d longings so detained her
thoughts that she was unable to pass beyond the confines of the present
moment, and could not foresee that true growth must bring her, as it
soon did, a great enlargement of influence and relation.

CHAPTER III.

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.--MARGARET'S EARLY CRITICS.--FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH
MR. EMERSON.

It was to be expected that in such a correspondence as that between
Margaret and James Freeman Clarke the chord of religious belief would
not remain untouched. From Margaret's own words, in letters and in her
journal, we clearly gather that her mind, in this respect, passed
through a long and wide experience. Fortunate for her was, in that day,
the Unitarian pulpit, with its larger charity and freer exegesis. With
this fold for her spiritual home, she could go in and out, finding
pasture, while by the so-called Orthodox sects she would have been
looked upon as standing without the bounds of all religious fellowship.

The requirements of her nature were twofold. A religious foundation for
thought was to her a necessity. Equally necessary was to her the
untrammelled exercise of critical judgment, and the thinking her own
thoughts, instead of accepting those of other people. We may feel sure
that Margaret, even to save her own soul, would not and could not have
followed any confession of faith in opposition to her own best judgment.
She would have preferred the hell of the free soul to the heaven of the
slave. To combine this intellectual interpretation of religious duty
with the simple devotion which the heart craves is not easy for any one.
We may be very glad to find that for her it was not impossible. Her
attitude between these two points of opposition is indeed edifying; for,
while she follows thought with the daring of a sceptic, and fearlessly
reasons concerning the highest mysteries, she yet acknowledges the
insufficiency of human knowledge for themes so wonderful, and here, as
nowhere else, bows her imperial head and confesses herself human.

One thing we may learn from what Margaret has written on this subject,
if we do not already know it, and this is, that in any true religious
experience there must be progress and change of attitude. This progress
may be first initiated by the preponderance of thought or by that of
affection, but, as it goes on, the partiality of first views will be
corrected by considerations which are developed by later study.
Religious sincerity is, in the en