Part 9 (1/2)
Religious observances played an important part in the early days of the settlement. The first statute made by an early legislative a.s.sembly, requires that in every plantation some house or room be specially dedicated to the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, sequestered and set apart for that purpose, and not to be of any temporal use whatever.
It is curious, in view of this last clause, to find it recorded of the House of Burgesses itself: ”The most convenient place wee could finde to site in was the quire of the churche.” Surely no place could have been more appropriate for the gathering of the first free a.s.sembly of the people in America, and it was equally fitting that their proceedings should open with a prayer for guidance in the path which was destined to be darker and more difficult than they knew. ”Forasmuch as men's affaires doe little prosper when G.o.d's service is neglected,” a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister, ”that it would please G.o.d to guide and sanctifie all our proceedings to His owne glory and the good of this Plantation.”
If the church of that time was devoted to temporal uses, religious services were not confined within its walls. Alexander Whitaker, the apostle of Virginia, writes home that he _exercises_ at the house of the governor, Sir Thomas Dale, every Sat.u.r.day night. This ”exercising,” or hearing of the catechism, with prayer and song, in private houses, was a matter of necessity in days when a parish covered a s.p.a.ce hardly to be crossed in a day's journey, with the roads or bridle-paths choked with undergrowth, and blocked by fallen logs. The Rev. Mr. Forbes seems to have been of a complaining nature, yet he rouses one's sympathy when he tells of the difficulties under which he labored.
”My parish,” he says, ”extendeth LX miles in length, in breadth about XI.”
Over this distance were scattered some four hundred families, to whom he was expected to minister. ”Sometimes,” he goes on plaintively, ”after I have travelled Fifty Miles to Preach at a Private House, the weather happening to prove bad on the day of our meeting so that very few met, or else being hindred by Rivers and Swamps rendred impa.s.sable with much rain, I have returned with doing of nothing to their benefit or mine own satisfaction.”
Few clergymen of that day and region took their duties so seriously. They were for the most part quite willing to have service read by some deputy-priest or layman in the ”chapels of ease;” or if they must officiate, they chose some sermon from Thomas Fuller or Jeremy Taylor, or, as a last resort, constructed one at small expense of labor on a scaffolding of headings resting on an underpinning of text. A fine example of this method of sermon-building I find in the discourse sent home by the pious Whitaker. He takes as his text, ”Cast thy bread upon the waters,”
and expounds it after this fas.h.i.+on:
”1. The dutie to be performed: _Cast thy bread._ Be liberal to all.
”2. The manner of bestowing alms: By _casting_ it away.
”3. What is to be given? _Bread_; all things needful, yes, and of the best kind.
”4. Who may be liberal? Even those that have it. It must be _thy_ bread--thine own.
”5. To whom we must be liberal: To all; yea to the _Waters_.”
This kind of sermon had the double advantage of being easy for the preacher, and restful to the congregation. It went along at a comfortable jog-trot, like a family horse, and the hearer was in no danger of being hurled over the head of revival eloquence into lurid threats of future punishment. If the preachers of the Church of England did not kindle spiritual ardor, at least they did not keep children awake o' nights, nor frighten nervous women into hysterics.
While these drowsy discourses were going on in the Southern colonies, the Puritan divine in the New England pulpit was throwing off such cheerful observations as these: ”Every natural man and woman is born full of all sin, as full as a toad is of poison, as full as ever his skin can hold; mind, will, eyes, mouth; every limb of his body and every piece of his mind.” The future awaiting such a wretch, he sets forth vividly: ”Thou canst not endure the torments of a little kitchen-fire on the tip of thy finger, not one-half hour together. How wilt thou bear the fury of this infinite, endless, consuming fire in body and soul!” To these inspiring doctrines of the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, another Puritan preacher added his conviction that ”there are infants in h.e.l.l not a span long.”
To the credit of the Colonial Church of England be it recorded that no such sentiments disgraced its pulpit and made its Sabbath terrible to little children. The day was one of innocent enjoyment, and the church building was dear to generation after generation, as a peaceful and memory-hallowed spot. The early settlers had little money to spend in adorning their churches, yet from the beginning there was a great difference between the bare and square wooden New England meeting-house and the quaint Southern church of brick or stone, recalling in every line the beloved parish churches of Old England. The churchmen, unlike the Puritans, found no sin in beauty or adornment. St. John's Church at Hampton bore the royal arms carved on its steeple. Colonel Springer left by his will one thousand pounds of tobacco to pay for having the Lord's Prayer and Commandments put up in the new church at Northampton. By a statute of 1660, parishes are enjoined to provide at their own cost a great church Bible and two books of Common Prayer in folio for the minister and ”clark”; also communion-plate, pulpit-cloth, and cus.h.i.+on, ”that all things may be done orderly and decently in the church.”
In the next century, there is a record of an order sent to England for gold-leaf to enrich a chancel, which was to be made gorgeous with an original painting of an angel holding back a crimson curtain, draped with a golden cord and ta.s.sel.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Y{e} Pulpit.]
The pulpits in the old churches were placed at an angle, if the church were in the form of a cross; or if the building were an oblong on one side. These pulpits were so high that, unless the preacher were very tall, nothing could be seen by the congregation but the top of his head. Bishop Meade confesses that when he was to speak from one of these old box-pulpits, he would often hurry to church before his hearers, in order to pile up bricks or boards on which to stand. The good bishop must sometimes have found his thoughts sadly distracted from the sermon by the necessity of keeping his balance on his improvised platform.
The sharp distinction of cla.s.ses, which was so marked a feature of the Cavalier Colonies, showed itself even in church. Certain pews were set apart and marked ”Magistrates” and ”Magistrates' Ladies.” Into these the great folks marched solemnly on Sundays, followed by their slaves bearing prayer-books, and never suspecting that their conduct was at variance with gospel principles. The great families kept their private pews for generations, and held firmly to their privileges. Matthew Kemp, as churchwarden, was commended by his vestry for displacing ”a presuming woman, who would fain have taken a pew above her degree.” In the very earliest church, Lord De la Warre's seat was upholstered in green velvet with a green ”cooshoon;” Governor Spotswood's pew in Bruton Parish Church at Williamsburg was raised from the floor, and covered with a canopy, while the interior was ornamented with his name in gilt letters. In 1750, it was ordered by the vestry of St. Paul's Church, Norfolk, that ”three captains and Mr. Charles Sweeny be allowed to build a gallery reaching from the gallery of Mr. John Taylor to the school-boys' gallery, to be theirs and their heirs' forever.”
Was.h.i.+ngton's pew was an ample square, fitted with cus.h.i.+ons for sitting and kneeling. The Puritans would have thought it a glaring iniquity to pay such heed to creature comfort in the house of G.o.d. They would have been more in sympathy with the Virginia dame of high degree who, in tardy atonement for her pride, directed that her body be buried under the pavement in the aisle occupied by the poor of the church, that they might trample on her dust. Such gloomy and ascetic a.s.sociations with the house of G.o.d were rare at the South. The church was a centre of cheerfulness, and the Sabbath was supposed to be a day of innocent enjoyment. All work was frowned upon as inconsistent with a due observance of its sanct.i.ty, however; and the Grand Jury in Middles.e.x County, Virginia, in 1704, presented Thomas Simms, for travelling on the road on Sunday with a loaded beast, William Montague and Garrett Minor for bringing oysters ash.o.r.e on the Sabbath, James Senis for swearing and cursing on the holy day; but outside such restrictions as these, no Blue Laws enforced gloom as part of the decorum of Sunday-keeping.
When the church-bell, hung usually from the bough of a tree, began to ring for service, the roads were filled with wors.h.i.+ppers moving churchward, full of peace and good-will. First might be seen the young men on horseback, with the tails of their coats carefully pinned in front, to protect them from the sweat of their horses' flanks. Lumbering slowly after these equestrians came the great family-coaches, from which the ladies are a.s.sisted by the dismounted gallants. Every young damsel is planning some social festivity. Before or after service, invitations are given, and visits of weeks in length are arranged at the church door. It is to be feared that these colonial maidens sometimes allow their thoughts to wander in sermon-time, from their quaint little prayer-books, with their uneven type and crooked f's, and that they are thinking of dinners while they confess themselves sinners. But their levity is not treated severely by the priest, for he is as eager for his Madeira as his young paris.h.i.+oners are eager for their minuet.
They were jolly dogs, those colonial clergymen of the Church of England in the eighteenth century, and no more to be taken seriously than Friar Tuck, whose apostolic successors they were. Paris.h.i.+oners who wished spiritual counsel had difficulty in finding the parson. In the morning he was fox-hunting, in the afternoon he was over (or under) the dining-table, and the midnight candle shone on his wine-cup and dice-box.
Like their brethren across the Atlantic, the colonial clergy were strong on doctrine. ”They abhorred popery, atheism, and idolatries in general, and hiccupped 'Church and State!' with fervor.” Yet their morals were at so low an ebb as to justify the complaint made against them that they were ”such as wore black coats and could gabble in a pulpit, roar in a tavern, exact from their paris.h.i.+oners, and rather by their dissoluteness destroy than feed their flock.”
One clergyman a.s.saulted a dignitary in vestry-meeting, pulling off his wig and subjecting him to various indignities, and capped the climax of audacity by preaching the next Sunday from the text: ”I contended with them and cursed them, and smote certain of them and pulled off their hair.” Another minister fought a duel behind his church, and a third, the Rev. Thomas Blewer (p.r.o.nounced probably _Blower_), was presented by the Grand Jury as a common swearer. All efforts to reform the clergy were in vain. Ministers were sometimes tried for drunkenness, and some of the tests of what const.i.tutes drunkenness were laid down by the court: ”Sitting an hour or longer in the company where they are drinking strong drink and in the mean time drinking of healths, or otherwise taking the cups as they come round, like the rest of the company; striking or challenging or threatening to fight.” Staggering, reeling, and incoherent speech are justly regarded as suspicious circ.u.mstances, and the advice continues: ”Let the proof of these signs proceed so far till the judges conclude that behavior at such time was scandalous, undecent, unbecoming the dignity of a minister.” There is unfortunately only too clear a case against the colonial clergy; but it is only fair to take into account the condition of the church at home. If the clergymen in Maryland and Virginia gambled and drank, so did those in England and Wales. Did not Sterne grace the ca.s.sock? Did not Gay propose taking orders for a living, and did not Swift write from a deanery stuff too vile for print? There was some talk at one time of sending this great Dr. Swift over to Virginia as a bishop, and a worthy one he would have been, to such a church.
The eighteenth century was a period of decadence in the colonial ministry.
Things had not always been so bad. When the first settlers came to America, the clergymen who accompanied them were men of sterling worth and character. They were moved by a hope of converting the Indians, and came in a true missionary spirit. The journals of those adventurers testify to the courage with which their chaplain braved dangers and bore discomforts. ”By unprosperous winds,” they say, ”we were kept six weeks in sight of England; all which time Master Hunt, our preacher, was so weake and sicke that few expected his recovery. Yet, although we were but twentie myles from his habitation, and notwithstanding the stormy weather, nor the scandalous imputations against him, all this could never force from him so much as a seeming desire to leave the businesse.” All through the journey he was brave and cheerful, though there was a constant ferment of wrath in that hot-headed s.h.i.+p's company, which might have ended in bloodshed, ”had he not, with the water of patience and his G.o.dly exhortations, but chiefly by his true, devoted example, quenched those flames of envy and detraction.” Finally, after the fire at Jamestown, Master Hunt lost all his library and ”all he had but the cloathes on his backe, yet none never heard him repine at his loss.”
Following Hunt came the good Whitaker, ”a schollar, a graduate, a preacher well born and well friended in England,” who from conscientious desire to help the savages left ”his warm nest and, to the wonder of his kinsmen, and to the amazement of them that knew him,” undertook this perilous enterprise. Of such pith and worth were these first priests; but the Indian ma.s.sacre made a great change. Friendly intercourse with the natives being cut off, there was no chance for missionary work among them, and the plantations were too far apart to make a vigorous church life possible.
The pay was small and the field barren, so that there was little temptation either to the ambitious and intellectual, or to the spiritually minded cla.s.s of the clergy, to come to America. They were as a rule, therefore, the ignorant, the dissipated, and the _mauvais sujets_ who filled the colonial livings. Yet at the lowest ebb there were exceptions to this rule. There, for instance, was Rector Robert Rose, whose tombstone describes him as discharging with the most tender piety the ”domestick”
duties of husband, father, son, and brother, and in short as ”a friend to the whole human race.” His journal gives a glimpse of his relations with his parish, very cheering in the dreary waste of quarrels and bickering so common in those days. On one occasion, during a drouth, when a famine threatened, he told his people that corn could be had from him. On the appointed day a crowd gathered before his house. He asked the applicants if they had brought money to pay for the corn. Some answered cheerfully, ”Yes,” others murmured disconsolately, ”No.” The good priest then said: ”You who have money can get your corn anywhere, but these poor fellows with no money shall have my corn.”