The period of my
growing-up had peculiarities which our future history can never
repeat, although something far better is undoubtedly already
resulting thence. Those peculiarities were the natural de-
velopment of the seed sown by our sturdy Puritan ancestry. The
religion of our fathers overhung us children like the shadow of a
mighty tree against the trunk of which we rested, while we looked
up in wonder through the great boughs that half hid and half
revealed the sky. Some of the boughs were already decaying, so
that perhaps we began to see a little more of the sky, than our
elders; but the tree was sound at its heart. There was life in it
that can never be lost to the world.
One thing we are at last beginning to understand, which our
ancestors evidently had not learned; that it is far more needful
for theologians to become as little children, than for little
children to become theologians. They considered it a duty that
they owed to the youngest of us, to teach us doctrines. And we
believed in our instructors, if we could not always digest their
instructions.
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