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titious tale which we can procure; unless the fact that the latter is untrue be kept out of sight.

Almost all children ask instinctively, when a narration is read "Is this a true story?" and we have often witnessed the painful disappointment occasioned by the discovery that it was false. Religious biography is read with more universal interest, probably, than any other species of religious reading. How important then, that the lives of those who were pious in childhood be presented to the young; that at this erring period, they may have models continually before them, not only of ministers, missionaries, and martyrs, who have fought the good fight; but of little children and youth also, who were beset with temptations like their own and were enabled to triumph over them.

MEMOIRS, &c.

Mrs. Susan Huntington was a daughter of the Rev. Achilles Mansfield of Killingworth, in the state of Connecticut. On the maternal side, she was descended from the Rev. John Elliot, who bears the title of the "Indian Apostle." Susan Mansfield was the youngest of three children. She was born Jan. 27th 1791.

At an early age she manifested a very inquisitive mind, particularly on subjects connected with religion and morals. Her sensibility was exquisite, her disposition very docile, and it seemed necessary only to point out to her her duty, to secure its performance. Her conscientiousness was so remarkable in very early childhood, that it is said her father often expressed his firm belief that she was sanctified from her birth. One of her relatives writes thus respecting this subject.

"My opinion of Mrs. Huntington's conversion has always accorded with her mother's (though she herself entertained a different one) viz. that she was sanctified in infancy. The uncommon traits of cha

racter, which she exhibited, when a mere child, can be accounted for on no other principle. She seemed to possess an intuitive perception of what was wrong in opinion and practice.

"From her earliest years, she was remarkable for simplicity and godly sincerity of character; a fearlessness in avowing sentiments which she knew were right; and a boldness, a holy boldness, in defending them, wherever she was, and however unwelcome or unfashionable they might appear; and this at the timid age of thirteen or fourteen years. I have often looked at her with amazement, that she could exert sufficient fortitude and confidence, to introduce and converse upon religious subjects, in a circle composed entirely of the gay and thoughtless of both sexes; at a time when vital religion was at its lowest ebb; when darkness covered the land, and gross darkness the people. I now think, it required a degree of moral courage which few christians, even ministers of the gospel, are able to exert."

"I remember," says the same friend, "that at twelve years of age, at our house, she reproved a gentleman, eminent for science, for a remark which she thought had an infidel tendency."

Other friends regarded Susan as pious at five years of age; but she herself, though probably unable to decide with precision, ultimately considered sixteen as the period when she became a subject of divine grace. Whatever the fact may have been, it

is certain that her tenderness of conscience, her dread of sin, and grief on account of it, seem not to belong to the unrenewed heart. When a very little girl, after having retired to rest one night, she was found to be weeping; and as her distress seemed uncommon, one of the family, probably her mother, went immediately to her room and inquired why she thus wept. Her grief was obviously that of the heart, and she was tenderly urged to tell the cause. She immediately replied with great ingenuousness, that she had been stealing. My readers can hardly conceive of the dismay of a pious parent, in receiving such a disclosure from such a child. On being urged to explain herself, she immediately said, that she had that day passed a very beautiful garden where were many flowers: she stopped to admire, and seeing a very pretty rose putting its head quite through the fence, she had picked it off. How few children, even among those who are favored with the privileges of the present day, would have felt similar compunctions for such an act. Her love of truth was as conspicuous as her honesty, and we never heard of her telling a falsehood, or of her giving even an evasive answer. So very scrupulous was she on this subject, that she seemed afraid to assert any thing with regard to the past without some qualifying expression like the following," if I have not forgotten, or, if I rightly remember." It is true that Susan Mansfield had the advantage of a religious education, and that her pa

rents were very exemplary. But my young readers must remember that a religious education in that day was a very different thing from what it is now. Probably she had never heard of a Sabbath school; as for religious books like those with which children are now favored, they were almost unknown. Watts' Hymns, the Catechisms, the New-England Primer, with the religious lessons of the spelling book, comprised most of the religious reading to which children generally had access. There were a very few others, such as Miss More's repository tracts; Janeway's token; Misses Magazine; (the latter translated from the French, and containing little that was religious, excepting bible stories, and these interspersed with fairy tales ;) a little book called Early Piety; and Bunyan's works: but these were very rare, possessed only by a few families and not considered by children as designed to promote their conversion. There were no tract societies in those days, and probably this little girl never heard of a tract in her childhood. Children were taught to read the bible and say their prayers and hymns and catechisms, with the hope that in maturer years they might reap the benefit of those instructions; and this was called, in most cases, a religious education. Early conversions were not talked of; and it is to be feared, were not generally expected, even by pious parents. Those who gave their children to God in the ordinance of baptism; did not always think themselves christians; and those

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