observe, in passing, that I heard, in those days, a great deal of
dissent expressed from the popular theology, beside my uncle's. I heard
it often from my father and his friends. It was a frequent topic in our
house, especially after a sermon on the decrees, or election, or
the sinner's total inability to comply with the conditions on which
salvation was offered to him. The dislike of these doctrines increased
and spread here, till it became a revolt of nearly half the town, I
think, against them; and thirty years ago a Liberal [39] society might
have been built up in Sheffield, and ought to have been. I very
well remember my father's coming home from the General Court [The
Massachusetts Legislative Assembly is so called.--M. E. D.], of which he
was a member, and expressing the warmest admiration of the preaching of
Channing. The feeling, however, of hostility to the Orthodox faith,
in his time, was limited to a few; but somebody in New York, who was
acquainted with it,--I don't know who,--sent up some infidel books. One
of them was lying about in our house, and I remember seeing my mother
one day take it and put it into the fire. It was a pretty resolute act
for one of the gentlest beings that I ever knew, and decisively showed
where she stood. She did not sympathize with my father in his views of
religion, but meekly, and I well remember how earnestly, she sought and
humbly found the blessed way, such as was open to her mind.

As my whole view of religion was changed from indifference or aversion
to a profound interest in it, a change very naturally followed in my
plan for future life, that is, in my choice of a profession,--very
naturally, at least then; I do not say that it would be so now. I
expected to be a lawyer; and I have sometimes been inclined to regret
that I was not; for courts of law always have had, and have still, a
strange fascination for me, and I see now that a lawyer's or physician's
life may be [40] actuated by as lofty principles, and may be as noble
and holy, as a clergyman's. But I did not think so then. Then, I felt
as if the life of a minister of religion were the only sacred, the only
religious life; as, in regard to the special objects with which it
is engaged, it is. But what especially moved me to embrace it, I will
confess, was a desire to vindicate for religion its rightful claim and
place in the world, to roll off the cloud and darkness that lay upon it,
and to show it in its true light.