Her relations to organized Christianity are particularly interesting. Doubtless the history of her connection with the churches is a type of that of other lives numerous in our generation that have become dissatisfied with the communions in which they have been trained, and after a period of uncertainty and unrest have found a home in the Episcopal Church. Her religious life began in a Puritan home, and in a Congregational meeting-house. The strong ethical teaching of her fathers made a lasting impression on her, and the dogmatic preaching of Calvinism influenced her young life. From both she gained a love for the simplicity of living which characterized her career, and that dearness of conscience which she always displayed. There was also a joy to her under the austerity of the worship, and the sternness of the theology. The sermons suggested new thoughts, which forced themselves between the sentences of the minister, and in this way she preached to herself another sermon than that spoken from the pulpit. Her religious enthusiasm bore fruit at thirteen years of age, in church membership, in Lowell. Not many years after this she was sorry for the step she had taken, for the natural broadening of her mind and the deepening of her consciousness of truth led her far away from the doctrines she had accepted. The sermons that she heard did not seem to satisfy her needs; she longed for spiritual nourishment, for help on the daily path, for thoughts that had some connection with actual temptations and doubts. Most of the discourses dealt ingeniously with exegetical questions, or were massive arguments used to crush the objector, or efforts to prove some metaphysical doctrine. Relating one Sunday’s experience, which has been referred to before in her diary, she said, “I went to meeting, expecting and needing spiritual food, and received only burning coals and ashes. There was a sermon to prove that Satan will be tormented for ever and ever; and the stress of the argument was to prove the endlessness of his punishment.”