worked badly in his case, and had there not been so much real good at the basis of his character it might have led this gentle, yearning boy far from the useful channel along which his life has flown.
His stepmother was a lady of fine mental culture, of elegant breeding and high character, but she was an invalid, and withal thoroughly imbued with the gloomy sternness of her husband's faith. One day little Henry, who was barely able to manage the steady-going old family horse, was driving her in the chaise. They passed a church on their way, and the bell was tolling for a death. "Henry," said Mrs. Beecher, solemnly, "what do you think of when you hear a bell tolling like that?" The boy colored and hung his head in silence, and the good lady went on. "I think, was that soul prepared? It has gone into eternity." The little fellow shuddered, in spite of himself, and thought, no doubt, what a dreadful thing it was to be a Christian.
So it was with the religion that was crammed into him. There was no effort made to draw him to religion by its beauty and tenderness. He rarely heard of the Saviour as the loving one who took little children in His arms and blessed them, but was taught to regard Him as a stern and merciless judge, as one who, instead of being "touched with the feeling of our infirmities," makes those infirmities the means of wringing fresh sufferings from us. Sunday was a day of terror to him, for on that day the Catechism was administered to him until he was more than sick of it. "I think," said he to his congregation, not long since, referring to this part of his life, "that to force childhood to associate religion with such dry morsels is to violate the spirit, not only of the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one thing, that if I am 'lax and latitudinarian,' the Sunday Catechism is to blame for a part of it. The dinners that I have lost because I could not go through 'sanctification,' and 'justification,' and 'adoption,' and all such questions, lie heavily on my memory! I do not know that they have brought forth any blossoms. I have a kind of grudge against many of those truths that I was taught in