urch
was nothing that I had supposed it, but it was a great building, far
greater than any house which I had seen, where men, and women, and
children, came together, twice a day, on Sundays, to hear the Bible
read, and make good resolutions for the week to come. She told me,
that the fine music which we sometimes heard in the air, came from
the bells of St. Mary's church, and that we never heard it but when
the wind was in a particular point. This raised my wonder more than
all the rest; for I had somehow conceived that the noise which I
heard, was occasioned by birds up in the air, or that it was made
by the angels, whom (so ignorant I was till that time) I had always
considered to be a sort of birds: for before this time I was totally
ignorant of any thing like religion, it being a principle of my
father, that young heads should not be told too many things at once,
for fear they should get confused ideas, and no clear notions of any
thing. We had always indeed so far observed Sundays, that no work was
done upon that day, and upon that day I wore my best muslin frock,
and was not allowed to sing, or to be noisy; but I never understood
why that day should differ from any other. We had no public
meetings:--indeed the few straggling houses which were near us, would
have furnished but a slender congregation; and the loneliness of the
place we lived in, instead of making us more sociable, and drawing
us closer together, as my mother used to say it ought to have done,
seemed to have the effect of making us more distant and averse to
society than other people. One or two good neighbours indeed we had,
but not in numbers to give me an idea of church attendance.

But now my mother thought it high time to give me some clearer
instruction in the main points of religion, and my father came readily
into her plan. I was now permitted to sit up half an hour later on a
Sunday evening, that I might hear a portion of Scripture read, which
had always been their custom, though by reason of my tender age, and
my father's opinion on the impropriety of children being taught too
young, I had never till now been an auditor. I was taught my prayers,
and those things which you, ladies, I doubt not, had the benefit of
being instructed in at a much earlier age.

The clearer my notions on these points became, they only made me
more passionately long for the privilege of joining in that social
service, from which it seemed that we alone, of all th