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to be seemly. This is, indeed, changing the order of things, by
elevating the sinner, and depressing the saint."
"You forget, Miss Eve, that under the old plan, the people could not
see; they were kept unnaturally down, if one can so express it, while
nobody had a good look-out but the parson and the singers in the
front row of the gallery. This was unjust."
"I do not conceive, sir, that a good look-out, as you term it, is at
all essential to devotion, or that one cannot as well listen to
instruction when beneath the teacher, as when above him."
"Pardon me, Miss;" Eve recoiled, as she always did, when Mr. Bragg
used this vulgar and contemptuous mode of address; "we put no body up
or down; all we aim it is a just equality--to place all, as near as
possible, on a level."
Eve gazed about her in wonder; and then she hesitated a moment, as if
distrusting her ears.
"Equality! Equality with what? Surely not with the ordained ministers
of the church, in the performance of their sacred duties! Surely not
with the Deity!"
"We do not look at it exactly in this light, ma'am. The people build
the church, _that_ you will allow, Miss Effingham; even _you_ will
allow _this_, Mr. Effingham."
Both the parties appealed to, bowed a simple assent to so plain a
proposition, but neither spoke.
"Well, the people building the church very naturally ask themselves
for what purpose it was built?"
"For the worship of God," returned Eve with a steady solemnity of
manner that a little abashed even the ordinarily indomitable and
self-composed Aristabulus.
"Yes, Miss; for the worship of God and the accommodation of the
public."
"Certainly," added Mr. Dodge; "for the public accommodation and for
public worship;" laying due emphasis on the adjectives.
"Father, you, at least, will never consent to this?"
"Not readily, my love. I confess it shocks all my notions of
propriety to see the sinner, even when he professes to be the most
humble and penitent, thrust himself up ostentatiously, as if filled
only with his own self-love and self-importance."
"You will allow, Mr. Effingham," rejoined Aristabulus, "that churches
are built to accommodate the public, as Mr. Dodge has so well
remarked."
"No, sir; they are built for the worship of God, as my daughter has
so well remarked."
"Yes, sir; that, too, I grant you"
"As secondary to the main object--the public convenience, Mr. Bragg
unquestionably means;" put in John Effingham, speaking for the first
time that morning on the subject.
Eve turned quickly, and looked towards her kinsman. He was standing
near the table, with folded arms, and his fine face expressing all
the sarcasm and contempt that a countenance so singularly calm and
gentleman-like, could betray.
"Cousin Jack," she said earnestly, "this ought not to be."
"Cousin Eve, nevertheless this will be."
"Surely not--surely not! Men can never so far forget appearances as
to convert the temple of God into a theatre, in which the convenience
of the spectators is the one great object to be kept in view!"
"_You_ have travelled, sir," said John Effingham, indicating by his
eye that he addressed Mr. Dodge, in particular, "and must have
entered places of worship in other parts of the world. Did not the
simple beauty of the manner in which all classes, the great and the
humble, the rich and the poor, kneel in a common humility before the
altar, strike you agreeably, on such occasions; in Catholic
countries, in particular?"
"Bless me! no, Mr. John Effingham. I was disgusted at the meanness of
their rites, and really shocked at the abject manner in which the
people knelt on the cold damp stones, as if they were no better than
beggars."
"And were they not beggars?" asked Eve, with almost a severity of
tone: "ought they not so to consider themselves, when petitioning for
mercy of the one great and omnipotent God?"
"Why, Miss Effingham, the people _will_ rule; and it is useless to
pretend to tell them that they shall not have the highest seats in
the church as well as in the state. Really, I can see no ground why a
parson should be raised above his parishioners. The new-order
churches consult the public convenience, and place every body on a
level, as it might be. Now, in old times, a family was buried in its
pew; it could neither see nor be seen; and I can remember the time
when I could just get a look of our clergyman's wig, for he was an
old-school man; and as for his fellow-creatures, one might as well be
praying in his own closet. I must say I am a supporter of liberty, if
it be only in pews."
"I am sorry, Mr. Dodge," answered Eve, mildly, "you did not extend
your travels into the countries of the Mussulmans, where most
Christian sects might get some useful notions concerning the part of
worship, at least, that is connected with appearances. There you
would have seen no seats, but sinners bowing down in a mass, on the
cold stones, and all thoughts of cushioned pews and drawing-room
conveniences unknown. We Protestants have improved on our Catholic
forefathers in this respect; and the innovation of which you now
speak, in my eyes is an irreverent, almost a sinful, invasion of the
proprieties of the temple."
"Ah, Miss Eve, this comes from substituting forms for the substance
of things," exclaimed the editor. "For my part, I can say, I was
truly shocked with the extravagancies I witnessed, in the way of
worship, in most of the countries I visited. Would you think it, Mr.
Bragg, rational beings, real _bona fide_ living men and women,
kneeling on the stone pavement, like so many camels in the Desert,"
Mr. Dodge loved to draw his images from the different parts of the
world he had seen, "ready to receive the burthens of their masters;
not a pew, not a cushion, not a single comfort that is suitable to a
free and intelligent being, but every thing conducted in the most
abject manner, as if accountable human souls were no better than so
many mutes in a Turkish palace."
"You ought to mention this in the Active Inquirer," said Aristabulus.
"All in good time, sir; I have many things in reserve, among which I
propose to give a few remarks, I dare say they will be very worthless
ones, on the impropriety of a rational being's ever kneeling. To my
notion, gentlemen and ladies, God never intended an American to
kneel."
The respectable mechanics who stood around the table did not
absolutely assent to this proposition, for one of them actually
remarked that "he saw no great harm in a man's kneeling to the
Deity;" but they evidently inclined to the opinion that the new-
school of pews was far better than the old.
"It always appears to me, Miss Effingham," said one, "that I hear and
understand the sermon better in one of the low pews, than in one of
the old high-backed things, that look so much like pounds."
"But can you withdraw into yourself better, sir? Can you more truly
devote all your thoughts, with a suitable singleness of heart, to the
worship of God?"
"You mean in the prayers, now, I rather conclude?"
"Certainly, sir, I mean in the prayers and the thanksgivings."
"Why, we leave them pretty much to the parson; though I will own it
is not quite as easy leaning on the edge of one of the new-school
pews as on one of the old. They are better for sitting, but not so
good for standing. But then the sitting posture at prayers is quite
coming into favour among our people, Miss Effingham, as well as among
yours. The sermon is the main chance, after all."
"Yes," observed Mr. Gouge, "give me good, strong preaching, any day,
in preference to good praying. A man may get along with second-rate
prayers, but he stands in need of first-rate preaching."
"These gentlemen consider religion a little like a cordial on a cold
day," observed John Effingham, "which is to be taken in sufficient
doses to make the blood circulate. They are not the men to be
_pounded_ in pews, like lost sheep, not they?"
"Mr. John will always have his say;" one remarked: and then Mr.
Effingham dismissed the party, by telling them he would think of the
matter.
When the mechanics were gone, the subject was discussed at some
length between those that remained--all the Effinghams agreeing that
they would oppose the innovation, as irreverent in appearance,
unsuited to the retirement and self-abasement that best comported
with prayer, and opposed to the delicacy of their own habits; while
Messrs. Bragg and Dodge contended to the last that such changes were
loudly called for by the popular sentiment--- that it was unsuited to
the dignity of a man to be 'pounded,' even in a church--and
virtually, that a good, 'stirring' sermon, as they called it, was of
far more account, in public worship, than all the prayers and praises
that could issue from the heart or throat.
Chapter XIV. ("We'll follow Cade--we'll follow Cade.")
MOB.
"The views of this Mr. Bragg, and of our old fellow-traveller, Mr.
Dodge, appear to be peculiar on the subject of religious forms,"
observed Sir George Templemore, as he descended the little lawn
before the Wigwam, in company with the three ladies, Paul Powis, and
John Effingham, on their way to the lake. "I should think it would be
difficult to find another Christian, who objects to kneeling at
prayer."
"Therein you are mistaken, Templemore," answered Paul; "for this
country, to say nothing of one sect which holds it in utter
abomination, is filled with them. Our pious ancestors, like
neophytes, ran into extremes, on the subject of forms, as well as in
other matters. When you go to Philadelphia, Miss Effingham, you will
see an instance of a most ludicrous nature--ludicrous, if there were
not something painfully revolting mingled with it--of the manner in
which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; and which, I am
sorry to say, is immediately connected with our own church."
It was music to Eve's ears, to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious
ancestors, as being American, and to find him so thoroughly
identifying himself with her own native land; for, while condemning
so many of its practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and
contradictions, our heroine had seen too much of other countries, not
to take an honest pride in the real excellencies of her own. There
was, also, a soothing pleasure in hearing him openly own that he
belonged to the same church as herself.
"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in
connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily
disposed to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."
"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry,
discontinued, in a great degree, the use of the cross, as an outward
religious symbol; and that there was probably a time when there was
not a single cross to be seen in the whole of a country that was
settled by those who made a profession of love for Christ, and a
dependence on his expiation, the great business of their lives?"
"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and
scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances."
"They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little
pleasing to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that
peculiarly favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know
whether travelling has had the same effect on you, as it has produced
on me; but I find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible
representation of the cross, superseded by a sort of solemn affection
for it, as a symbol, when it is plain, and unaccompanied by any of
those bloody and minute accessories that are so often seen around it
in Catholic countries. The German Protestants, who usually ornament
the altar with a cross, first cured me of the disrelish I imbibed, on
this subject, in childhood."
"We, also, I think, cousin John, were agreeably struck with the same
usage in Germany. From
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