mon one. William Cullen Bryant says of himself, "The Calvinistic
system of divinity I adopted of course, as I heard nothing else taught
from the pulpit, and supposed it to be the accepted belief of the
religious world." But it was not the "five points" which remained in the
young poet's memory and shaped his higher life. It was the influence of
his mother that left its permanent impression after the questions and
answers of the Assembly's Catechism had faded out, or remained in memory
only as fossil survivors of an extinct or fast-disappearing theological
formation. The important point for him, as for so many other children of
Puritan descent, was not his father's creed, but his mother's character,
precepts, and example. "She was a person," he says, "of excellent
practical sense, of a quick and sensitive moral judgment, and had no
patience with any form of deceit or duplicity. Her prompt condemnation of
injustice, even in those instances in which it is tolerated by the world,
made a strong impression upon me in early life; and if, in the discussion
of public questions, I have in my riper age endeavored to keep in view
the great rule of right without much regard to persons, it has been owing
in a great degree to the force of her example, which taught me never to
countenance a wrong because others did."

I have quoted this passage because it was an experience not wholly unlike
my own, and in certain respects like that of Number Five. To grow up in
a narrow creed and to grow out of it is a tremendous trial of one's
nature. There is always a bond of fellowship between those who have been
through such an ordeal.

The experiences we have had in common naturally lead us to talk over the
theological questions which at this time are constantly presenting
themselves to the public, not only in the books and papers expressly
devoted to that class of subjects, but in many of the newspapers and
popular periodicals, from the weeklies to the quarterlies. The pulpit
used to lay down the law to the pews; at the present time, it is of more
consequence what the pews think than what the minister does, for the
obvious reason that the pews can change their minister, and often do,
whereas the minister cannot change the pews, or can do so only to a very
limited extent. The preacher's garment is cut according to the pattern
of that of the hearers, for the most part. Thirty years ago, when I was
writing on theological subjects, I came in for a ve