"Sallie had a very true, deep, strong religious nature, and a leaning to religious, not to say theological, studies. Alone in Cincinnati when I first went there, I was often a guest at Mr. Ellis's Sunday table. Sallie borrowed my sermons. She liked to talk over the subject of the sermon, and this led to my recommending to her many books for her reading, and loaning to her what I had in my library. She became familiar with the writings of most of our Unitarian writers,--with Channing, Clarke, Hedge, Dewey, Norton, Furness, and many others. She was no careless reader, but a student of the writer's thought.... She had great breadth of mental outlook, and a great heart of charity and love for all. She admired the diversity of opinion in our body, and had faith in the unity of the Spirit that would fuse us into one.... If Sallie ever expressed wonder and surprise, it was that Unitarianism did not grow as fast as it ought, and that those who accepted its teachings did not identify themselves with it. We had our Mission School of about three hundred pupils, and our Sewing School.... The time had not come for the Pamphlet Mission or the Post Office; yet Miss Ellis was making the best preparation possible for her after-work, and in due time the door of best usefulness stood wide open. You know, as we all know, how well she filled her office.... Her letters were sermons,--tracts in themselves, best adapted to her correspondents, and, I am persuaded, did a grand work of their own. She heard with difficulty, she was not an easy talker, but she wrote with great clearness.... More than the books she sent out, she was to many a one the blessed missionary of our faith.... In her early studies the miracle question was a stumbling-block to Sallie. The old-time interpretation of miracle she could not accept; neither could she take up with the mythical theory of Strauss. Miracle must be in harmony with law. Jesus must be to her the natural flower of _human_ nature, the perfect blossom of _human_ development. Nature and the supernatural must be in harmony. Hence the delight she took in Dr. Furness's works. His works helped her, as they have so many others, out of her difficulties about the supernatural. And more than that, they fed her religious life, pure and simple, and let her into the heart of Christ. She often alluded to her debt to Dr. Furness, whom she admired and loved."