ather naif expedient of reading the Bible straight
through. Having begun her task on Monday, the desired effect was
produced on Thursday, and she felt it possible to skip at once to the
New Testament. The crisis ran through its usual course, ending in a
state of rapture, during which she enjoyed for days 'a kind of beatific
vision of God.' The poor girl was very ill, and expressed 'great
longings to die.' When her brother read in Job about worms feeding on
the dead body, she 'appeared with a pleasant smile, and said it was
sweet to her to think of her being in such circumstances' (iii. 69). The
longing was speedily gratified, and she departed, perhaps not to find in
another world that the universe had been laid out precisely in
accordance with the theories of Mr. Jonathan Edwards, but at least
leaving behind her--so we are assured--memories of touching humility and
spirituality. If Abigail Hutchinson strikes us as representing, on the
whole, rather a morbid type of human excellence, what are we to say to
Phebe Bartlet, who had just passed her fourth birthday in April 1735?
(iii. 70). This infant of more than Yankee precocity was converted by
her brother, who had just gone through the same process at the age of
eleven. She took to 'secret prayer,' five or six times a day, and would
never suffer herself to be interrupted. Her experiences are given at
great length, including a refusal to eat plums, 'because it was sin;'
her extreme interest in a thought suggested to her by a text from the
Revelation, about 'supping with God;' and her request to her father to
replace a cow which a poor man had lost. She took great delight in
'private religious meetings,' and was specially edified by the sermons
of Mr. Edwards, for whom she professed, as he records, with perhaps some
pardonable complacency, the warmest affection. The grotesque side of the
story of this detestable infant is, however, blended with something more
shocking. The poor little wretch was tormented by the fear of
hell-fire; and her relations and pastor appear to have done their best
to stimulate this, as well as other religious sentiments. Edwards boasts
at a subsequent period that 'hundreds of little children' had testified
to the glory of God's work (iii. 146). He afterwards remarks
incidentally that many people had considered as 'intolerable' the
conduct of the ministers in 'frightening poor innocent little children
with talk of hell-fire and eternal damnation' (iii