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"I am aware that many will say it is impossible that Laura, ignorant as she is, should have by herself conceived the existence of God, because it is said that of the thousands of deaf-mutes who have been received into the institutions of this country, no one ever arrived at the truth unaided.

"Now there is very great vagueness in such general negations; the words can be taken in various senses, and are difficult to be proved in any. It may be said that no man ever arrived at the knowledge of the fact that ten and ten make twenty by the unassisted efforts of his own mind; for if he had never associated with other human beings he would probably never have perceived that relation between numbers.

"The words 'knowledge of God 'may also be understood in different ways; if a child ascertains that tables and chairs and carpets; houses, ships and machinery; carriages, tools, watches, and a thousand other things, are made by men, and then infers that the sun, moon, and stars, the hills, rivers, and rocks, must have been created, but could not have been made by man, -- that child has an idea of the existence of God; and when you teach him the three letters G-O-D, -- you do not make to him a revelation of God's existence; you only give to him a name for a power the existence of which he had already conceived in his own mind. We teachers are apt to overrate our own efforts: let us attempt to convey a knowledge of abstract truths to parrots and monkeys, and then we shall know how much is done by children, and how little by ourselves.

"It is in this sense that I mean to be understood when I say that Laura Bridgman of herself arrived at the conception of the existence of God.

"Unless there has been some intellectual process in a child's mind, the words God, Deity, etc., must be utterly insignificant to it. We pronounce certain words with great solemnity and reverence, and the child perceives and understands our manner, for that is the natural language of our feelings; he imitates us, and the repetition of the words will ever after, by association of ideas, call up in his mind the same vague feelings of solemnity and reverence; but all this may be unaccompanied by anything like an intellectual perception of God's existence and creative power.

"It will be said that children three years old will repeat devoutly the Lord's Prayer, and tell correctly what God did on each of the six days of creation; but in so doing they too often take the name of the Lord in vain, and sometimes, alas! worse than in vain. ...

"It may be said that no human being can have any adequate idea of God's attributes, and that therefore all we have to do is to give Laura such ideas of Him as pious Christians form from the study of natural and revealed religion; but I know not what others may do, I cannot do this. . .

"I might long ago have taught the Scriptures to Laura; she might have learned, as other children do, to repeat line upon line, and precept upon precept; she might have been taught to imitate others in prayer; but her God must have been her own God, and formed out of the materials with which her mind had been stored. It was my wish to give her gradually such ideas of His power and love as would have enabled her to form the highest possible conception of His divine attributes. In doing this, it was necessary to guard as much as I could against conveying impressions which it would be hard to remove afterwards, and to prevent her forming such notions as would seem unworthy to her more developed reason, lest the renouncement of them might impair her confidence in her own belief.

"But various causes have combined to prevent what seemed to me the natural and harmonious development of her religious nature; and now, like other children, she must take the consequences of the wise or unwise instruction given by others. I did not long hold the only key to her mind; it would have been unkind and unjust to prevent her using her power of language as fast as she acquired it, in conversation with others, merely to carry out a theory of my own, and she was left to free communication with many persons even before my necessary separation from her of more than a year.

"During my absence, and perhaps before, some persons more zealous than discreet, and more desirous to make a proselyte than to keep conscientiously their implied promise of not touching upon religious topics, -- some such persons talked to her of the Atonement, of the Redeemer, the Lamb of God, and of some very mystical points of mere speculative doctrine. These things were perhaps not farther beyond her comprehension than they were beyond the comprehension of those persons who assumed to talk to her about them; but they perplexed and troubled her, because, unlike such persons, she wished that every word should be the symbol of some clear and definite idea.

"She could not understand metaphorical language; hence the Lamb of God was to her a bona fide animal, and she could not conceive why it should continue so long a lamb, and not grow old like others and be called a sheep.