The churches in Lowell stimulated her religious thought. At thirteen years of age, she stood up before her beloved minister, Dr. Amos Blanchard, and professed her belief in the Christian religion, and for many years found refreshment in the Sunday services. But as she grew older, she found many of the doctrines of Calvinistic Orthodoxy difficult for her to accept, and she regretted the step she had taken. The worship was not always helpful to her, especially the long prayer:--
“That long prayer Was like a toilsome journey round the world, By Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon, To come at our own door-stone, where He stood Waiting to speak to us, the Father dear, Who is not far from any one of us.”[3]
She admired the picturesque Episcopal church of St. Ann’s, with its vine-wreathed stone walls, “an oasis amid the city’s dust.” The Church for which this venerable edifice stood was to be her final religious home, and in its stately services and sacred rites she was to find the spiritual nourishment of her later years.
She took an interest in the movements of politics, especially the question of slavery; she was an Abolitionist with the strongest feelings, from the first. She had some scruples about working on the cotton which was produced by slave labor:--
“When I have thought what soil the cotton plant We weave is rooted in, what waters it-- The blood of souls in bondage--I have felt That I was sinning against light, to stay And turn the accursèd fibre into cloth For human wearing. I have hailed one name-- You know it--‘Garrison’--as a soul might hail His soul’s deliverer.”[4]
Whenever a petition for the abolition of slavery was circulated, to be sent to Congress, it was always sure to have the name of Lucy Larcom upon it. The poetry of Mr. Whittier had aroused her spirit, and though she does not seem to have written any of her stirring anti-slavery verses until years later, she was nursing the spark that during the Civil War blew into a flame.
It was in 1843, while in Lowell, that she first met Mr. Whittier, who was editing the “Middlesex Standard.” Being present at one of the meetings of the “Improvement Circle,” he heard her read one of her poems, “Sabbath Bells:”--