But some there are,
born of that resolute manliness of the fathers, which is finer than
tempered steel, and of the conscience of the mothers which is more
sensitive than the bare nerve,--the very flower of the Puritan
tradition, and my heart goes out to them. And if there be a youth in
our days who feels hesitancy in such an early surrender into the bosom
of a Church, however broadly inclusive of firm consciences, strong
heads, and free hearts; if primitive Puritanism is bred in his bone and
blood and is there the large reserve of liberty natural to the American
heart; if the spirit is so living in him that he dispenses with the
form, which to those of less strenuous strain is rather a support; if
truth is so precious to him that he will not subscribe to more or less
than he believes, or tolerate in inclusive statements speculative and
uncertain elements, traditional error, and all that body of rejected
doctrine which, though he himself be free from it, must yet be slowly
uprooted from the general belief; if emotion is so sacred to him that
his native and habitual reticence becomes so sensitive in this most
private part of life as to make it here something between God and him
only; if his heart of charity and hand of friendship find out his
fellow-men with no intervention; if for these reasons, or any of them,
or if from that modesty of nature, which is so much more common in
American youth than is believed, he hesitates, out of pure awe of the
responsibility before God and man which he incurs, to think himself
worthy of such vows, such hopes, such duties,--if in any way, being of
noble nature, he keeps by himself,--let him not think he thereby
withdraws from the life of Christendom, nor that in the Church itself he
may not still take some portion of its great good.
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