Part 17 (1/2)
”He began the Sabbath at evening, therefore then performed family duty after supper, being longer than ordinary in exposition. After which he catechized his children and servants, and then returned to his study. The morning following, family wors.h.i.+p being ended, he retired into his study until the bell called him away. Upon his return from meeting (where he had preached and prayed some hours), he returned again into his study (the place of his labor and prayer), unto his favorite devotion; where having a small repast carried him up for his dinner, he continued until the tolling of the bell. The public service of the afternoon being over, he withdrew for a s.p.a.ce to his pre-mentioned oratory for his sacred addresses to G.o.d, as in the forenoon, then came down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed, after supper sang a Psalm, and toward bedtime betaking himself again to his study he closed the day with prayer. Thus he spent the Sabbath continually.”
The Virginia Cavaliers were strict Church of England men and the first who came to the colony were strict Sunday-keepers. Rules were laid down to enforce Sunday observance. Journeys were forbidden, boat-lading was prohibited, also all profanation of the day by sports, such as shooting, fis.h.i.+ng, game-playing, etc. The offender who broke the Sabbath laws had to pay a fine and be set in the stocks. When that st.u.r.dy watch-dog of religion and government--Sir Thomas Dale--came over, he declared absence from church should be punishable by death; but this severity never was executed. The captain of the watch was made to play the same part as the New England t.i.thing-man. Every Sunday, half an hour before service-time, at the last tolling of the bell, the captain stationed sentinels, then searched all the houses and commanded and forced all (except the sick) to go to church. Then, when all were driven churchwards before him, he went with his guards to church himself.
Captain John Smith, in his _Pathway to erect a Plantation_, thus vividly described the first places of divine wors.h.i.+p in Virginia:--
”Wee did hang an awning, which is an old saile, to three or foure trees to shadow us from the Sunne; our walls were railes of wood; our seats unhewed trees till we cut plankes; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we s.h.i.+fted into an old rotten tent; this came by way of adventure for new.
This was our Church till we built a homely thing like a barne set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth; so also was the walls; the best of our houses were of like curiosity, that could neither well defend from wind nor rain.
”Yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and evening; every Sunday two sermons; and every three months a holy Communion till our Minister died: but our Prayers daily with an Homily on Sundays we continued two or three years after, till more Preachers came.”
A timber church sixty feet long took the place of this mud and clay chapel, and this was in turn replaced by the brick one whose ruined arches are still standing. The wooden church saw the most pompous ceremony of the day when the governor, De La Warre, or Delaware as we now call it, in full dress, attended by all his councillors and officers and fifty halbert-bearers in scarlet cloaks, filed within its flower-decked walls.
This decoration of flowers was significant of the difference between the church edifices of the Puritans and of the Cavaliers. The churches of the Southern colonies were, as a rule, much more richly furnished. Many were modelled in shape after the old English churches and were built of stone, though Jonathan Boucher, the colonial clergyman, could write that the greater number of the Southern churches were, at the time of the Revolution, ”composed of wood, without spires, or towers or steeples or bells, placed in retired and solitary spots and contiguous to springs or wells.” Many of the churches and the chapels-of-ease stood by the waterside, and to the services came the church attendants in canoes, periaugers, dugouts, etc. It made an animated scene upon the water, as the boats came rowing in and as they departed after the service.
Sometimes the seats were comfortably cus.h.i.+oned, and they were carefully a.s.signed as in the Puritan meetings. In some Virginia churches seats in the galleries were deemed the most dignified. There was a pew for the magistrates, another for the magistrates' ladies; pews for the representatives and church-wardens, vestrymen, etc. Persons crowded into pews above their stations, just as in New England, and were promptly displaced. Groups of men built pews together, and there were schoolboys'
galleries and pews.
The first clergyman in Virginia, Robert Hunt, a true man of G.o.d, came as a missionary, and he and others were men of marked intellect and religion, but in the eighteenth century the pay was too small and uncertain to attract any great men from the Church of England, and church attendance dwindled and became irregular. For in Virginia the parish was expected to receive any clergyman sent them from England, a rule which often proved unsatisfactory; and deservedly so, since some very disreputable offshoots of English families were thrust upon the Virginia churches. In the Carolinas, where the church chose its own clergyman, harmony and affection prevailed in the parishes as it did among the New England Puritans. Though the Virginians did not always love their clergymen, still they were ever steadfast in their affection to their church, and regarded it as the only church.
Sunday was not observed with as much rigidity in New Netherland as in New England, but strict rules and laws were made for enforcing quiet during service-time. Fis.h.i.+ng, gathering berries or nuts, playing in the streets, working, going on pleasure trips, all were forbidden. On Long Island shooting of wild fowl, carting of grain, travelling for pleasure, all were punished. In Revolutionary times a cage was set up in City Hall Park, near the present New York Post-office, in which boys were confined who did not properly regard the Sabbath.
Before the Dutch settlers had any churches or domines, as they called their ministers, they had _krankbesoeckers_, or visitors of the sick, who read sermons to an a.s.sembled congregation every Sunday. The first church at Albany was much like the Plymouth fort, simply a blockhouse with loop-holes through which guns could be fired. The roof was mounted with three cannon. It had a seat for the magistrates and one for the deacons, and a handsome octagonal pulpit which had been sent from Holland, and which still exists. The edifice had a chandelier and candle sconces and two low galleries. The first church in New Amsterdam was of stone, and was seventy-two feet long.
A favorite form of the Dutch churches was six or eight sided, with a high pyramidal roof, topped with a belfry and a weather-vane. Usually the windows were so small and of gla.s.s so opaque that the church was very dark. A few of the churches were poorly heated with high stoves perched up on pillars, the Albany and Schenectady churches among them, but all the women carried foot-stoves, and some of the men carried m.u.f.fs.
Almost as important as the domine was the _voorleezer_ or chorister, who was also generally the bell-ringer, s.e.xton, grave-digger, funeral inviter, schoolmaster, and sometimes town clerk. He ”tuned the psalm”; turned the hour-gla.s.s; gave out the psalms on a hanging board to the congregation; read the Bible; gave up notices to the domine by sticking the papers in the end of a cleft stick and holding it up to the high pulpit.
The deacons had control of all the church money. In the middle of the sermon they collected contributions by pa.s.sing _sacjes_. These were small cloth or velvet bags hung on the end of a pole six or eight feet long. A French traveller told that the Dutch deacons pa.s.sed round ”the old square hat of the preacher” on the end of a stick for the contributions. Usually there was a little bell on the _sacje_ which rung when a coin was dropped in.
In many Dutch churches the men sat in a row of pews around the wall while the women were seated on chairs in the centre of the church. There were also a few benches or pews for persons of special dignity, or for the minister's wife.
There were many other colonists of other religious faiths: the Roman Catholics in Maryland and the extreme Southern colonies; the Quakers in Pennsylvania; the Baptists in Rhode Island; the Huguenots, Lutherans, Moravians; but all enjoined an orderly observance of the Sabbath day.
And it may be counted as one of the great blessings of the settlement of America, one of the most enn.o.bling conditions of its colonization, that it was made at a time when the deepest religious feeling prevailed throughout Europe, when devotion to some religion was found in every one, when the Bible was a newly found and deeply loved treasure; when the very differences of religious belief and the formation of new sects made each cling more lovingly and more earnestly to his own faith.
CHAPTER XVI
COLONIAL NEIGHBORLINESS
If the first foundation of New England's strength and growth was G.o.dliness, its next was neighborliness, and a firm rock it proved to build upon. It may seem anomalous to a.s.sert that while there was in olden times infinitely greater independence in each household than at present, yet there was also greater interdependence with surrounding households.
It is curious to see how completely social ethics and relations have changed since olden days. Aid in our families in times of stress and need is not given to us now by kindly neighbors as of yore; we have well-arranged systems by which we can buy all that a.s.sistance, and pay for it, not with affectionate regard, but with current coin. The colonist turned to any and all who lived around him, and never turned in vain for help in sickness, or at the time of death of members of his household; for friendly advice; for culinary aids to a halting appet.i.te; for the preparation for feasting an exceptional number of persons; in short, in any unusual emergency, as well as in frequent every-day cooperation in log-rolling, stone-piling, stump-pulling, wall-building, house-raising, etc.,--all the hard and exhausting labor on the farm.
The word ”cooperation” is modern, but the thing itself is as old as civilization. In a new country where there was much work to be done which one man or one family could not do, under the mechanical conditions which then existed, a working together, or union of labor was necessary for progress, indeed, almost for obtaining a foothold.
The term ”log-rolling” is frequently employed in its metaphorical sense in politics, both by English and American writers who have vague knowledge of the original meaning of the word. A log-rolling in early pioneer days, in the Northern colonies and in western Virginia and the central states, was a n.o.ble example of generous cooperation, where each gave of his best--his time, strength, and good will; and where all worked to clear the ground in the forest for a home-farm for a neighbor who might be newly come and an entire stranger, but who in turn would just as cheerfully and energetically give his work for others when it was needed.
With the vanis.h.i.+ng of the log-rolling, and a score of similar kindly usages and customs, has gone from our communities all traces of the old-time exalted type of neighborliness. We nowadays have generalized our sentiments; we have more philanthropy and less neighborliness; we have more love for mankind and less for men. We are independent of our neighbors, but infinitely more dependent on the world at large. The personal element has been removed to a large extent from our social ethics. We buy nursing and catering just as we hire our houses built and buy our corn ready ground. Doubtless everything we buy is infinitely better; nevertheless, our loss in affectionate zeal is great.