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 ABOUT AN OLD 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH 
 
 An Address on " The Good Old Days" 
 
 PUBLISHED AS A SOUVENIR OF THE ONE HUNDRED AND 
 
 FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CONGREGATIONAL 
 
 CHURCH OF SHARON, CONNECTICUT 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. GERALD STANLEY LEE 
 
 SHARON, CONN. 
 
 W. W. KNIGHT & CO. 
 1891
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1890, BY 
 GERALD STANLEY LEE 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York
 
 AS TO YE EVENT 
 
 It was on this wise. 
 
 In ye year of our Lord, ye eighteen hundred and 
 ninetieth, and of Sharon and ye Sharon Church, ye hun- 
 dred and fiftieth, on ye thirty first day of December at 
 half after ten by ye clock ye members of ye old Church and 
 all ye Sharonites, and ye Canaanites and ye Ameniaites, 
 and ye Nor-folks and ye Lake-villians, and many more 
 people from these parts, did gather in ye Congregational 
 Meetinghouse to celebrate a century and a half and to 
 bless their forefathers and to wonder at them. 
 
 Ye First Part was a devotional exercise, and then after 
 a short waiting time did begin ye Second Part, ye men 
 and women sitting as ye saints have been wont to sit in 
 this church, on separate sides of ye meetinghouse ; ye 
 singers clad in ye gown-and-bonnet orthodoxy of ye olden 
 time did sing old Sherburne with mouths wide open and 
 shrill and did make ye "glory to shine all around" until 
 they did have no more breath for to make it shine with, 
 and ye beadle did move to and fro to watch ye young men 
 and maidens and ye sprightly lads, and ye Parson did 
 begin to speak of ye good old days and ye Parson did keep 
 speaking for a good while, ye singers interrupting him 
 once and again with Judgment Anthems and such like, 
 while ye tables of grandmotherly thrift did show white 
 through ye doors beyond, and ye odor of coming events did 
 
 2012458
 
 AS TO YE EVENT. 
 
 steal over ye pews ; and then ye events did come, and ye 
 events -went vety many plates full ; and ye people did meet 
 again to hear much speaking, and Dr. Hiram Eddy did 
 tell who should speak and what they should speak, and 
 they did speak wisely and wittily and well, so that all did 
 enjoy it, and Dr Eddy did speak all ye time and in be- 
 tween and ye people did enjoy that too, and then ye people 
 did all rise and ye Parson did line out ' ' Bkst be ye tie 
 that binds our hearts in Christian love " and ye hearts did 
 all go home with ye benediction of one hundred and fifty 
 years, and all was over, except ye next hundred and fifty 
 years, and may God bless them and bless us that they 
 may take after ye hundred and fifty years that are gone.
 
 AS TO YE CONSEQUENCES 
 
 u Gentle Reader" be gentle. Here it is. I can't kelp 
 it. I have done it. I -won't do it again. This little book 
 is a grave undertaking, especially in its pleasantry, and it 
 fills me with gravity to think of it ; a gravity that both 
 you and I -would fain haz-e in the book. 
 
 I have but one favor to ask else we are strangers from 
 the first page : Enter this little volume through the church 
 door, and read it surrounding yourself -with the occasion. 
 
 I -would that I might lend you the original pitch-pipe, 
 we used, to set the tunes with, that Anniversary morning, 
 that you and I might start together on exactly the same 
 key, for unless -we do I fear that one of us will Jlat all 
 the way through and you will accuse me. Readers always 
 do. 
 
 On the following pages are the fatal footprints of a 
 random talk that would not have been so random, if it 
 had known that it was to be tracked with printer s ink. 
 But what is, is, and sadder still, what was, was, and 
 herein is the end of it except for you "gentle reader"; 
 and will you please remember in my behalf the ijtk of 
 Corinthians as you read, and kindly think of the excellent 
 paper on some of these pages when you can find nothing 
 else to think of. You see / have been seized with this 
 disease of "Published by request," and I have found that, 
 in trying to trim the -wild woods you are about to enter,
 
 AS TO YE CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 into some sort of literary civilization, I could only do it by 
 actually cutting them down and planting all over again, so 
 I have given up, and here they are : a great deal of 
 brush, and thick undergrowths of informality, sprouting all 
 over -with " didn'ts" and " don'ts." Some of you, I fear, 
 will be caught in little brambles of expression, and there 
 are a great many tough little roots of phrases that ought to 
 have been covered up, and ambuscades of meaning that 
 ought to have been uncovered mere Sharonisms, known 
 only to the local mind, and other isms known only, I fear, 
 to my own ; and the paths, with their zigzag logic, yoti will 
 strangely wonder at, but as you wander through this 
 thicket of nothings, if perchance you find a flower, pluck 
 it, I beg you, while the bloom lasts, and keep it to re- 
 member me by and to forgive me with. 
 
 Only a little historical effervescence is this : a dash, a 
 sketch, dealing, as sketches do, in the distinctive rather 
 than the true, perhaps. 
 
 I have already asked my own forgiveness. I know as 
 the years go on I shall ask it again, and now I ask yours. 
 
 GERALD STANLEY LEE 
 THE PARSONAGE, SHARON 
 
 yanuary 20, 1891
 
 FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE DAY 
 
 It was a skilful turning of the microscope on to a germ, 
 causing us to see its unfolding and expansion, its growth, 
 bloom, and fruit ; climbing the trellis, overspreading the vale, 
 fitting the land, bathing its branches in the two oceans, shak- 
 ing its golden clusters in the face of all nations : PURITAN- 
 ISM, THE GERM, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 It was an occasion of singular interest. There were some 
 relics of the olden times old dresses, old bonnets, old music, 
 with the old "pitch-pipe" and the grand old bass-viol ; the 
 sombre old pulpit, from whence the lightnings had flashed 
 with no uncertain sound. 
 
 This solemn old pulpit, with the bright young pastor 
 in it, with his scintillations of wit and his flexible style, re- 
 vealed the striking contrast between the Then and the Now 
 the Then, with its stern casque and chain armor ; the 
 Now, with its armor of light and beauty. 
 
 We laughed, yet not in ridicule of something grotesque, 
 but at beauty in its tamest dress, expanding more and more 
 into symmetry by the working out of the true inwardness 
 of the Christian life. 
 
 We saw the beauty, and we discovered nothing musty 
 as we inhaled the odor of the Rose of Sharon and the Lily 
 of the Valley. It was a rose one hundred and fifty years 
 old, and still all abloom in its modern Sharon. 
 
 But Puritanism was more than a rose. It was a tree
 
 8 FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE DAY. 
 
 of sturdy and magnificent growth, blooming midst the pri- 
 meval forests. It bloomed there because it had the true life 
 in it; and we, the descendants, were shaking the fruit from 
 the boughs of the old tree fruit intellectual, fruit tzsthet- 
 ical, fruit social, Matrons there were more than Roman ; 
 maidens many and fair, fifty Priscilla Mutters, who 
 seemed to say, but did not, " Why don't you speak for your- 
 self, John ? " ; tables blooming with fioral beauty, loaded 
 with fruits of earth, air, and sea. 
 
 All this was enjoyed in the glow of fraternal feeling, 
 rendered sublime by the grandest memories. We felt, with 
 filial devotion, the breath of the fathers and mothers in our 
 festivities and saw the connection of the Past with the Pres- 
 ent : 
 
 " That human things, retreating on themselves, 
 Move forward, leading up the golden year." 
 
 HIRAM EDDY
 
 ABOUT AN OLD NEW ENGLAND 
 CHURCH: ONE HUNDRED 
 AND FIFTY YEARS 
 
 LET us understand one another to begin 
 with. This is not a history. It is not a 
 study of the principles and trends of thought 
 of the last one hundred and fifty years. It 
 is not an oration. It is not a sermon. It 
 isn't anything, in fact, except just what it 
 happens to be as it meanders along ; a kind 
 of semi-historical hap-hazardness ; a series of 
 touches and sketches, glimpses, guesses and 
 gases, while an idle fancy wanders wilfully 
 about in the vast roominess of one hundred
 
 10 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 and fifty years, tripping along over facts, 
 and, in a wofully reckless and illogical way, not 
 stopping to look just long enough at the great 
 things, but dallying whimsically, I fear, to 
 look just a little too long at the small ones. 
 If I were to give you an historical 
 address this morning, covering the last one 
 hundred and fifty years, I wouldn't get 
 through in time for our two hundredth cel- 
 ebration ; and the dishes have to be cleared 
 away you know and all sorts of other 
 practical things that ministers are apt to 
 forget, so I will not detain you with an 
 historical address. Indeed, if I were only to 
 give one minute one of these light-headed, 
 nineteenth century minutes of ours to each 
 of these one hundred and fifty years, it 
 would take two hours and a half to deliver it 
 from which you would wish to be delivered
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. II 
 
 and that would be at least two hours too 
 old-fashioned ; and though some of you 
 might wish a little more old-fashioned min- 
 ister, you had rather have him old-fashioned 
 in some other way, and I am sure that if the 
 good Lord has taken one hundred and fifty 
 years to go over all these things, it would 
 be a mistake for me to attempt to go over 
 them in three-quarters of an hour. I have 
 said this so that you may expect nothing, 
 and then you will get just what you ex- 
 pect and go home gratified. 
 
 This town and church commenced to- 
 gether. One hundred and fifty years ago 
 this town was the church, this church was 
 the town ; and they were so identified that, 
 practically, the church had selectmen and the 
 town had deacons. There is one hundred 
 and fifty years, difference illustrated here
 
 12 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 in the way of doing things. Nowadays a 
 town is born, and it is some time before 
 the church comes, and the town is born 
 again. Sharon was born and born again at 
 the same time ; almost born again before it 
 was born at all. Leadville, we are told, with 
 a population of 125,000, finally secured one 
 minister, and he had five hundred weddings 
 and three hundred funerals in his first year. 
 Towns nowadays start with a depot ; then 
 they started with a church. I find the fol- 
 lowing votes upon the record of the first 
 town meeting of Sharon : 
 
 VOTED, " That Nathaniel 'Skinner, Jonathan Dun- 
 ham and John Sprague was chosen a Comm'tt to go 
 after a minister." 
 
 Further voted : 
 
 " That Swin haven a Ring in Their Noses Shall be 
 accounted an orderly Greater" [C-r-e-a-t-^-r.]
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 13 
 
 This is certainly the union of Church and 
 State. 
 
 As regards the beginning it is interest- 
 ing to note that Captain Dunham and Mr. 
 Pardee did not have to go to church. The 
 church came to them, worshipping alternately 
 in their houses, during the winter season ; 
 and in the summer, the First Congregational 
 Church of Sharon was a barn. We can im- 
 agine our forefathers worshipping there, with 
 the great brown hay-mows reaching away for 
 galleries, the more terrible passages of the 
 sermon likely to be disturbed by the startled 
 screech-scrawch flying of a hen, over the 
 heads of the audience, scared out of her 
 guilty, stolen nest in the hay-loft by the 
 awful denunciations of sinners ; while the 
 long seventeenthlies, and deserts of doc- 
 trine, in the discourse were interlarded with
 
 14 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 vague, musical, mystic cadences from the 
 comfortable-looking choir of worthies, too 
 fond of the good things of this world, 
 around the end of the building squeal- 
 ing in high, spare-rib soprano and grunt- 
 ing in deep, contented bass ; and the voice 
 of the rooster rose high in the singing of 
 the psalms. 
 
 This was in 1740. In the spring of 1741 
 a new meeting-house, built of poles, and 
 measuring thirty-six by twenty, was erected ; 
 and the next one, which was four or five 
 years in being completed, was forty-five by 
 thirty-five feet, and was located in the mid- 
 dle of the street, opposite the tavern. Sev- 
 eral of our churches have been in the mid- 
 dle of the street, typical of the old life, in 
 which a man either had to go to church or 
 go decidedly out of his way not to. A bell
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 15 
 
 was offered by Hon. Philip Livingstone for 
 this church, if the town would build a 
 steeple. This called out a vote of thanks, 
 but the vote failed to materialize into tim- 
 ber enough for the steeple, and Mr. Living- 
 stone's bell has not come yet. Possibly 
 they put on an injunction instead of a 
 steeple. This was our first bell difficulty. 
 Perhaps, because at this time the town 
 wanted a bell and couldn't get it, some of 
 our city friends, with a keen sense of provi- 
 dence, are laboring under the impression that 
 now the town has a bell and doesn't want it. 
 The first pastor was Rev. Peter Pratt. 
 History records that he was treated very 
 handsomely by the church, the special 
 points emphasized being that he was sup- 
 plied with firewood, and that when he went 
 to Lebanon to marry his wife they paid the
 
 l6 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 expense of hiring a horse and wagon, that 
 he might becomingly bring her to Sharon. 
 
 (I wonder if you would do as much for 
 me?) 
 
 Mr. Pratt was an active and able man, 
 interesting himself in affairs, upholding the 
 rights of the Indians, and starting mission- 
 work among them, and saving the financial 
 life of the colony by a petition to the As- 
 sembly. But Providence seems to have se- 
 lected him as a temperance lesson to the com- 
 munity, for he was so handsomely treated 
 in making his pastoral calls that it began 
 to be noticed that he was nearly as bibulous 
 as he was biblical ; and the parish found 
 itself forced to the painful conclusion that 
 he was not dry enough even for a minister, 
 and, after much gathering of indignation, on 
 the ninth day of January, 1746, the town
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 17 
 
 solemnly voted, as a terrible blow, that they 
 would no longer supply him with firewood. 
 But this had only a temporary effect, and 
 he was dismissed by council from the 
 church in 1747. 
 
 Mr. John Searl was the next pastor, 
 after being employed three months as a 
 candidate, which, by the way, is the habit- 
 ual custom of this church, a precaution 
 probably originating in their sad experience 
 with Mr. Pratt. He has cast a suspicion 
 over all the rest of us ! 
 
 Mr. Searl was loved and respected by 
 his people, but his failing health required 
 him to resign after five years. 
 
 It would seem as if history loved to in- 
 dulge in a little flourish of epigram that 
 of two pastors, at this time, the one should 
 have had to leave for his health, and the
 
 18 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 other for the health of the church. But, 
 to atone for all these things, God had in 
 store for us a half-century blessing in the 
 consecrated pastorate of the Rev. Cotton 
 Mather Smith, whose influence is so woven 
 into Sharon that the history of the town 
 could almost be said for this time to be 
 his biography, with a few foot-notes of 
 other things. 
 
 He was pastor for fifty-two years, and 
 every death and birth and wedding linked 
 him to the love of Sharon. That was a 
 pastorate ! And how the nobility and possi- 
 bility of it contrast with the ecclesiastical 
 fussiness and religious squeamishness of our 
 modern ways employing ministers as spirit- 
 ual hired men for a season, and then walk- 
 ing out some fine morning and telling them 
 they may go; or having them walk into the
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 19 
 
 house at any time to inform us that they 
 have something else in view and want to 
 leave day after to-morrow. Parson Smith 
 was not a preacher who stopped to speak 
 to Sharon a few minutes on the way to 
 preaching somewhere else like unto some 
 men ; but he was an institution of the town 
 a kind of college in himself abiding 
 always in the community, and sending out, 
 like class after class, the influences and 
 the growths and inspirations of his large 
 nature upon the lives of men and women 
 through all these momentous years. 
 
 Whitfield was here in 1770, and it was 
 the influence of the liberal consecration of 
 Parson Smith that gave the great gospel 
 Hercules a hearing in the church; for many 
 were opposed and he was expecting to 
 speak in the orchard across the street. He
 
 2O ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 was entertained by Parson Smith at his 
 house as well as in his pulpit, and the con- 
 gregation to hear him was so large that 
 scaffoldings were erected all around the 
 meeting-house that the crowds might listen 
 through the open windows. 
 
 The Congregational Church of Sharon 
 fought in the Revolutionary War : Rev. 
 Cotton M. Smith Commander ; that is, figu- 
 ratively speaking. Mr. Smith was willing to 
 put his religion into politics, and his politics 
 into bayonets. The news of the Battle of 
 Lexington came on Sunday and the pastor 
 announced it from the pulpit, with a speech 
 like a war-bugle ; and, immediately after the 
 congregation had bowed to the benediction, 
 the militia and volunteers paraded up and 
 down before the meeting-h9use in a kind of 
 praise-service of war, and prepared imme-
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 21 
 
 diately to march to the field; and Parson 
 Smith, martial as a modern David not free 
 by his calling to go and fight against the 
 British, went with the army to the North to 
 pray against them, as chaplain to Colonel 
 Hinman's regiment. One of the hymns fre- 
 quently sung at Sabbath worship, in which 
 our sturdy forefathers were wont to cannon- 
 ade forth their pent-up feelings, began with 
 this verse : 
 
 "Let tyrants shake their iron rod, 
 
 And slavery clank their galling chains, 
 We fear them not, we trust in God, 
 New England's God forever reigns ;" 
 
 and the feeling ran so high that undoubt- 
 edly some of the good saints would have 
 had their faith wonderfully shaken if they 
 hadn't thought that God was on their 
 side, and possessed of a decided prejudice
 
 22 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 against the British ; and while they were 
 using the new church to store up indigna- 
 tion against the enemy, they used the old 
 one as a storehouse for powder and arms. 
 
 These were exciting times. Election ser- 
 mons were common all over the land, and 
 the ministers not only preached the law of 
 Moses and the gospel of Christ, but the 
 law of New England and the gospel of 
 standing stoutly for our rights. Several 
 ministers fought and preached alternately. 
 The pastor of the Congregational Church in 
 Sturbridge, Mass., not being able to go 
 himself, sent a cask of powder, to blow his 
 wrath all over the British at the expense 
 of one-fifth of his salary, while one of his 
 deacons furnished bullets to match ; and the 
 First Church in Boston held a meeting to 
 vote that the lead-weights of the clock be
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 23 
 
 melted into bullets, and other metal substi- 
 tuted instead. 
 
 Rev. Cotton Mather Smith's patriotism 
 and ability made him widely known, and 
 carried the name of Sharon to where it 
 otherwise would not have gone. His force 
 and courage won the admiration of all 
 who knew him or heard of him, and gave 
 him a close friend in General Schuyler, his 
 commander. At the time of Burgoyne's 
 march from the North, news had come to 
 Sharon of two doubtful battles and a third 
 imminent, which brought all men and 
 women to church, Sunday morning, with 
 but one great, eager thought, and one awful 
 dread, while the children were all still with 
 wonder. Parson Smith preached a never-to- 
 be-forgotten sermon on the text : " Watch- 
 man, what of the night? The watchman
 
 24 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 saith, The morning cometh." He appealed 
 to their faith, and their valor, and prophe- 
 sied a victory, and as a magnificent climax 
 that God had been arranging all the way 
 from Saratoga, a messenger arrived at the 
 close of the sermon with the news that our 
 arms were overwhelmingly victorious and 
 that Burgoyne had surrendered ; and when 
 the pastor read the letter from the pulpit, 
 if the hallelujahs of those anxious, listening 
 hearts could have been put into music, the 
 echo of them would be sounding yet, and 
 they would not have waited to line them 
 out either. 
 
 The first Methodist preaching in Sharon 
 was shortly after the war ; Parson Smith, 
 being somewhat opposed on doctrinal 
 grounds, holding a discussion with Mr. Gar- 
 rison, their preacher. There was much op-
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 25 
 
 position in the community, and the Method- 
 ism of Sharon commenced, paradoxically, in 
 the ball-room of Callow's Tavern ; but, owing 
 to the fact that the town authorities threat- 
 ened to take away the license of the tavern- 
 keeper if he allowed any more Methodist 
 gatherings there, the meetings were moved 
 to private houses, and held every two weeks 
 on the afternoon of a week-day. For a 
 saloon-keeper to be expelled from a church 
 is very commonplace; but where is there 
 another church that has the unique charm 
 and interest of having been expelled from 
 a saloon? It is to be hoped that our Meth- 
 odist brethren will keep on doing all that 
 they can to return the compliment, and 
 take their turn in having the expulsion the 
 other way. The preaching was marked by 
 great earnestness and freedom and with
 
 26 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 many conversions. History records that 
 Andrew Harpending, a preacher of some 
 note, as a large crowd was leaving the Con- 
 gregational Church, made a pulpit of a table 
 and preached so powerfully to the assembled 
 multitude that a young lady half a mile 
 away, standing in the open window of her 
 room, distinctly heard all that was said, and 
 under its influence was brought into the 
 Christian life. This is the most striking in- 
 stance of long-distance conversion I have ever 
 heard of, although I imagine that our Meth- 
 odist brethren have lifted up just as many 
 souls by dropping their voices as they used 
 to in the good old days by raising them. 
 
 Let us now try to place before ourselves 
 a general idea of the characteristics and con- 
 ditions of church life and worship in those 
 good old days.
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 27 
 
 As regards the position of the minister in 
 the community, it was well expressed by the 
 word " parson," which literally means " per- 
 son" " The Person " in the parish. This is 
 very august. He had a complete monopoly 
 in all the materials of the intellectual and 
 spiritual life of his people. He had no com- 
 petition. Nowadays a minister enters prac- 
 tically into competition with all literature, 
 with the telegraph and newspaper, and peo- 
 ple cannot keep him as a pastor but just 
 about so long, for fear of finding out how 
 little he knows. 
 
 He must be as full of facts as an en- 
 cyclopaedia, as full of knowledge of human 
 nature as a novel, as interesting as a play, 
 as close to life as a newspaper ; he must 
 have the style of the Ruskin on the library 
 tables at home, the eloquence of Carlyle, the
 
 28 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 prophet-tone of Emerson, and the imagina- 
 tion of Shakespeare. He must be a whole 
 library in himself, both for ready reference 
 and to be drawn on at will ; and, to say 
 nothing of calling on every one before he 
 calls on any one else, with a kind of minia- 
 ture omnipresence of the Being he stands for, 
 he must take a post-graduate course in om- 
 niscience and know as much about every- 
 thing as each specialist of a man knows 
 about anything. One can hardly wonder if 
 even a man like Parson Smith, had he come 
 to Sharon in 1854 instead of 1754, would not 
 have resigned or even fallen in with the 
 modern style of being asked to resign by 
 this time. Isaiah himself wouldn't have re- 
 mained in a modern pulpit fifty-two years 
 and, if he had, probably the church would 
 have valued him so highly as to feel called
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 29 
 
 upon to help him resign for some other church. 
 It was because the 271 pastors in Massa- 
 chusetts in 1776 were public libraries, lecture 
 bureaus, magazines and newspapers, all in 
 themselves, that 233 of them retained their 
 pastorates until death ; and the parishioners 
 of Joseph Adams, who preached to his peo- 
 ple for sixty-eight years, did not read the 
 Sunday edition of the New York Blank, 
 nor possess the rival attraction of a modern 
 apostle of Mars Hill gesticulating by tele- 
 graph for the national edification. 
 
 In the good old days people were taxed 
 for the minister just as they were taxed 
 for the highways. The straight and narrow 
 path was a State road in those days, and 
 our forefathers evidently intended to keep 
 the roads as well open to the next world 
 as they were in this (although it is to be
 
 30 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 hoped that our road to Sharon Station 
 will not be taken as an example to the 
 churches). 
 
 In some towns the minister was so un- 
 worldly that the town appointed a steward 
 to manage his affairs for him. In others, 
 there was a small farm attached to the 
 parsonage, and the parson was often as 
 much of an authority on onions and pota- 
 toes as he was on the Garden of Eden 
 and the ten commandments ; and there is 
 a story to the effect that one good dom- 
 inie was so famous for his onions that 
 his sermons were more flavored with them 
 than with theology, and his people were 
 more proud of his orchard than they were 
 of his eloquence. One of his deacons is 
 reported as saying : " Waal, our minister 
 gives so much attention to his farm and
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 31 
 
 orchard that we get pretty poor sermons ; 
 but I tell you one thing, brethren, he is 
 mighty movin' in prayer in caterpillar and 
 cankerworm time." 
 
 Every one was obliged to go to church 
 in those days, and inspectors roamed the 
 fields for truants. There are many cases of 
 discipline on record for failure to be at ser- 
 vices, and, if any persons were caught stand- 
 ing and talking about the meeting-house 
 while a service was going on inside, the 
 church appointed a committee to go and 
 labor with them that they might reflect, re- 
 pent, and mend the evil of their ways. Mem- 
 bers of the Horseshed Class in our Sunday 
 School, please notice. Because Balaam's ass 
 prophesied, it does not follow that all four- 
 footed beasts of burden are capable spiritual 
 advisers.
 
 32 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 While the New England parson has been 
 somewhat misrepresented in literature, there 
 is a great deal to bear out the general state- 
 ment that religion, in the old days, was lit up 
 with a decidedly lurid glare and consisted, 
 with many saints, largely of a deep feeling 
 that something terrible was going to happen. 
 
 Speaking with strict qualification of the 
 more common people, and bearing in mind 
 how much ignorance there was, and how this 
 coarseness and ignorance would affect the 
 preaching that tried to reach it, making it a 
 gospel of strong measures and overdrawn 
 appeals to the senses, it was too true that 
 God to many was a Brooding .Awfulness, 
 the church apparently using the spirit of the 
 sword rather than the Sword of the Spirit. 
 Religion was often a kind of baptized mor- 
 bidness, a scared righteousness ; piety was a
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 33 
 
 kind of tremulousness of the soul under 
 Sinai, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of 
 God was so unfortunately exaggerated that 
 the greatness of the place of the soul in 
 the plans of God was crowded into a mere 
 rat-hole, in the popular conception of things : 
 so that all the universe, with the stars on 
 the watch, was on a mighty still-hunt for 
 the guilty soul of man, peering out of the 
 mouse-nest of his sins, watching for a chance 
 to fly from the general doom of things ; and 
 sainthood, in the case of many ignorant 
 people, was a kind of running a running 
 not of the race that is set before us but 
 from the doom that chases behind us and 
 to a remarkable degree the atmosphere was 
 so full of brimstone that religion sometimes 
 seemed caricatured, in the popular mind, as 
 a kind of vast theological fire-escape, and
 
 34 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 Mount Sinai so loomed up over Mount Cal- 
 vary that it is no wonder we are carrying 
 the reaction a little too far nowadays. 
 
 The choir interrupts to carry on the 
 idea musically, and to the tune of " Green- 
 wich " touchingly renders the following poem : 
 
 "Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I 
 To mourn, and murmur, and repine 
 To see the wicked placed on high, 
 In pride and robes of honor shine. 
 
 " But, oh, their end ! their dreadful end ! 
 
 Thy sanctuary taught me so ! 
 On slippery rocks I see them stand, 
 And fiery billows roll below ! " 
 
 With this conception more or less com- 
 mon among the mass of church-goers, it is 
 very easy to see how the minister might 
 take some of the awfulness brooding about 
 him unto himself, and so far forget the,
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 35 
 
 " Suffer little children to come unto me," 
 that the little children certainly did suffer if 
 they had to come unto him. But under- 
 neath all the sternness there was a deal 
 of sweetness and a kind of beautiful, au- 
 stere gentleness ; and it is one of the charms 
 of the old New England character of the 
 highest type that many and many men were 
 quaint contradictions of their theology, while 
 its cold, bold, rocky outlines only made an 
 impressive" background for the beauty of 
 the spirit of their lives. And please re- 
 member that I have said this and feel this, 
 through all else that I say ; for, indeed, the 
 beauty of men is ever the truest thing 
 about them the part that God remembers 
 and that ever lends its undying sweet- 
 ness to the following lives, whether they 
 know it or not : too beautifully elusive,
 
 36 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 too divinely diffused, to be gathered into 
 the clumsy words of a sketch like this, 
 while the vulgar obtrusiveness of theologies 
 and customs brings them to the foreground. 
 How true it is that, while men have never 
 been as good as their religion, they have 
 always been a deal better than their theol- 
 ogy- 
 There is one rule of the old New Eng- 
 land life that seems to me to be especially 
 commendable. I am thinking of proposing 
 that it be made a rule of this church at 
 the next church-meeting: "If any person or 
 persons shall be guilty of speaking against 
 the minister in any shape, form, or man- 
 ner or of speaking against his preaching, 
 said person or persons shall be punished 
 by fine, whipping, or banishment, or cutting 
 off of ears." This needs no comment. It
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 37 
 
 speaks for itself. The cutting off of ears 
 is particularly fitting though I wonder a 
 little that no provision is made for tongues 
 in the matter. It seems to me that a 
 little old-fashioned ruling of this kind 
 would be very beneficial and would sum- 
 marily do away with the prevalent idea, 
 among pew-holders of modern times, that a 
 man pays his pew-rent as a fee for the 
 privilege of grumbling, with a tacit under- 
 standing that he can grumble to an 
 amount twice the value of the fee if he 
 pays cash down. Those were good old 
 days. 
 
 The first church-edifices were generally 
 three stories high, with heavy beams cross- 
 ing overhead, bare and unsightly, except as 
 embroidered as used to be the case occasion- 
 ally in one old church in Massachusetts
 
 38 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 with sprightly lads swinging their legs over 
 the heads of the congregation, and brushing 
 the dust down into their powdered wigs. 
 Kegs of powder, before stoves were intro- 
 duced, often lay along these beams in 
 sullen vindictiveness as a kind of barrelled- 
 up illustration of what poor sinners could 
 expect, who didn't mend the evil of their 
 ways, and heed the sermon. Square pews 
 were not introduced at first ; but when they 
 were, they had seats that turned on hinges, 
 so that when the people, rising according to 
 their custom for the prayers, prepared to sit 
 down again, the slam-banging of the seats 
 was like a volley of musketry, as if a salute 
 had been fired because the long prayer was 
 finally over. 
 
 As regards attending worship in those 
 days, people came to it in their every-day
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 39 
 
 shoes ; and one of the interesting features of 
 entering the house of God was watching the 
 worshippers reverently changing their shoes 
 at the door, and then slyly poking around 
 in the bushes for nice little nooks to hide 
 their old ones in during the service. 
 
 The service opened generally with the 
 singing of a psalm, which was lined off and 
 sung in nasal strains for the nose was one 
 of the musical instruments in those days ; 
 and though noses are not out of date, by 
 any means, we have lost the cunning of our 
 ancestors, and only a random genius here 
 and there can strike an old-time note upon 
 one under the passing inspiration of a cold. 
 
 The prayers were preceded by requests 
 for prayer read from the pulpit. Each case 
 was then taken up. The prayers were always 
 at least fifteen minutes long very often twice
 
 40 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 or thrice as long probably on the assumption 
 that it took the Lord fully ten minutes to 
 get interested in a prayer, and that He was 
 just about ready to listen when the audience 
 was through. 
 
 Two travellers from abroad wrote home 
 as follows of the exercises on a certain day 
 for fasting and prayer :. 
 
 " We went into a church where, in the first place, 
 the preacher made a prayer one hour and fifty min- 
 utes in length, after which another minister delivered 
 a sermon an hour long. In the afternoon three or 
 four hours were consumed with nothing but prayers, 
 three ministers relieving each other alternately when 
 one was tired the other went up into the pulpit." 
 
 Rev. Thomas Clapp, of Taunton, in a 
 volume of his sermons, had a scheme of one 
 of his prayers in the introduction. 
 
 It is divided into five general heads, with
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 41 
 
 subheads, and makes a total of two hundred 
 and forty subheads (one for each head in the 
 audience). 
 
 It seemed to be the feeling that preach- 
 ers did not earn their salaries unless they 
 talked to the people a good deal longer 
 than they did to the Lord, and the eloquent 
 preacher was frequently the one who had the 
 gift of powerfully not knowing when to stop. 
 
 The old saying, that brevity is the soul 
 of wit, was taken by our Puritan ancestors 
 with much seriousness and possibly it is 
 because they felt that wit was out of place 
 in the pulpit that they made such elaborate 
 endeavors to keep brevity out of their 
 sermons. 
 
 A certain preacher of the olden time had 
 turned his hour-glass once in the sermon, 
 and was about to turn It again, when he
 
 42 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 found that the congregation, one by one, 
 were slipping out ; and, finally, when it was 
 turned for the beginning of the third hour, 
 the weary clerk audibly asked his reverend 
 superior to lock up the church and put the 
 key under the door when the sermon was 
 done, as he and a few remaining auditors 
 were going home. The sermon proper was 
 generally an argument and this was fol- 
 lowed by what was called an " Improve- 
 ment" which, like much of our finite im- 
 provement, sadly failed to improve. 
 
 But I must say something upon the sub- 
 ject of music, or, rather, upon the subject 
 of discords, for Providence seems to have 
 scattered more evidences of the exceeding 
 humanness of human nature along our church 
 history in connection with music than any- 
 thing else. The first discord recorded in
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 43 
 
 our church is a musical discord. The voice 
 of the heretic was heard in the land. The 
 younger members of the church wanted to 
 sing in the " new way." I suppose they 
 might be called the members of the Chris- 
 tian Endeavor Society of 1773. They 
 claimed that the lining out of hymns was 
 not necessary, that it made the worship 
 seem like a district school, that the custom 
 was originally instituted because in the 
 earlier days few people knew how to read, 
 that it was not impressive, that it was a 
 kind of pious puttering. " It takes the 
 edge off the words to have a full rehear- 
 sal before eve/y line. If we are going to 
 have singing and praise the Lord, let's have 
 singing and praise the Lord, and not this 
 practising at praising Him as if we didn't 
 understand it or He didn't understand us,"
 
 44 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 etc., etc. The older and wiser heads, how- 
 ever, got themselves together, and, as if 
 they had a copyright on all the wisdom of 
 eighteen centuries and an injunction on all 
 that was to come, told the young people, 
 " quietly but firmly," that this " could not 
 be." Lining out the hymns was more sol- 
 emn, and, besides, it took longer ; and the 
 longer anything took the more holy it was, 
 of course. But this did not satisfy, and the 
 heretics swelled in numbers and logic and 
 again made charge. 
 
 The town shook. 
 
 The wise heads said : " Lining out is sol- 
 emn." Said the foolish : " Lining out is 
 ridiculous." Profundities passed to and fro, 
 deep calling unto deep. 
 
 The town shook. 
 
 Said the wise ones : " Lining out is the
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 45 
 
 only right way. IT'S THE WAY WE HAVE 
 
 ALWAYS DONE, AND THAT SETTLES IT." But 
 
 it didn't settle it. An argument as old as 
 that ought to have settled anything but 
 it didn't. 
 
 The war waged. 
 
 The feeling ran so high that the " air " 
 was full of it, and so deep, that it spread 
 to the other parts, much of it descending 
 so far, I am sorry to say, as to be of a 
 decidedly bass tenor ; men and women all 
 quarrelling as if the whole town were a big 
 choir. Most of the arguments seem to have 
 been in sharps, though many of them would 
 be transposed into flats nowadays. The 
 tempo was amazingly rapid, and all was ren- 
 dered fortissimo ; until one is reminded, in 
 looking over the score, or, rather, the scor- 
 ing, of the magnificent Baal Chorus in the
 
 46 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 " Elijah," each side calling upon its gods, 
 with its, " Oh, Baal, hear us ! " and cutting 
 themselves, after their manner, with knives 
 and lancets, or, rather, one another (meta- 
 phor), until it must have been nearly as in- 
 teresting to Baal and his relatives as it is to 
 us ; and I do not doubt that they were there. 
 Oh, the arguments rubbed vigorously 
 out in wash-tubs ! The invectives strung 
 along the clothes-lines ! The epithets that 
 were churned in with the butter! The bit- 
 terness that was skimmed off the milkpans, 
 and the sturdy farmer's, " I won't give up," 
 planted with his potatoes! But history re- 
 cords that, when the potatoes were pulled 
 up, the " I won't " was pulled up too, and 
 the lined-out hymns had fallen from grace 
 and good and regular standing in the sanct- 
 uary.
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 47 
 
 It was in this wise. The first victory 
 was in getting a trial of the new way for 
 two months. Then the final question came 
 up the older ones claiming that they had 
 all the past of the world on their side, and 
 the lovers of the new way insisting that 
 they had all the next world on theirs, for 
 they were sure that the angels didn't have 
 any lining out of hymns in heaven. Where- 
 upon the older ones talked as if they didn't 
 care to go there unless they did, and would 
 like to have the matter decided before they 
 started, worrying some of the hotter youth 
 into the wish that they would go and see 
 for themselves at once ; the cooler youth 
 suggesting that, under the circumstances, it 
 would be wise to know how to sing in both 
 ways. They knew how in the old way, and 
 had better spend the rest of their lives in
 
 48 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 practising on the new, and then they would 
 have a sure thing of it. The older ones re- 
 plied that, if they actually did sing in the 
 new way in heaven, the younger ones might 
 just as well wait until they reached there, 
 and sing in the old way while they had a 
 chance. This was certainly reasonable. But 
 it was of no avail. Possibly, from a guilty 
 sense that, if they postponed singing the new 
 way, to heaven, they might not be on hand 
 for their parts, the young people sinfully 
 insisted, and on a fatal night in 1773 the 
 agony came to a culmination in a vote of 
 the church to sing in the new way, and on 
 the following Sunday the church was com- 
 pelled to listen to the following startling in- 
 novation : 
 
 (Choir sings " New Durham," without 
 lining out.)
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 49 
 
 Now, any one can see that such a shock- 
 ingly modern performance as this would 
 outrage the feelings of the audience. The 
 result was, as appears from the vote of the 
 next church meeting, that half the con- 
 gregation were so filled with righteous in- 
 dignation that they could not find breath 
 to sing at all. Some of the choir thought 
 that this rather improved the singing, and 
 the improvement was kept up with vigor- 
 ous silence for some time. On the I2th 
 of November, 1784, John Common was 
 brought before the church to be disciplined 
 for " regularly absenting himself from public 
 worship," and he made the statement that : 
 
 " Whereas, when he first joined with this church, 
 the method of singing was line by line and singing 
 such tunes as he could understand, and whereas 
 the church have voted to omit reading line by line 
 and singing such tunes as were thus intelligible to
 
 5O ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 him, therefore he cannot with good conscience join 
 with such singing." 
 
 This musical martyr was not alone ; but 
 there were other heroes in the good old 
 cause, capable of mounting to the same 
 height of discord, and self-sacrifice in stay- 
 ing at home from church for conscience's 
 sake. Whatever may be said about great 
 causes bringing out great men, little causes 
 certainly bring out the greatness of little 
 men. 
 
 As an outcome of several incidents of 
 this kind, on November 4th I find the fol- 
 lowing record : 
 
 " Whereas, there appears in the mind of some of 
 the brethren of this church an uneasiness on ac- 
 count of the late method of singing, especially on 
 account of its being confined to so small a number. 
 In order, therefore, for general peace and union, it is 
 agreed that one half of the time the old tunes shall
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 51 
 
 be lined out and sung with reading line by line, 
 and that a number of persons shall be desired to 
 sit below in order to assist in singing both tenor 
 and bass, and ye other part of ye time ye new 
 tunes may be sung without reading line by line." 
 
 So for the following year our ancestors for 
 all the morning services sang in the proper 
 way, which was this : 
 
 LET us SING THE TWELVE HUNDRED 
 AND FIFTH HYMN! 1205. 
 
 (" Coleshill " is lined out and sung by 
 the choir.) 
 
 And in the afternoon the hymns were 
 sung without being cut off and handed to 
 the audience in cold slices ; alternating elo- 
 cution and execution after the old and 
 correct manner, like a course of sacred 
 sandwiches in music. In February, 1775, 
 the church voted that all hymns should be
 
 52 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 sung without lining, and no linings have 
 ever been put in since until to-day. We 
 had no deacon in the church at that time, 
 
 who, like Deacon C , of M , 
 
 braved the whole congregation of heretical 
 non-liners, and lined out the hymns faith- 
 fully all by himself, like a lion at bay, until 
 the choir overpowered him, and he walked 
 with a kind of lordly, excommunicating air 
 out of the church. 
 
 No statue has been erected to his 
 memory. 
 
 As for Sharon, in spite of the fact that 
 many in the congregation maintained a 
 grim and saintly silence during the pagan- 
 ism of unlined hymns, things grew worse 
 and worse until the choir actually degen- 
 erated into anthems, and religion occasion- 
 ally dwindled away into mere duets and
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 53 
 
 trios, with frequent excursions into the 
 worldliness of musical novelties : and do you 
 wonder that many objections were raised, 
 when the choir actually held rehearsals and 
 favored the congregation on Sundays with 
 elaborate operatic airs like this ? 
 
 (CHOIR SINGS JUDGMENT ANTHEM.) 
 
 Hark ! hark ! ye mortals, hear the trumpet 
 (Bass) Sounding loud the mighty ROAR. 
 
 Hark the archangel's voice proclaiming, 
 Thou, old time, shalt be no more. 
 
 His loud trumpet, his loud trumpet, 
 
 (Bass) Rend the tombs: YE DEAD, AWAKE! 
 
 See the purple banner flying, 
 
 Hear the Judgment chariot roll. R-O-L-L. 
 
 (Judgment chariot rolls. Rolls some more. 
 R-O-L-L-S rolls a good deal more. Rolls 
 up into the soprano and down into the bass, 
 off on to the tenor and along on the alto
 
 54 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 ROLLS ! Rolls for fifteen minutes, more or 
 less, all on one syllable, and then slides off 
 on to another, and rolls again. ROLLS ! How 
 that Judgment chariot rolls ! and then, finally, 
 comes to a jerking short stop on the last 
 note, and ends with a wonderful musical thud, 
 and rolls no more. Congregation, which had 
 been rising and facing the music, or, rather, 
 the chariot, is seated.) 
 
 Now, any one can see that such intricate 
 convolutions of sound must have had a very 
 baleful effect upon the moral life of the com- 
 munity. Such stately trills, alternating with 
 such worldly wigglings of melody and artis- 
 tic quavers, to say nothing of the profane 
 and thrilling holding of the breath for such 
 a long period of time, turning the worship 
 of the Lord into a mere exhibition of breath- 
 ing exercises, caused a sensation that can be
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 55 
 
 better imagined than described, and which, 
 if it could be set to music, would be one of 
 the most expressive compositions in the his- 
 tory of sound. 
 
 There is always an old way and always a 
 "new way"; the quarrels of yesterday are 
 but our own quarrels on different subjects. 
 The past generations are but historic mas- 
 querades on ours, and in them we see our 
 own faults, with an old date on them, and 
 with circumstances just enough disguised so 
 that we do not recognize the fact that we are 
 laughing at ourselves. There is a curious 
 sameness in human nature through all the 
 old ways into all the new ones ; but all 
 things must change, and the relevancies of 
 one day are the irrelevancies of the next, and 
 the sublimity of one age the fun of another 
 world without end. God alone can untangle
 
 56 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 the great essentials of the coming of His 
 Kingdom from our prejudices, and God alone 
 can overcome the stiffening of our joints 
 into custom and the curious confusion of our 
 minds between what is right and what we 
 are accustomed to ; and the world moves on, 
 and keeps moving, and we must learn to 
 rejoice in its progress, even though it bring 
 to us the sadness of moving away from our- 
 selves. It is not moving away from the best 
 in us, but only from that which it does not 
 need, and moving to that which it needs 
 more. 
 
 I have been struck, in looking over the 
 church records, with their complete failure to 
 really reflect the life the real nobility and 
 beauty that this church has stood for in 
 Sharon. 
 
 The curt language of " Yeas and nays "
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 
 
 of " Voted and passed," as seen in the records, 
 can no more express the great motherly 
 heart of this church, brooding over these one 
 hundred and fifty years, going out to the 
 needs and hopes of this village, than a man's 
 account book will tell you the real life of 
 the man, with the yearnings and the striv- 
 ings and the triumphs of his spirit ; or than 
 our religion can be spelt out in figures, or 
 the love of God revealed to souls in geome- 
 try. The church record is the mere steward 
 of the church, and is not the spirit but the 
 body of history, giving you only glimpses 
 through the loophole of an inference into 
 the great soul-life going on beyond. 
 
 For instance, a revival will be sketched 
 out in a few naked figures at the bottom of 
 a page ; and the case of John Blank, who 
 paid four shillings to a brother church mem-
 
 58 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 ber for something worth two shillings, and 
 didn't want to heap coals of fire on the head 
 of the dear brother who had cheated him 
 unless he could do it literally, would occupy 
 as much space as if it had been the main 
 event of the year: and it is surprising how, 
 in turning over the leaves, discipline cases 
 seem so numerous that one feels that it 
 must be a record of sinners instead of saints. 
 I remember being much impressed, how- 
 ever, with the spirit and wisdom of Parson 
 Smith in the case of one Mabel, who had 
 been guilty of absenting herself punctually 
 and regularly from Sabbath services, and 
 who, after being labored with by numerous 
 committees and sub-committees, and commit- 
 tees on more committees, was finally cut off 
 from communion. The letter doing it is 
 one so rich in contrasts of love and consci-
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 59 
 
 entious severity that one is almost glad that 
 Mabel stayed away from church a few Sun- 
 days in order to thus bring out the rare 
 spirit that moved in the life of our old father- 
 pastor, Cotton Mather Smith. Votes of ex- 
 communication were passed very impressively. 
 It was a vote of silence. All those in favor 
 of it were to so indicate by keeping still after 
 the question was put. Not a voice was lifted, 
 while the air was heavy with condemnation 
 and the sad sentence of unopened lips, as if 
 the Lord were doing it and not they, the 
 guilty one being cut off from the church 
 with not a word spoken against him only 
 the hush that left the soul with God ! 
 
 So many pages in the record are taken 
 up with the notices of marriages that in 
 places it looks more like the record of a mat- 
 rimonial society than of an ecclesiastical one.
 
 60 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 It was an epoch in the history of this 
 church when it purchased its first stove. 
 It was in the early years of Parson Smith 
 that the society voted that a committee 
 look into the matter of the " practicabil- 
 ity of having a stove." It is recorded with 
 all the ponderousness of a very important 
 and revolutionary event. When the com- 
 mittee reported in favor of warming the 
 building, those opposed to it seemed to try 
 to make it unnecessary, by making it warm 
 in other ways. There were two parties. 
 Both parties were warm ; but one party was 
 warm because it wanted to be warm, and 
 the other, because it didn't want to be 
 warm. There had never been any heated dis- 
 cussions in the church before at least, only 
 those heated by foot-stoves and it was con- 
 sidered orthodox to freeze. " We had always
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 6l 
 
 frozen." Religion was better cold. Our fore- 
 fathers had always pronounced the benedic- 
 tion with mittens on, and if a stove was put 
 in the mittens would have to be taken off, 
 and the old people did not like a benedic- 
 tion without mittens, and it would be an in- 
 novation. (Possibly the argument was some- 
 thing like this, but I do not know. No 
 stenographers were present.) People who 
 were taxed three and a half cents on a 
 dollar for their preaching wanted to SEE 
 their sermons as well as hear them ; and 
 when you could actually see the " firstly," 
 "secondly," and "thirdly" coming out of 
 the minister's mouth, in beautiful, frosty out- 
 lines, there was a certain tangibility about it 
 that made it plainer, somehow, and made up 
 in a degree for the abstract quality of the 
 points, breathing a kind of spirit into them.
 
 62 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 Perhaps this was it. But it was of no 
 avail. The stove was put in, and things 
 went from bad to worse until religion seemed 
 in a way to be made so comfortable that 
 all the piety would be taken out of it, and 
 it really looked as if, as a last resort if a 
 man was to have any religion at all he 
 would have to put it into the spirit of his 
 life, instead of being sanctimoniously miser- 
 able a few hours every Sunday and feeling 
 as if he had done something for the Lord. 
 Mr. Smith asked for an assistant in the 
 forty-ninth year of his pastorate, and the 
 church called Mr. Perry ; and when, at last, 
 the great heart had passed away, the heart 
 that had stirred so many lives with its 
 strength and courage, and soothed so many 
 griefs with its peace, the heart that had 
 built fifty years of itself into the very
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 63 
 
 foundations of this town, it took all Sharon 
 and two generations to measure all that 
 God had done for us in him : and God is 
 not through yet, for the spirit of Cotton 
 Mather Smith lives over and over again in 
 that beautiful posterity of human souls, and 
 that wonderful genealogy of unseen de- 
 scendants, in the thoughts and lives of men, 
 that God is ever weaving out of the influ- 
 ences of a soul for centuries after He has 
 taken the soul to Himself. 
 
 The fifty years of his pastorate here were 
 only the arc of a circle that God is ever 
 finishing, and though Mr. Perry was called 
 to be his assistant, all of us who have fol- 
 lowed have been but the assistants of Cot- 
 ton Mather Smith ; for he is working here 
 yet. Men never die. Every touch of influ- 
 ence from a human life has its ripple upon
 
 64 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 the farthest shore of history. A good deed 
 is never childless, but is the Adam of an im- 
 mortal race that goes on multiplying through 
 all the generations of men ; and, though God 
 may take a man from us, the thoughts 
 that were the children of his soul go mov- 
 ing to and fro across the restless spirit of 
 the world forever and forever ! 
 
 Mr. Perry was our pastor for thirty-one 
 years. His work began with a revival. The 
 Sunday School was started by him in 1818, 
 Deacon William Smith being the first super- 
 intendent, holding the office, after what seems 
 to have been the Smith custom, for nearly 
 fifty years. " Smith " seems a semi-centennial 
 name. We regret that the Superintendent 
 Smith who has just resigned has not lived 
 up to it. This present building was built 
 out of the conversion of souls, a large in-
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 65 
 
 crease making a new house possible. The 
 church has had eleven pastors, and a total 
 membership of 1,217 souls. Of the original 
 members, the only two represented among 
 us by their own name, in the male line, 
 are Deacon Ebenezer Jackson and Deacon 
 Ebenezer Hamlin, by which it would appear 
 that Providence has a special leaning to- 
 ward Ebenezer as a first name, for this 
 climate, and toward deacons as a good, 
 firm soil to plant the family tree in. 
 
 Indeed, it would seem as if Sharon must 
 have been raised as a kind of Litchfield 
 Ebenezer, for there is another name handed 
 down to posterity in the fair bosom of our 
 beautiful lake a mile north of the village : 
 Ebenezer Mudge the ancestor of Mudge 
 Pond. They ought to have lived on some 
 other pond " the Mudges." The whole fam-
 
 66 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 ily abandoned us before the Revolutionary 
 War, and yet that exquisite touch of a name, 
 " Mudge," is what we faithfully call our in- 
 nocent lake by. The veriest wild Indian 
 war-whoop of a name would be better, 
 although you couldn't have hired a well-bred 
 savage to call a swamp by such a bad, bad 
 name as that. There is something very 
 touching to me in this sad instance of what 
 might be called unpoetic license, that such a 
 lovely sheet of water should be handed down 
 to posterity with such a sentimental blunder 
 of a name to be Mudgified by generation 
 after generation, because Mrs. Ebenezer 
 Mudge happened to make rye-bread in a 
 cabin on its banks for a few seasons before 
 they moved away; and if we have to call a 
 public mass meeting this afternoon to do it, 
 it seems to me that this favorite lake of
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 6/ 
 
 ours should be un-Mudged (great crises call 
 for great men), even if we can't find any- 
 thing better than the Indian name of a 
 stream I know of in the West " Squeety- 
 wagoogoo," I think which was the Indian 
 name for rum, and I suggest that a good 
 way to christen it would be to pour all the 
 " squeetywagoogoo " we can find into it, be- 
 ginning at the parsonage place. I'll let our 
 Congregational license go. Demoralizing to 
 the fish? There is Scripture for it. I refer 
 you to Matthew viii. 31, 32, and the devils 
 of another day. Henceforth " Mudge " is 
 dead to me. I call it Webotuck. 
 
 Here are a. few stray motions on the 
 records. (I don't mean lost motions.) For 
 instance, as regards collection of salary : 
 
 VOTED, "That the collector of said tax shall be 
 entitled to receive two and a half per cent, upon all
 
 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 monies which he shall collect on said tax and pay 
 into the treasury, provided he shall pay over the whole 
 of said tax, deducting the abatements, and settle the 
 same with the treasurer on or before the first day of 
 January next." 
 
 There is no doubt in the minds of all 
 fair-minded nistorians that we have had sin- 
 ners in Sharon, but it gives one a kind of 
 New Testament feeling to thus realize that 
 we have had both publicans and sinners. 
 
 VOTED, "That a committee be appointed to seat 
 the meeting-house by dignity, age, and list." 
 
 Another vote on record was that all be 
 seated according to " dignity, age, and quality" 
 Note the striking and beautiful analogy be- 
 tween the Sharonites and the Apostles. 
 
 VOTED, " That no wooden foot-stoves be used nor 
 admitted into the meeting-house, and that no foot- 
 stoves be filled in the house during the time of re- 
 ligious worship."
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 69 
 
 Good thing for punctuality, foot-stoves! 
 Might give a few away in our congregation. 
 
 VOTED, "That no person shall use tobacco in the 
 house without providing spitting boxes." 
 
 There was a great deal of pious spit- 
 ting in those days but, you see, it was 
 always done decently and in order. 
 
 VOTED, " That the committee be authorized to 
 place tin pans under the stove-pipe to prevent its 
 dripping." 
 
 VOTED, " That a committee be appointed to try 
 and sell the bass viol belonging to the Society." 
 
 (Bass-viol suddenly growls in the gallery 
 as its name is mentioned.) Its ghost seems 
 to have risen to the occasion that its 
 name may not be taken in vain. Well, dear 
 old bass-viol ! though at first you seemed 
 to our unriddled sanctity a little fiddleish,
 
 70 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 you served us well and nobly, and we can 
 truly say that we are glad we scraped an 
 acquaintance with you in the days of auld 
 lang syne and you certainly may speak in 
 our meeting. You know our sign is, " Please 
 be brief, but not silent." And you too, oh, 
 sacred flute ! (flute sounds) wont in the 
 days gone by to take up our religious feel- 
 ings and waft them out in breathy tootings 
 over our listening ears in notes so full, so 
 divinely shrill, that they vibrated in the 
 very marrow of our bones. Hail ! old 
 tooter! beloved discord of many memories! 
 girls in the galleries ! whispers in the choir ! 
 notes in the hymn books ! We greet thee 
 across the years ! 
 
 The church has had four parsonages. 
 The land was once given for " a parsonage 
 to be erected thereon to be the residence "
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 
 
 (so says the agreement) "of ministers whose 
 theological sentiments accord with the Con- 
 fession of Faith at present established in this 
 church." It was the evident intention to 
 have an orthodox parsonage, at all events if 
 they should happen to fail on the ortho- 
 doxy of their ministers. Query, Why has 
 the parsonage had to be moved so often ? 
 
 VOTED, " That this Society pay the Rev. - for 
 his services, Nov. ist, and thereafter as money may 
 be in the treasury from time to time, not needed for 
 other purposes." 
 
 Passed. This looks a little as if the par- 
 sonage babies had to take their chances on 
 getting new copper-toed shoes when the 
 other children did, but it is explained away 
 by saying that the salary had always been 
 paid annually ; and this was a concession 
 allowing the good dominie to put his hand
 
 72 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 in the church pocket whenever he chose if 
 he could find anything there, lying around 
 in a kind of loose " you-may-take-me-if-you- 
 please " fashion. The church has always 
 treated its pastors very handsomely al- 
 though, in taking a good long, historical per- 
 spective of a look at ourselves, we discover 
 some things that we would not do over again. 
 But I fear the perspective is getting a 
 little too long, and I must begin to begin 
 to stop ; but it takes so long to climb up 
 into this pulpit that a man feels he must 
 do something after he is here. I was told 
 at breakfast this morning that my audience 
 would think I was in heaven when I com- 
 menced to speak from this holy height ; and 
 I felt sure that you would wish I was be- 
 fore I was through, for I fear that most of 
 you are going home a decidedly stiff-necked
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 73 
 
 people especially those in the front seats. 
 But the celebrating of this one hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary is so important an event, 
 that so young a man as myself could hardly 
 help feeling that this high old pulpit 
 would have to be brought in to help him 
 rise to the occasion ; but I am sure that I 
 have not set it on fire with my eloquence, 
 in spite of the kerosene that it has been so 
 freely cleansed and polished with. And as 
 for your stiff necks you will have the 
 liniment of knowing that they are not half 
 so stiff as the same in your forefathers ; 
 for there were several more stories on this 
 pulpit, in th'e palmy days of yore, and 
 the sexton used to step from the pulpit 
 into the gallery to do his dusting or, rather, 
 perhaps he did, or he could have done it ; 
 or, possibly, my dear brethren, he didn't at
 
 74 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 all. I can't say that any one really ever saw 
 it ; but one thing I know, as I leave the 
 solemn stateliness of this old desk, never 
 have there been such flutterings and flop- 
 pings of vain, empty thoughts as have 
 winged their way out over it to you from 
 the dim and misty regions of the past one 
 hundred and fifty years! 
 
 I hope that I have offended none of 
 the Chinamen in my audience this morn- 
 ing. I refer to the Chinese genius of a few 
 men here and there in the world, who turn 
 a healthy honor of the past into the 
 morbid paganism of a thoroughly almond- 
 eyed ancestor-worship ; so that, in consider- 
 ing the past, we are standing, to their minds, 
 in a cemetery on the edge of graves, and 
 all the foibles of human nature that have 
 been buried have never been. They are
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 75 
 
 wiped out by an epitaph, and men are gods 
 when their tombstones are cut. I hope I 
 am not irreverent, but I do not think so. 
 All that the Past is for is the Present. I 
 live in the hope that our follies and ab- 
 surdities will teach the future, as well as 
 our virtues. That is one way of atoning 
 for them the only way some of us have. 
 And the man who loves his race as a kind 
 of splendid larger self, a vast and glorious 
 magnifying of the instincts of his own heart 
 stretching over the ages, growing better 
 with every one hundred and fifty years, is 
 so sure of his love of those who have gone 
 before that he feels he can afford to laugh 
 a little at the smaller eccentricities of their 
 ways, as only a far-off shadow of the 
 eccentricities of his own. We smile but at 
 portraits of ourselves fancifully taken in old-
 
 76 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 fashioned clothes. It is this same ridicu- 
 lous, old human nature of ours, with its 
 stately-comic travesty on itself kind of 
 sadly laughable ; grand even in its foolish- 
 ness, and foolish ever in its grandeur ! 
 What a beautiful blunder we are ! What 
 a great glory of a mistake ! 
 
 Man has ever been, and ever will be, 
 his own fun and his own solemnity, his 
 own disgrace and his own dignity ; while 
 all the years pass over him, with their exits 
 and their entrances, he is ever the great 
 tragi-comedy of existence, taking off his 
 own follies, interpreting his own greatness, 
 laughing and crying, striving and failing, 
 strutting now in sublime littleness and bow- 
 ing again in little sublimity weaver of non- 
 sense and heroism out of the weak-strong 
 strangeness of his heart !
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 77 
 
 But while there is a good deal to smile 
 over in this one hundred and fifty years, 
 there is more to pray over, and many are 
 the sermons folded away in events for our 
 thoughtfulness. 
 
 The " Home " of our forefathers, for in- 
 stance, was not, as is often the case with us, 
 a place to be born in and to sleep in, and to 
 come down late to breakfast in, just in time 
 to rush off into the great hive-home of busi- 
 ness. It was not a kind of natural restau- 
 rant in which to take meals, a place to be 
 sick in, a place to be loved in when we 
 are too tired for anything else ; nor a place 
 to cry in and be cross in and sweet in and 
 petted in and scolded in until just old 
 enough to get away, to make a home out 
 of everywhere and a family out of every 
 one. Well might this unconsciously home-
 
 78 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 less boarding-house race of ours look back 
 to the good old days when a family was 
 started with somewhat of the feeling with 
 which a colony was ; and though the father 
 was a little too much like a governor, he 
 at least did his own the honor of seeing 
 that God had given him a holier trust than 
 ever a state can give a man. And well 
 may we learn from them, that the largest 
 responsibility there is in life is ever the soul 
 of the child that we bring into the world, 
 and that the heart of a boy or girl is a 
 great unknown continent of a possibility, 
 and that there is no office that man gives 
 to his fellows so sacred with responsibility 
 and so momentous with consequences as 
 that office which God gives to thousands of 
 men and women the kingliness of being 
 father to a soul and the queenliness of
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 79 
 
 being mother to a human heart, and the 
 kingdom of a home ! And again, while our 
 ancestors, making an intense business of 
 religion, were a little apt to feel that they 
 could let it go a little after business hours, 
 and that God was on one side and a good 
 time on the other, we are reminded that 
 real religion is the genius of intense earnest- 
 ness and looks down into the great deeps 
 and sees the chasms there, and then looks 
 up into the great deeps and sees the love 
 there ; and it is not, like some of ours, a 
 pious thoughtlessness and a kind of con- 
 scientious carelessness, but a deep thing 
 a glorious sad-glad knowledge, and not a 
 butterfly peace fluttering over small things, 
 happy in not seeing great ones. A wor- 
 shipful and beautiful seriousness, a vast, 
 incalculable, wonderful, unworded solemnity,
 
 8O ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 this religion of ours ! They teach us this, 
 and, while the Puritan made God a kind 
 of infinite and eternal Puritan Himself, and 
 often, under the extravagances of the doc- 
 trine of election, a great, fickle Arbitrari- 
 ness, selecting and rejecting souls with a 
 kind of autocratic, infinite unreasonableness, 
 without reference to their pleadings some- 
 times, it is certainly better than the modern 
 infant-class God a great Sentimentality far 
 away in the heavens who, in a kind of 
 vast weak-mindedness, wants everybody to 
 be good and hopes they will, but doesn't 
 quite know what to do about it if they are 
 not. And which is worse the old way of 
 almost thinking that God would take ad- 
 vantage of men, or the new way of treat- 
 ing Him as a kind of Infinite Convenience, 
 and supposing that men can take advan-
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 8 1 
 
 tage of Him? The one was stupidity of 
 mind, but this is meanness of spirit. 
 
 We can learn from one of the mistakes 
 of our ancestors that the only religion that 
 can live is one that is as broad as human 
 life, and that no religion can make itself a 
 special faculty of the soul ; but, would it live, 
 it must be of all the faculties combined 
 making a specialty of observing one God. 
 
 It was the blunder of their methods that 
 they tried to get a man away from his life 
 over into religion instead of trying to get 
 his religion over into his life. The religion 
 needs the life, and the life needs the relig- 
 ion. 
 
 They teach us, also, the force and value 
 of definite convictions, and their superb so- 
 lidity makes its own comments standing 
 
 rock-like under our theology of beautiful 
 6
 
 82 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 mist, and vast, glorious, shining vagueness ; 
 and, while we would not go back to them, 
 they enforce the lesson that they needed us 
 and we need them, and that the only safe lib- 
 eral man is the very intense and earnest one, 
 and the only safe earnest man is the truly 
 liberal one. 
 
 Looking over these years, we but learn 
 again that it takes all the epochs to spell 
 out God, and that religion is a kind of rain- 
 bow arching across the ages, each century 
 putting in its own particular color ; but it 
 takes the adding of them all together to bring 
 out the glory of beautiful blendings, reaching 
 from horizon to horizon, that exist in the nat- 
 ure of God. And it comes to me in another 
 way that years are a sort of books, each 
 coming with its copy to each of us, never 
 to be copied again. We have the " Century
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 83 
 
 Dictionary," but we have also another dic- 
 tionary great, massive folios issued from 
 heaven, the dictionary of the centuries 
 which God is writing, of infinite meanings, 
 out of human event and experience, and we 
 have been turning over the last one hundred 
 and fifty pages and looking up some of the 
 references and the new words God has been 
 writing there for the souls of men. 
 
 God is always writing. He is the Great 
 Author. The Bible is only one of His Prim- 
 ers, and all history is a massive publication of 
 God's love, God's interest in us publishing 
 the Bible over again in a new and more 
 gigantic form, in the sublime, God-like real- 
 ism of what actually takes place in the 
 world ; the Bible, translated into events, and 
 into a thousand thousand tongues of human 
 experience. The Bible, so far as the canon
 
 84 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 is concerned, closes with the Revelation of 
 John ; but history is the Revelation of God ; 
 and the ages, as they roll on, are an ever 
 mightier inspiration. God in History is tak- 
 ing the whole human race for a deep, 
 broad wonder of an apostle, and inspiring 
 it to speak from its own great heart to its 
 own great Self and the brooding greater 
 greatness of the future. 
 
 This is the last day in our one hundred 
 and fifty years. To-morrow is the birthday 
 of a new history and of the new series 
 God begins, for us, of the blessings yet to 
 be. God is with us. The Past is with us. 
 One hundred and fifty years are assembled 
 in this sacredness and the 1,200 souls that 
 have waited in this church, on their way to 
 heaven, watch over us with the deep and 
 tender benediction of all their prayers, their
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 85 
 
 strivings, and their triumphs. The real his- 
 tory of this church has been written by God 
 in a nobler, deeper language than my words 
 can feel their way to. Human lives ! God's 
 words ! I would that, in solemn and still 
 processional winding through this pulpit, one 
 by one, I could cause the spirits of these 
 lives to pass before you ; for the real history 
 begins where my words leave off. It would 
 be like gathering the sunshine of the sunny 
 days of one hundred and fifty years. The 
 earth feels it, but the sunny days are gone ; 
 God has gathered them unto Himself. We 
 can only have more like them. One hundred 
 and fifty yeais of blunders and blessings 
 blessed blunders, blunderings blessed ! Oh, 
 this wondrous maze of good and evil that we 
 call the human heart ! this strange intricacy 
 of things from another world, of forces and
 
 86 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 weaknesses, trying to puzzle its dim-lighted 
 way across Time into Eternity, under the 
 love of God, to the destination of things ! 
 Out of our honor, out of our disgrace, out 
 of our prayers, out of our hopes and de- 
 spairs, out of our prejudices and charities, 
 God is working wonders in a kind of di- 
 vinely wilful way of having everything come 
 out rightly in spite of us ! 
 
 One hundred and fifty years seems long 
 to us, but to God it is only one of the 
 touches of His sublime love upon the hu- 
 man spirit, out of countless ones across the 
 ages. We look back out of our newness 
 this morning upon this, oldness of one 
 hundred and fifty years ago, but our 
 newness is but another oldness yet to 
 be. It is we who are new and old ; but 
 all that belongs to God moves majesti-
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 87 
 
 cally on above these very human words. 
 This church belongs to God ; and long after 
 the elms on our village streets have dropped 
 away, and many new corner-stones have 
 been laid, this church will live on, standing 
 at the door-way of life, and leading the gen- 
 erations each as they come unto Him. A 
 church is the best symbol of Eternity we 
 have in Time. Generations, to a church, 
 are but what years are to the spirit of a 
 man, while thousands of members who are 
 born into it, and live out the meaning of 
 their threescore and ten, die away and are 
 no more ; but the church lives on, lives on 
 like some great spirit that can never die, 
 while the souls of men are but thoughts 
 and feelings that come and go across it. 
 
 We stand under the halo of the past. 
 Stepping into the pastorate of this church,
 
 88 ABOUT AN OLD 
 
 a great wave of awe comes over me to-day ; 
 and I am young wonderfully young! Holy 
 with traditions and rich with memories, I 
 stand like a little child under this mighty 
 Past, like a child entering a great cathedral 
 time-hallowed arches reaching over him 
 afraid of his own small voice, echoing 
 childishly across the wide, still reaches of all 
 that has gone before ; and the great, deep 
 heart of this church, speaking across all the 
 silences of these beautiful years, makes my 
 heart stand still. Who am I who are 
 you to take up the glory of this Past and 
 hand it on through the sweetness of our 
 lives to the waiting Future ? 
 
 Will it be a broken link a sad paren- 
 thesis of God's looking the other way ? 
 
 God has given us the Past. The Future 
 belongs to God. And it belongs to us
 
 NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 89 
 
 to us in Him, and to Him in us. And, lo ! 
 the years, like prophets, come to meet us, 
 preaching a greater nobility to be, out of 
 the nobility that hath been ; and, lo ! the 
 lives that have gone before, linking with 
 souls this church to heaven, seem but a kind 
 of living, loving logic, linking heaven to us : 
 promises gone before of what we may be. 
 They have given the direction and the im- 
 pulse. We have only to be true. 
 
 The best celebration of the last one 
 hundred and fifty years will be the next one 
 hundred and fifty years. 
 
 Look now teward heaven, and tell the stars, 
 if thou be able to tell them : and He said unto 
 him, So shall thy seed be.
 
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