It is true that Mary Baker made a religious profession at this time. She was examined at the age of twelve by the pastor who eagerly put to her the usual “doleful questions,” declaring that he must be assured that she had been truly regenerated. With the eyes of the church members upon her and her own father’s haggard face visible from his place in their family pew, she answered without a tremor:
“I can only say in the words of the psalmist, ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’”
Her childish, but resolute figure, and the grave words so earnestly spoken, brought about a reaction in her favor and the oldest church members wept. Her pastor relented toward her and the ordeal was over. However, it was not until the age of seventeen that she united with the Congregational church.
The circumstances of her struggle with her father made a profound impression on her and the watchful love of her mother saw fit to send her on a visit to a friend in the suburbs of Boston under the care of her brother Samuel. These friends received her with kindness and sought to draw her thoughts away from serious questions with bright entertainment and pleasant diversion. That they did not entirely succeed is shown in some of her verses written at this time in which, while she shows a rapturous love of nature, she declares that all this is the poet’s world-wish and only a shadow hastening
