I have no fears for myself, and listen very quietly to all your debates.  I go from your philosophical discussions to the reading of Jeremy Taylor’s “Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying” without feeling that I have unfitted myself in the least degree for its solemn reflections.  And, as I have mentioned his name, I cannot help saying that I do not believe that good man himself would have ever shown the bitterness to those who seem to be at variance with the received doctrines which one may see in some of the newspapers that call themselves “religious.”  I have kept a few old books from my honored father’s library, and among them is another of his which I always thought had more true Christianity in its title than there is in a good many whole volumes.  I am going to take the book down, or up,—­for it is not a little one,—­and write out the title, which, I dare say, you remember, and very likely you have the book.  “Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, showing the Unreasonableness of prescribing to other Men’s Faith, and the Iniquity of persecuting Different Opinions.”

Now, my dear sir, I am sure you believe that I want to be liberal and reasonable, and not to act like those weak alarmists who, whenever the silly sheep begin to skip as if something was after them, and huddle together in their fright, are sure there must be a bear or a lion coming to eat them up.  But for all that, I want to beg you to handle some of these points, which are so involved in the creed of a good many well-intentioned persons that you cannot separate them from it without picking their whole belief to pieces, with more thought for them than you might think at first they were entitled to.  I have no doubt you gentlemen are as wise as serpents, and I want you to be as harmless as doves.

The Young Girl who sits by me has, I know, strong religious instincts.  Instead of setting her out to ask all sorts of questions, I would rather, if I had my way, encourage her to form a habit of attending to religious duties, and make the most of the simple faith in which she was bred.  I think there are a good many questions young persons may safely postpone to a more convenient season; and as this young creature is overworked, I hate to have her excited by the fever of doubt which it cannot be denied is largely prevailing in our time.

I know you must have looked on our other young friend, who has devoted himself to the sublimest of the sciences, with as much interest as I do.  When I was a little girl I used to write out a line of Young’s as a copy in my writing-book,

     “An undevout astronomer is mad”;