"You have helped me not a little in my search for truth. Before I
first wrote you for tracts, etc., I knew absolutely nothing of
Unitarianism beyond the term, and the fact that Unitarians did not
believe Christ to have been God."
Miss Ellis corresponded with him from that time on, loaning many books,
etc. It was never her wish or aim to unsettle persons of a fixed faith.
She sought rather to reach and help those who, by reading and thinking,
had become dissatisfied with the only forms of religious faith known to
them, and were consequently drifting into scepticism. Mr. ----'s own
letters best tell the story. After Miss Ellis's death, he wrote Feb.
3,1886:
"I had long been wondering why I did not hear from her, but
supposed that she found her time so engrossed with her chosen work
that she must defer writing until some more convenient season. She
had, it is true, hinted at her failing health, but I never dreamed
it was so bad. My first intimation of the real state of affairs was
the notice of her death. I need not say that I was startled, that I
regret our common loss; these are but feeble expressions.
"Through all my life here at Cambridge I have been anticipating the
day when, returning West, I should meet her, and in some degree
thank her for the help and comfort she brought me in life. This has
become such a fixed idea with me, that it is hard to believe, as I
write this, that it can never be in this world. It seems very
strange that the one friend who did me such a supreme kindness in
life I shall never meet.
"She was the very messenger of God to me, and is inseparably
associated with the most trying period of my life. The only
conceptions of religion I had ever had were proving unreal and
worthless, and no one offered anything as a substitute. As I look
back, the peril of my situation seems much greater than it did at
the time. I fear I should have become insincere, or, what is
perhaps almost as bad, should have fallen into a sort of despairing
scepticism. Heaven in mercy saved me from it; but I shall not
forget that even Heaven might not have found a way to do this, had
there been no Miss Ellis. It was but a little thing, a trifle, a
brief notice in a daily paper, that in some way caught a careless
reader's eye. But my whole life is changed in consequence.
"And so, while you miss her in her place and in your work, in your
church and social life, I, too, here in New England miss her. I
feel as if something is gone out of my life and I have really one
less reason for returning West when my school work is done. But I
have if possible an additional incentive to a good life. I trust I
shall hear that your work is still going on successfully. I assure
you I shall never lose interest in your Mission, and shall never
cease to regard it as in some sense a home into which I was
adopted. I sincerely hope I shall never do it any discredit."