... I wish I could feel as you do, about the Church. I should like to be there, but I have to look upon it from the outside as an institution. The real church, to which I hope I belong, seems to me to be so much broader than any one form, so inclusive of all denominations, that I hardly think I have the right to identify myself with any; for, by so doing, I should exclude myself absolutely from the rest. Now I seem to myself to belong everywhere. Yet it is sometimes lonely to feel that spiritually I have not where to lay my head. We women crave home, a home of our own; but we must not deceive ourselves by shutting our eyes, and making believe we are at home, when we are not. However, I mean to go regularly to Trinity if I can, for the feeling of having free seats is more comfortable than that of intruding into people’s pews, and I go as if I had a right to the service.... Her diary for 1881 and 1882 indicates the deepening of her religious thought, and the way in which the Episcopal Church was becoming known to her. Boston, November 28, 1881. Waked by distant bells of Advent Sunday. As a Puritan, I have known little of the Christian year, in its Church history. It is worth while to try to enter into the spirit of all methods of true Christian worship. I read a sermon by F. D. Maurice, one by F. W. Robertson, and one by Phillips Brooks, all bearing upon the idea of these Advent days. In the “Christian Year” (Keble), an allusion is made to one of the skeptical centuries, which seems to fit this, in its over-scientific tendencies:-- “An age of light, Light without love, glares on the aching sight.” But under all true science,--if science is indeed knowledge,--we shall find Christ, since Christ is the revelation of the deepest love of God. December 4. Have been writing Christmas verses, by request, the past week. Thanksgiving and Christmas would blend themselves in my thoughts as one festival. “For my body liveth by my soul, and my soul by me” (St. Augustine). “Too little doth he love Thee, who loves anything with thee, which he loveth not for Thee” (_Ibid._). December 5. Two distinct thoughts impressed by the two successive evening services at Trinity Church:-- A week since,--That the controversy between skepticism and Christianity, as carried on quite recently among us, does not touch the real point in question, which is whether Christ, the Son of God, has come into the world, and has changed it, and is changing it for the better: not whether certain statements of the Hebrew Scriptures can be verified as facts, but whether there is a living Christ.