Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/123

Rh and his sunshine with renewed dearness on Monday, is a pretty shrewd guess. The awful God of the sanctuary, and the God of her flowers, or the wood, or her friends was a reconcilement easily baffling to one wiser and older than she. She flouted the external glooms in her reactionary moods, made fun of the worthy saints of local fame, dashed into sacrilege and out again before she was caught, all the while dutifully accompanying her family with due meekness to the family pew, until the time came when she gradually was allowed to set up her own church within her own heart at home.

The form and substance of her religion were hardly on speaking terms. Her letters are full of flashes like this—called forth by one of the protracted seasons of revival called an awakening—"I know of no choicer ecstasy than to see Mrs. F roll out in crepe every morning, I presume to intimidate Antichrist." She scorned hypocrisy and writes to Sister Sue: A counterfeit, a plated person I would not be, Whatever strata of Iniquity my nature under-lie Truth is good, health and safety is good— And the sky. How meagre is a lie! And vocal when we die!

To her nephew, detained from church, she wrote:

The Bible is an antique volume Written by faded men, At the suggestion of Holy Spectres— Subjects—Bethlehem— Eden—the ancient Homestead—