Part 3 (2/2)
Mr. Symmes showed his G.o.dliness and endurance (and proved that of his paris.h.i.+oners also) by preaching between four and five hours. Sermons which occupied two or three hours were customary enough. One old Scotch clergyman in Vermont, in the early years of this century, bitterly and fiercely resented the ”popish innovation and Sabbath profanation” of a Sunday-school for the children, which some daring and progressive paris.h.i.+oners proposed to hold at the ”nooning.” This canny Parson Whiteinch very craftily and somewhat maliciously prolonged his morning sermons until they each occupied three hours; thus he shortened the time between the two services to about half an hour, and victoriously crowded out the Sunday-school innovators, who had barely time to eat their cold lunch and care for their waiting horses, ere it was time for the afternoon service to begin. But one man cannot stop the tide, though he may keep it for a short time from one guarded and sheltered spot; and the rebellious Vermont congregation, after two or three years of tedious three-hour sermons, arose in a body and crowded out the purposely prolix preacher, and established the wished-for Sunday-school. The vanquished parson thereafter sullenly spent the noonings in the horse-shed, to which he ostentatiously carried the big church-Bible in order that it might not be at the service of the profaning teachers.
An irreverent caricature of the colonial days represents a phenomenally long-preaching clergyman as turning the hour-gla.s.s by the side of his pulpit and addressing his congregation thus, ”Come! you are all good fellows, we'll take another gla.s.s together!” It is recorded of Rev. Urian Oakes that often the hour-gla.s.s was turned four times during one of his sermons. The warning legend, ”Be Short,” which Cotton Mather inscribed over his study door was not written over his pulpit; for he wrote in his diary that at his own ordination he prayed for an hour and a quarter, and preached for an hour and three quarters. Added to the other ordination exercises these long Mather addresses must have been tiresome enough.
Nathaniel Ward deplored at that time, ”Wee have a strong weakness in New England that when wee are speaking, wee know not how to conclude: wee make many ends before wee make an end.”
Dr. Lord of Norwich always made a prayer which was one hour long; and an early Dutch traveller who visited New England a.s.serted that he had heard there on Fast Day a prayer which was two hours long. These long prayers were universal and most highly esteemed,--a ”poor gift in prayer” being a most deplored and even despised clerical short-coming. Had not the Puritans left the Church of England to escape ”stinted prayers”? Whitefield prayed openly for Parson Barrett of Hopkinton, who could pray neither freely, nor well, that ”G.o.d would open this dumb dog's mouth;” and everywhere in the Puritan Church, precatory eloquence as evinced in long prayers was felt to be the greatest glory of the minister, and the highest tribute to G.o.d.
In nearly all the churches the a.s.sembled people stood during prayer-time (since kneeling and bowing the head savored of Romish idolatry) and in the middle of his pet.i.tion the minister usually made a long pause in order that any who were infirm or ill might let down their slamming pew-seats and sit down; those who were merely weary stood patiently to the long and painfully deferred end. This custom of standing during prayer-time prevailed in the Congregational churches in New England until quite a recent date, and is not yet obsolete in isolated communities and in solitary cases. I have seen within a few years, in a country church, a feeble, white-haired old deacon rise tremblingly at the preacher's solemn words ”Let us unite in prayer,”
and stand with bowed head throughout the long prayer; thus pathetically clinging to the reverent custom of the olden time, he rendered tender tribute to vanished youth, gave equal tribute to eternal hope and faith, and formed a beautiful emblem of patient readiness for the last solemn summons.
Sometimes tedious expounding of the Scriptures and long ”prophesying”
lengthened out the already too long service. Judge Sewall recorded that once when he addressed or expounded at the Plymouth Church, ”being afraid to look at the gla.s.s, ignorantly and unwittingly I stood two hours and a half,” which was doing pretty well for a layman.
The members of the early churches did not dislike these long preachings and prophesyings; they would have regarded a short sermon as irreligious, and lacking in reverence, and besides, would have felt that they had not received in it their full due, their full money's worth. They often fell asleep and were fiercely awakened by the t.i.thingman, and often they could not have understood the verbose and grandiose language of the preacher.
They were in an icy-cold atmosphere in winter, and in glaring, unshaded heat in summer, and upon most uncomfortable, narrow, uncus.h.i.+oned seats at all seasons; but in every record and journal which I have read, throughout which ministers and laymen recorded all the annoyances and opposition which the preachers encountered, I have never seen one entry of any complaint or ill-criticism of too long praying or preaching. Indeed, when Rev. Samuel Torrey, of Weymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, prayed two hours without stopping, upon a public Fast Day in 1696, it is recorded that his audience only wished that the prayer had been much longer.
When we consider the training and exercise in prayer that the New England parsons had in their pulpits on Sundays, in their own homes on Sat.u.r.day nights, on Lecture Days and Fast Days and Training Days, and indeed upon all times and occasions, can we wonder at Parson Boardman's prowess in New Milford in 1735? He visited a ”praying” Indian's home wherein lay a sick papoose over whom a ”pow-wow” was being held by a medicine-man at the request of the squaw-mother, who was still a heathen. The Christian warrior determined to fight the Indian witch-doctor on his own grounds, and while the medicine-man was screaming and yelling and dancing in order to cast the devil out ol the child, the parson began to pray with equal vigor and power of lungs to cast out the devil of a medicine-man. As the prayer and pow-wow proceeded the neighboring Indians gathered around, and soon became seriously alarmed for the success of their prophet. The battle raged for three hours, when the pow-wow ended, and the disgusted and exhausted Indian ran out of the wigwam and jumped into the Housatonic River to cool his heated blood, leaving the Puritan minister triumphant in the belief, and indeed with positive proof, that he could pray down any man or devil.
The colonists could not leave the meeting-house before the long sen ices were ended, even had they wished, for the t.i.thingman allowed no deserters.
In Salem, in 1676, it was ”ordered by ye Selectmen yt the three Constables doe attend att ye three greate doores of ye meeting-house every Lordes Day att ye end of ye sermon, both forenoone and afternoone, and to keep ye doores fast and suffer none to goe out before ye whole exercises bee ended.” Thus Salem people had to listen to no end of praying and prophesying from their ministers and elders for they ”couldn't get out.”
As the years pa.s.sed on, the church attendants became less referential and much more impatient and fearless, and soon after the Revolutionary War one man in Medford made a bargain with his minister--Rev. Dr. Osgood--that he would attend regularly the church services every Sunday morning, provided he could always leave at twelve o'clock. On each Sabbath thereafter, as the obstinate preacher would not end his sermon one minute sooner than his habitual time, which was long after twelve, the equally stubborn limited-time wors.h.i.+pper arose at noon, as he had stipulated, and stalked noisily out of meeting.
A minister about to preach in a neighboring parish was told of a custom which prevailed there of persons who lived at a distance rising and leaving the house ere the sermon was ended. He determined to teach them a lesson, and announced that he would preach the first part of his sermon to the sinners, and the latter part to the saints, and that the sinners would of course all leave as soon as their portion had been delivered. Every soul remained until the end of the service.
At last, when other means of entertainment and recreation than church-going became common, and other forms of public addresses than sermons were frequently given, New England church-goers became so restless and rebellious under the regime of hour-long prayers and indefinitely protracted sermons that the long services were gradually condensed and curtailed, to the relief of both preacher and hearers.
VIII.
The Icy Temperature of the Meeting-House.
In colonial days in New England the long and tedious services must have been hard to endure in the unheated churches in bitter winter weather, so bitter that, as Judge Sewall pathetically recorded, ”The communion bread was frozen pretty hard and rattled sadly into the plates.” Sadly down through the centuries is ringing in our ears the gloomy rattle of that frozen sacramental bread on the Church plate, telling to us the solemn story of the austere and comfortless church-life of our ancestors. Would that the sound could bring to our chilled hearts the same steadfast and pure Christian faith that made their gloomy, freezing services warm with G.o.d's loving presence!
Again Judge Sewall wrote: ”Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. Blows much more as coming home at Noon, and so holds on. Bread was frozen at Lord's Table. Though 't was so cold John Tuckerman was baptized. At six o'clock my ink freezes, so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my Wives chamber. Yet was very Comfortable at Meeting.” In the penultimate sentence of this quotation may be found the clue and explanation of the seemingly incredible a.s.sertion in the last sentence. The reason why he was comfortable in church was that he was accustomed to sit in cold rooms; even with the great open-mouthed and open-chimneyed fireplaces full of blazing logs, so little heat entered the rooms of colonial dwelling-houses that one could not be warm unless fairly within the chimney-place; and thus, even while sitting by the fire, his ink froze. Another entry of Judge Sewall's tells of an exceeding cold day when there was ”Great Coughing” in meeting, and yet a new-born baby was brought into the icy church to be baptized.
Children were always carried to the meeting-house for baptism the first Sunday after birth, even in the most bitter weather. There are no entries in Judge Sewall's diary which exhibit him in so lovable and gentle a light as the records of the baptism of his fourteen children,--his pride when the child did not cry out or shrink from the water in the freezing winter weather, thus early showing true Puritan fort.i.tude; and also his n.o.ble resolves and hopes for their future. On this especially cold day when a baby was baptized, the minister prayed for a mitigation of the weather, and on the same day in another town ”Rev. Mr. Wigglesworth preached on the text, Who can stand before His Cold? Then by his own and people's sickness three Sabbaths pa.s.sed without public Wors.h.i.+p.” February 20 he preached from these words: ”He sends forth his word and thaws them.” And the very next day a thaw set in which was regarded as a direct answer to his prayer and sermon. Sceptics now-a-days would suggest that he chose well the time to pray for milder weather.
Many persons now living can remember the universal and noisy turning up of great-coat collars, the swinging of arms, and knocking together of the heavy-booted feet of the listeners towards the end of a long winter sermon.
Dr. Hopkins used to say, when the noisy tintamarre began, ”My hearers, have a little patience, and I will soon close.”
Another clergyman was irritated beyond endurance by the stamping, clattering feet, a _supplosio pedis_ that he regarded as an irreverent protest and complaint against the severity of the weather, rather than as a hint to him to conclude his long sermon. He suddenly and noisily closed his sermon-book, leaned forward out of his high pulpit, and thundered out these Biblical words of rebuke at his freezing congregation, whose startled faces stared up at him through dense clouds of vapor. ”Out of whose womb came the ice? And the h.o.a.ry frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Knowest thou the ordinance of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof on the earth?
Great things doth G.o.d which we cannot comprehend. He saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth. By the breath of G.o.d frost is given. He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land, or for mercy. Hearken unto this. _Stand still_, and consider the wondrous works of G.o.d.” We can believe that he roared out the words ”stand still,” and that there was no more noise in that meeting-house on cold Sundays during the remainder of that winter.
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