ood by itself in her
memory. "I knew," she says, "it was sacramental Sunday, and thought
with sadness that when all the good people should take the bread and
wine I should be left out. I tried hard to think of my sins and count
them up; but what with the birds, the daisies, and the brooks that
rippled by the way, it was impossible." The sermon of Dr. Beecher was
unusually sweet and tender and when he appealed to his hearers to
trust themselves to Jesus, their faithful friend, she says, "I longed
to cry out I will. Then the awful thought came over me that I had
never had any conviction of my sins and consequently could not come to
him." Happily the inspiration came to her that if she needed
conviction of sin and Jesus were such a friend, he would give it to
her; she would trust him for the whole, and she went home illumined
with joy.

When her father returned, she fell into his arms saying, "Father, I
have given myself to Jesus and he has taken me." "Is it so?" said he.
"Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day." This is
very sweet and beautiful and it shows that Dr. Beecher had a tender
heart under his Calvinistic theology. "If she could have been let
alone," says her son, "and taught to 'look up and not down, forward
and not back, out and not in,' this religious experience might have
gone on as sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in the
gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was not possible at a
time when self-examination was carried to an extreme that was
calculated to drive a nervous and sensitive child well-nigh
distracted. First, even her sister Catharine was afraid that there
might be something wrong in the case of a lamb that had come into the
fold without being first chased all over the lot by the shepherd:
great stress being laid on what was called being under conviction.
Then also the pastor of the First Church in Hartford, a bosom friend
of Dr. Beecher, looked with melancholy and suspicious eyes on this
unusual and doubtful path to heaven."

Briefly stated, these two spiritual guides put Harriet through a
process which brought her to a sense of sin that must have filled
their hearts with joy. She reached the stage when she wrote to her
brother Edward: "My whole life is one continued struggle; I do nothing
right. I am beset behind and before, and my sins take away all my
happiness."

Unfortunately for her, it was at this stage of Harriet's religious
experience that Dr.