Library Collections: Document: Full Text

But the best sign of returning health is the change which has taken place in her animal spirits; nor is this change uninteresting in a moral point of view. Before her illness, she was not only a happy but a merry child, who tripped cheerfully along her dark and silent path of life, bearing sportfully a burden of infirmity that would have crushed a stout man, and regarding her existence as a boon given in love, and to be expended in joy; since her illness, she seems to be a thoughtful girl, from whom the spontaneous joy of childhood has departed, and who is cheerful or sad in sympathy with the feelings of those about her.

I hope and believe that her health will be perfectly restored, although it is still very frail, and easily deranged by any over-exertion of body or mind. Perhaps a complete change may take place in her physical system, and her now slender form develop itself into the proportions of a large woman; -- such changes are not unfrequent after such severe crises. At all events, with restoration of health will come a return to those studies and occupations which have been necessarily suspended.

She was just beginning to understand, that, as she was getting freed from the obligations of unconditional obedience to those who had directed her childhood, she must come under no less unconditional obedience to the new monitor and master, -- the conscience, that was asserting its rule within her; and the veneration and affection for human friends, which are the first objects of the awakened germ of the religious feeling, were gradually tending upwards and expanding into worship and love of God.

This transformation of her soul -- this disenthralment of its high and independent powers -- was becoming perfectly clear to her by means of instruction, and would have changed what had been mere habit and blind obedience into conscious duty and stern principle, but the process was necessarily interrupted. Such instruction would of course require the consideration of subjects which were to her of the most intensely exciting interest, and might have cost her life.

I know that many will say that I had already committed a great error by deferring the consideration of these subjects so long, and that I should have tried to retrieve it by giving at once the knowledge which they suppose necessary to eternal salvation, even at the expense of mortal life. To this I have only to answer, that I have gratefully received and carefully weighed all the counsel which has been given to me in the spirit of kindness, but that it has failed to alter my views of my duty.

As to those reverend gentlemen whose talents, and acquirements, and profession free them from fallibility so great as mine, and who have denounced me as "a blind leader of the blind," and bestowed upon me other terms of reproach, which I can more willingly bear than return to them, I have only to say that I think they overlook some of the circumstances of the case. If one of those gentlemen should receive into his household a child who came from a great distance, and whose intellectual and spiritual education had been intrusted to his care, he would doubtless pursue such a course of religious instruction as he conscientiously believed to be for that child's best good; he would not stop to ask what other people think and believe, but would teach the doctrines that he believed himself.

I did not venture, however, to do even so much as this, without first consulting the parents of Laura Bridgman, who are pious and intelligent people of the Orthodox faith. When her education was so far advanced that she could understand some of the doctrines of that religion in the spirit of which we had striven to make her live, I wrote to them to know their wishes. If they held that any particular form of faith and doctrine was necessary to her salvation, they had only to signify it to me. I gave them a general idea of the course which I should follow, if they left it to my discretion, and this course was not one which the gentlemen above alluded to would have approved; nevertheless, the parents did not choose to prescribe any other. They paid me the compliment of leaving me to be the teacher of their child in what I am sure they consider, as I do, to be the most important part of her education.

I should not make these statements and explanations in a Report which will go before the public, if they had no bearing except upon the case of Laura Bridgman, because that is a peculiar one, and for the religious doctrines that I may impart to her I am responsible only to her parents and to God; but they have a bearing upon the general interests of the Institution. They afford an opportunity for noticing insinuations which have been thrown out, that sectarian influence is used in our school. Such insinuations are unjust and injurious. They have been made probably by those who infer from some expressions in my Reports upon Laura Bridgman, that my religious sentiments are what they are pleased to denounce as false and dangerous. The error arises from misunderstanding the nature of those documents; they are special Reports, made by me, and for which I alone am responsible. They do not pretend to give the views of the Trustees or officers of the Institution; nor do they afford any indication of its policy with regard to the religious instruction of the pupils generally.