She encouraged her boys to attend church and Sunday school; but there was no difficulty in seeing that the writings of Swedenborg, and much of the Old and New Testaments had been discredited by her as unworthy of divine authorship or of acceptance as authoritative guides for the conduct of life.  I became deeply interested in the mysterious doctrines of Swedenborg, and received the congratulations of my devout Aunt Aitken upon my ability to expound “spiritual sense.”  That dear old woman fondly looked forward to a time when I should become a shining light in the New Jerusalem, and I know it was sometimes not beyond the bounds of her imagination that I might blossom into what she called a “preacher of the Word.”

As I more and more wandered from man-made theology these fond hopes weakened, but my aunt’s interest in and affection for her first nephew, whom she had dandled on her knee in Scotland, never waned.  My cousin, Leander Morris, whom she had some hopes of saving through the Swedenborgian revelation, grievously disappointed her by actually becoming a Baptist and being dipped.  This was too much for the evangelist, although she should have remembered her father passed through that same experience and often preached for the Baptists in Edinburgh.

Leander’s reception upon his first call after his fall was far from cordial.  He was made aware that the family record had suffered by his backsliding when at the very portals of the New Jerusalem revealed by Swedenborg and presented to him by one of the foremost disciples—­his aunt.  He began deprecatingly: 

“Why are you so hard on me, aunt?  Look at Andy, he is not a member of any church and you don’t scold him.  Surely the Baptist Church is better than none.”

The quick reply came: 

“Andy!  Oh!  Andy, he’s naked, but you are clothed in rags.”

He never quite regained his standing with dear Aunt Aitken.  I might yet be reformed, being unattached; but Leander had chosen a sect and that sect not of the New Jerusalem.

It was in connection with the Swedenborgian Society that a taste for music was first aroused in me.  As an appendix to the hymn-book of the society there were short selections from the oratorios.  I fastened instinctively upon these, and although denied much of a voice, yet credited with “expression,” I was a constant attendant upon choir practice.  The leader, Mr. Koethen, I have reason to believe, often pardoned the discords I produced in the choir because of my enthusiasm in the cause.  When, at a later date, I became acquainted with the oratorios in full, it was a pleasure to find that several of those considered in musical circles as the gems of Handel’s musical compositions were the ones that I as an ignorant boy had chosen as favorites.  So the beginning of my musical education dates from the small choir of the Swedenborgian Society of Pittsburgh.