onducted by the Rev. Seth Chandler and the
Rev. Hope Brown, I entered the school the first Monday of the month of
December.

In the preceding June I had received my freedom suit of clothes--blue
coat, bright buttons, black trousers, and buff vest. They were made by
Daniel Cross, of Fitchburg, and, when in 1884, I visited that town, and
found him still engaged in the business, I ordered a dress suit from
his hand.

III
CHANGES AND PROGRESS

As I pass in this record from my childhood and early youth to the
responsibilities of life, I am led to some reflections upon the changes
in opinions and the changes in the condition of the people in the more
than half-century from 1835 to 1899. At the first period there was not
a clergyman of any of the Protestant denominations who questioned the
plenary and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, including the Old and
New Testaments. The suggestion could not have safely been made in any
New England pulpit that there were errors of translation, and yet the
Christian world, outside the Catholic Church, now accepts a revision
that changes the meaning of some passages and excludes others as
interpolations. The account given in the first chapter of Genesis of
the creation of the world and of man was accepted according to the
meaning of the language used. At the present moment there is not a
well-educated clergyman of any denomination who would not either treat
the account as a legend, or else explain the days as periods of
indefinite duration.

The claim of the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Old Testament is
denied by many and doubted by others, and the volume is seen and
treated by them as a compilation of works or books in which are
recorded the thoughts and doings of men and tribes and nations that
existed at different periods and flourished or suffered as is the
fortune of mankind.

The early chapters of Genesis were then a faithful history; they are
now a legend. The Book of Job was then an inspiration; it is now a
poem. The reported interviews between Abraham and Jehovah were then
thought to have been real; now they are treated as the visions of an
excited brain. The ten commandments were then believed to have been
delivered to Moses by the Supreme Being; now they are regarded as the
work of a wise law-giver. Kings and Chronicles are now authentic
histories written by honest men; then those records of events were
attributed to the Supreme Ruler of the world.