Her religious enthusiasm bore fruit at thirteen years of age, in church membership, in Lowell. Not many years after this she was sorry for the step she had taken, for the natural broadening of her mind and the deepening of her consciousness of truth led her far away from the doctrines she had accepted. The sermons that she heard did not seem to satisfy her needs; she longed for spiritual nourishment, for help on the daily path, for thoughts that had some connection with actual temptations and doubts. Most of the discourses dealt ingeniously with exegetical questions, or were massive arguments used to crush the objector, or efforts to prove some metaphysical doctrine. Relating one Sunday’s experience, which has been referred to before in her diary, she said, “I went to meeting, expecting and needing spiritual food, and received only burning coals and ashes. There was a sermon to prove that Satan will be tormented for ever and ever; and the stress of the argument was to prove the endlessness of his punishment.”
Not only did she find a failing sympathy with the preaching and worship, but there were doctrines she could not continue to hold. Among these doctrines were, verbal inspiration of the Bible, which she thought mechanical and destructive of the Spirit’s influence through a distinctive human personality; the Atonement, as the purchase blood of God’s favor for a fallen race; predestination, which seemed to eliminate man’s freedom; and endless punishment, adjudged for acts in this life, without any probation in a future state, which seemed to her contrary to the idea of the Sonship of man. Neither did she care for the emphasis placed on doctrine, as distinguished from life. The central point in her theology was the truth of God’s love, and from this, by logical sequence, came her ideas of His revelation through nature, through human life as His gift, and through character as a manifestation of His glory. She was a student of Maurice, who led her along congenial paths of thought. On Sundays when she remained away from church, she generally read a sermon of Robertson’s; and in his powerful analyses of truth, and in his burning love for the Master, she found continued inspiration. Her love for the person of Jesus increased each year. She felt herself a member of the Invisible Church, being contented with the thought that the visible churches had no claim upon her, because of their errors.