A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

And peaceful sunshine seemed pouring in at the windows of my life on the day when I stood in the aisle before the pulpit with a group, who, though young, were all much older than myself, and took with them the vows that bound us to his service. Of what was then said and read I scarcely remember more than the words of heavenly welcome in the Epistle, "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners." It was like coming home, like stepping a little farther beyond the threshold in at the open door of our Father's house. Perhaps I was too young to assume those vows. Had I deferred it a few years there would have been serious intellectual hindrances. But it was not the Articles of Faith I was thinking of, although there was a long list of them, to which we all bowed assent, as was the custom. It was the homecoming to the "house not made with hands," the gladness of signifying that I belonged to God's spiritual family, and was being drawn closer to his heart, with whom none of us are held as "strangers and foreigners." I felt that I was taking up again the clue which had been put into my childish hand at baptism, and was being led on by it into the unfolding mysteries of life. Should I ever let it slip from me, and lose the way to the "many mansions" that now seemed so open and so near? I could not think so. It is well that we cannot foresee our falterings and failures. At least I could never forget that I had once felt my own and other lives bound together with the Eternal Life by an invisible thread.