Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3Various
Religion
Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3
Various
Christian life -- Periodicals
Such has been the feeling with which we have read and re-read the volume
before us. We knew but slightly her who is the subject of it, and are
indebted to the memoir for any thing like a conception of the character;
consequently we can better judge of its probable effect upon other
minds. We pronounce it a portrait successfully taken--a piece of
uncommonly skillful biography. There is no gaudy exaggeration in it,--no
stiffness, no incompleteness. We see the individual character we are
invited to see, and in contemplating it, we have all along a feeling of
personal acquisition. We have found rare treasure; a true woman to be
admired, a daughter whose worth surpasses estimation, a friend to be
clasped with fervor to the heart, a lovely young Christian to be admired
and rejoiced over, and a self-sacrificing missionary to be held in
reverential remembrance. Unlike most that is written to commemorate the
dead, or that unvails the recesses of the human heart, this is a
cheerful book. It breathes throughout the air of a spring morning. As we
read it we inhale something as pure and fragrant as the wafted odor of
"----old cherry-trees,
Scented with blossoms."
We stand beneath a serene unclouded sky, and all around us is floating
music as enlivening as the song of birds, yet solemn as the strains of
the sanctuary. It is that of a life in unison from its childhood to its
close; rising indeed like "an unbroken hymn of praise to God." There is
no austerity in its piety, no levity in its gladness. It shows that
"virtue in herself is lovely," but if "goodness" is ever "awful," it is
not here in the company of this young happy Christian heart.
We have heard, sometimes, that a strictly religious education has a
tendency to restrict the intellectual growth of the young, and to mar
its grace and freedom. We have been told that it was not well that our
sons and daughters should commit to memory texts and catechisms, lest
the free play of the fancy should be checked and they be rendered
mechanical and constrained in their demeanor, and dwarfish in their
intellectual stature. We see nothing of this exemplified in this memoir.
One may look long to find an instance of more lady-like and graceful
accomplishments, of more true refinement, of more liberal and varied
cultivation, of more thorough mental discipline, of more pliable and
available information, of a more winning and wise adaptation to persons
and times and places, than the one presented in these pages. And yet
this fair flower grew in a cleft of rugged Calvinism; the gales which
fanned it were of that "wind of doctrine" called rigid orthodoxy. We
know the soil in which it had its root. We know the spirit of the
teachings which distilled upon it like the dew. The tones of that pulpit
still linger in our ears, familiar as those of "_that good old bell_,"
and we are sure that there is no pulpit in all New England more
uncompromising in its demands, more strictly and severely searching in
its doctrines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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