"Sallie had a very true, deep, strong religious nature, and a
leaning to religious, not to say theological, studies. Alone in
Cincinnati when I first went there, I was often a guest at Mr.
Ellis's Sunday table. Sallie borrowed my sermons. She liked to talk
over the subject of the sermon, and this led to my recommending to
her many books for her reading, and loaning to her what I had in my
library. She became familiar with the writings of most of our
Unitarian writers,--with Channing, Clarke, Hedge, Dewey, Norton,
Furness, and many others. She was no careless reader, but a student
of the writer's thought.... She had great breadth of mental
outlook, and a great heart of charity and love for all. She admired
the diversity of opinion in our body, and had faith in the unity of
the Spirit that would fuse us into one.... If Sallie ever expressed
wonder and surprise, it was that Unitarianism did not grow as fast
as it ought, and that those who accepted its teachings did not
identify themselves with it. We had our Mission School of about
three hundred pupils, and our Sewing School.... The time had not
come for the Pamphlet Mission or the Post Office; yet Miss Ellis
was making the best preparation possible for her after-work, and in
due time the door of best usefulness stood wide open. You know, as
we all know, how well she filled her office.... Her letters were
sermons,--tracts in themselves, best adapted to her correspondents,
and, I am persuaded, did a grand work of their own. She heard with
difficulty, she was not an easy talker, but she wrote with great
clearness.... More than the books she sent out, she was to many a
one the blessed missionary of our faith.... In her early studies
the miracle question was a stumbling-block to Sallie. The old-time
interpretation of miracle she could not accept; neither could she
take up with the mythical theory of Strauss. Miracle must be in
harmony with law. Jesus must be to her the natural flower of
_human_ nature, the perfect blossom of _human_ development. Nature
and the supernatural must be in harmony. Hence the delight she took
in Dr. Furness's works. His works helped her, as they have so many
others, out of her difficulties about the supernatural. And more
than that, they fed her religious life, pure and simple, and let
her into the heart of Christ. She often alluded to her debt to Dr.
Furness, whom she admired and loved."
Miss Ellis little expected or would have desired to figure as a
Unitarian saint. Her estimate of herself was lowly. Whatever her faults
and limitations, however, they were only those natural to a strong
nature driven in upon itself, beating in vain against the stern walls
that everywhere surrounded it. Bravely did she strive to resist what she
clearly perceived to be the natural tendencies of her peculiar troubles,
and bravely did she succeed. The prayers, the tears, the struggles of
those lonely, baffled years are known only to God, and are only hinted
at here and there in the diary kept during a large part of her life. An
unique diary it is, showing, as nothing else could, the passion of
religious devotion which burned in her soul. Each day's record, no
matter how brief, ends with passages of Scripture, or sometimes a hymn,
appropriate to the day's mood or experience. In reading it, one realizes
afresh the richness of the Bible in comfort and strength. The diary
furnishes a complete history of the Unitarian Church of Cincinnati for
many years. All the individual joys and sorrows of its members, their
birthdays and their death-days, are here recorded with loving sympathy.
Also, a complete record of every Sunday's service for many years is
given, with always a full abstract of the sermon, sometimes filling
several pages of fine, close writing. Occasionally it happened that the
minister failed to hand Miss Sallie his sermon after delivery,--a
grievous disappointment, almost too great to bear, as the diary
testifies. Each year the personal matter grows less, the religious
meditations and quotations consume more and more space, until of the
journal in the last years her sister writes: "It seems to have been kept
mainly to give vent to her pure, spiritual nature, which was ever
longing for some expression of itself." A very few extracts are here
given from the diary,--a glimpse only of the struggles and longings that
unconsciously to herself were all fitting her for her work.