Mr. Channing's sermons are the cause; but
no account that I could give could convey any idea of them. You have
heard some of the same class; they so entirely absorb the feelings as
to render the mind incapable of action, and consequently leave on the
memory at times no distinct impression." I should like to quote all
she says of