 | | goodness both may prove unfortunate for those who come after him. I go for the good old Puritan platform.
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| | "
Your affectionate brother,
"J
ONATHAN
R
OSSITER.
"
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The consequence of all this was, that Tina adopted in her glad and joyous nature the simple, helpful faith of her brother,the faith in an ever good, ever present, ever kind Father, whose child she was and in whose household she had grown up. She had a most unbounded faith in prayer, and in the indulgence and tenderness of the Heavenly Power. All things to her eyes were seen through the halo of a cheerful, sanguine, confiding nature. Life had for her no cloud or darkness or mystery.
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As to myself, I had been taught in the contrary doctrines,that I was a disinherited child of wrath. It is true that this doctrine was contradicted by the whole influence of the minister, who, as I have said before, belonged to the Arminian wing of the Church, and bore very mildly on all these great topics. My grandmother sometimes endeavored to stir him up to more decisive orthodoxy, and especially to a more vigorous presentation of the doctrine of native human depravity. I remember once, in her zeal, her quoting to him as a proof-text the quatrain of Dr. Watts:
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| | "Conceived in sin, O woful state!
Before we draw our breath,
The first young pulse begins to beat
Iniquity and death."
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"That, madam," said Dr. Lothrop, who never forgot to be the grand gentleman under any circumstances,"that, madam, is not the New Testament, but Dr. Isaac Watts, allow me to remind you."
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"Well," said my grandmother, "Dr. Watts got it from the Bible."
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"Yes, madam, a
very long way
from the Bible, allow me to say."
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And yet, after all, though I did not like my grandmother's Calvinistic doctrines, I must confess that she, and all such as
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