Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

In religious speculation Mrs. Child moved in the very van. Her studies and friendships were with the foremost scholars. But it was not merely indifferentism, dissent, and denial — that negative and aggressive element to which Emerson has, of late, so strongly objected. She was penetrated with a deep religious fervor; as devotional, as profound and tender a sentiment as the ignorant devotee.

It has been my lot to find more bigotry and narrowness among free religionists than among their opponents. But Mrs. Child in her many-sidedness did not merely bear with other creeds; she heartily sympathized with all forms of religious belief, pagan, classic, oriental, and Christian. All she asked was that they should be real. That condition present, she saw lovingly their merits and gave to each the fullest credit for its honesty of purpose.

Her “Progress of Religious Ideas” was no mere intellectual effort. It was the natural utterance of a deep, kindly, and respectful sympathy with each. There was no foolish tenderness, no weak sentimentality about her. She held every one, as she did herself, strictly to the sternest responsibility. Still there was the most lovable candor and an admirably level fairness of judgment; always making every allowance and believing to the last in honesty of purpose.

She practised the most rigid economy always and in even the minutest particular. Her own hands ministered to her wants and those of her husband; waste was almost crime. But this hard and painstaking care with one hand was only that the other might be full for liberal gifts.

Franklin has had on one or two generations an evil influence that made them save only to accumulate, resulting in that despicable virtue “prudence ;” despicable when it saps independence and shuts up the over-careful hand.

But Mrs. Child's prudence never held back one needed bold word, and was only to make her more able to give.

There was a delicate shrinking from receiving too many