A writer of our own day, Alice Morse Earle, has well expressed our
opinion when she says in her _Child Life in Colonial Days_: "The
terrible verses telling of God's judgment on the land, of fear of the
pit, of the snare, of emptiness and waste, of destruction and
desolation, must have sunk deep into the heart of the sick child, and
produced the condition shown by this entry when she was a few years
older: 'When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and
told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the Abruptness of
the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection
and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst into an amazing
cry which caus'd all the family to cry too. Her mother ask'd the Reason,
she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should go to Hell, her
Sins were not pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a Sermon of
Mr. Norton's; Text, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And these
words in the Sermon, Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins, ran in her
Mind and terrified her greatly. And staying at home, she read out of Mr.
Cotton Mather--Why hath Satan filled thy Heart? which increas'd her
Fear. Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered Yes, but
fear'd her prayers were not heard, because her sins were not
pardoned.'"[11]

We may well imagine the anguish of Betty Sewall's mother. And yet
neither that mother, whose life had been gloomy enough under the same
religion, nor the father who had led his child into distress by holding
before her her sinful condition, could offer any genuine comfort. Miss
Earle has summarized with briefness and force the results of such
training: "A frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating
sweetheart, an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children;
but always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear of