USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 1 Connecticut and the British Government > Part 40
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The worship might perhaps seem rude to us, and the sermons unfinished and uncouth, and the culture and education from both to have been of a negative value. We should remember as we drag through the old sermons, and the books of ghostly counsel, and the poetry of doubtful inspiration, that the first preachers of New Eng- land were two generations and more earlier than Locke, three before Addison, and five before Johnson. We should not forget that Milton and Sir Henry Vane, their con- temporaries, were in prose diction often pedantic and unfinished, though usually eloquent and strong. Of one thing we may be assured, that had it not been for the meet-
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ing house and the ministry of its first century, New Eng- land would have sunk into barbarism, and neither school- master nor school would have flourished in New England, and if not there, surely nowhere in this land.
We ought not to forget that very early, under the in- spiration of the ministry and under the very shadow of the meeting house, school houses were erected for all the children of the parish and the town, and that like the gospel, education was enforced upon all the children, and all the parents were taxed to pay for it; and the neglect of such advantages was denounced from the pulpit as a sin against the commonwealth and against God. As the fruit of this religious inspiration and religious sanction in New England the public school system has taken its strong hold of the people of this country. The great num- ber of select schools or academies which have from time to time come into being, some of which have become per- manent and endowed, and some transformed into colleges and seminaries, is explained by the constant inculcation by the minister of the Christian duty of sustaining the higher education. The founders of all of the New Eng- land colleges have been conspicuously clergymen, and in hundreds of New England meeting houses have been heard the admonitions and teachings which have sent millions of dollars into the treasuries of our higher semi- naries of Christian learning. From the earliest days till now the minister was usually one of the authorized school visitors in the smaller towns, and not a few clergy- men still serve in this capacity. Nor should we forget those annual exhibitions of the schools of the town, which of necessity and of love were held in the meeting house, when the first classes of the smaller districts would vie with one another, and matches in reading, and spelling, and arithmetic, and grammar, were hallowed by the
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sanctuary and blessed by the minister, while the entire community looked on with sympathizing favor. Not in- frequently dramatic exhibitions have taken possession of the house of worship in the interests of the village academy, and many of the devices and arrangements of the theatre have been displayed in a Puritan meeting house, which in its earlier life had never been desecrated by a night meeting. When Sunday schools were first intro- duced, about sixty years ago,2 a few of the adherents of the old ways shook their heads in distrust, but very soon the great doors of the oldest meeting houses were thrown open for their heartiest welcome, till the Sunday school has now well nigh usurped the functions of the minister, or the minister has in some cases ceased to teach with that authority and earnestness which in the olden days he never failed to assert for his office and for himself.
I ought not to omit the culture of sacred song as a most important accessory of public worship and inci- dentally a means of social and individual refinement. In the first generations of New England the poetry and singing were rude enough and very little of culture could come of either. Two or three uncouth versions of the Psalms were all the sacred melodies which the worshipers knew or used in public or private worship. Some five or six tunes were all that were used by any congregation. Early in the last century the "new way" of singing was introduced, presumably by the new version of Dr. Watts with the new tunes. The novelties which the new melodies demanded occasioned serious divisions among the people, and now and then some scandalous scenes in the meeting house, each man following his conscience after a very unedifying fashion. But in the end the new way prevailed -as it always must, provided the new represents the true.
2 That is, about 1822.
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In some congregations the advocates of the old way were permitted to leave the assembly before the last singing in the afternoon, which followed the new fashion. The com- motion made by the departing malcontents as they tramped along the aisles and down the gallery stairs, was long remembered as an emphatic example of how vigorous can be the protests of an exasperated conscience. These controversies continued for nearly a half century, till finally Dr. Watts (the new way of singing), and separate choirs triumphed, and with these came in that cultiva- tion of sacred music, which for nearly a century at least has made the New England meeting house so efficient an incitement to the musical culture and incidentally to the refinement of the community. In connection with formal choirs, singing schools became general. In the natural course of human degeneracy, the zeal of the members of the choir would decline and with it their skill would abate. A new generation of singers would also have appeared full of promise and hope, at least in the judgment of their partial friends. Some promising leader and teacher was always ready to present himself, native or from a neighboring parish, with favorable recommen- dations of his skill and success, and the entire community would be engrossed for a winter with the excitement at- tending a new singing school under a new teacher.
The excitement attendant upon the singing meetings was manifold, social and otherwise, and at the conclusion of the term a sacred concert would be required and the installation of the new singers in their places in the gal- lery. Those were memorable days, when a long line of singers stood around the gallery front, headed in the center opposite the pulpit by old ladies and gentlemen and terminating at either end with children in their teens. At first, but long ago, the pitch-pipe and tuning fork were
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the only instruments allowed, and these simply because they were necessary. Every other was ruled out by the pointed declaration of the prophet, "I will not hear the melody of thy viols." But somehow a larger viol of greater dignity and sonorousness of sound, got in under another name, till at last an entire orchestra was estab- lished in the meeting house in spite of the suggestions of a similarity with the idolatrous concert of the "cornet, flute, dulcimer, sackbut, psaltry." The singing school, moreover, was often a convenient place for flirtation and sometimes the occasion of parish discord and strife. The musical tastes of the choir did not always harmonize the tempers nor even the voices of its members. And yet study and the practice of sacred music with reference to its effective and appropriate rendering in public worship, have been from one generation to another a most effective means of culture to thousands of individuals and families. Hundreds and thousands owe to the singing school and meeting house choir the beginning of their musical cul- ture, and the discovery and development of what has been the solace of their lives. The singing schools and Sunday choirs of New England are in many respects dis- tinctive and should never be omitted in our recollections and estimates of the New England place of worship.
Probably there is no particular in which the contrast is more striking between the peasantry of Old England and the yeomanry of New England, than the singing of the country churches. Perhaps there is no single feature by which the New Englander in the country is more dis- tinguished than by the self-reliance and aspiration which leads him to confront any exigency and to address him- self to any enterprise, whether this involves his personal fitness for any activity of life, or his confidence of success. The universality of the taste for music, the attention
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paid to singing, the diffusion of musical instruments among the homes of New Englanders and the New Eng- land emigration is to be ascribed almost entirely to the New England choir and the New England meeting house.
I have spoken of the positive village life of New Eng- land and the compact organization by which its families were formerly united together by religious and social bonds. Those influences which now exist were greatly intensified, in the earlier as compared with the present times. Few of us can adequately conceive of the seclusion of the great majority of the New England villages two gen- erations ago. Even those which were on the great roads and rivers or harbors were shut up to themselves and their own resources. They were singularly "self-dependent and self-sufficing." They were in an unusual degree "self- contained," to use an expression applied by the Scotch to a dwelling, which from basement to roof-tree is a single tenement, as contrasted with any variety of tene- ment or apartment houses. A community which is shut up to its own inhabitants and rarely sees any other, which has few books, few letters, few newspapers, if it has any energy and power to be roused, will make the most of what it has within itself. Especially will this be true if it has the rude vigor of youth and hope and enter- prise. In such a community every strong-minded man, every strong-hearted woman, every noticeable event, every sudden death, every lingering sickness, every public excitement, every striking piece of news, every sermon or public discourse, every visit of a stranger will make its definite and abiding impression. If the community be large enough and sympathizing enough it will move strongly and unitedly in response to any local excitement.
All these conditions of intense and marked individual- ity were fulfilled in the New England communities, and as
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everything in their faith was referred to the plan, and purpose, and kingdom of God, as these were expounded in the meeting house, it is not surprising that the meeting house and the weekly worship, and the minister, and the church left its impress upon every man, woman, and child. In this solemn place the members of an entire com- munity knowing one another's history, and position, and reputation, assembled every Lord's day for their common worship. They were no stupid boors, no thick-headed peasants, but all men of marked individuality, with opinions and prejudices, an originality and a humor o- their own. Many, not to say the most of them, were keenf witted, original, self-relying in their intellects, even if they were limited, and prejudiced, and obstinate. Every man of them had a character. Every man had made for himself his place in the little organism, and every man acted and reacted upon the other with more or less of quickening energy. Even the daring unbeliever, of whom every community could show here and there one, or the habitual absentee from the sanctuary, whose house and fields were supposed to be accursed, each had his lesson to impart. Every man and woman and household became an element of life and energy in this seething common- wealth, in which every element was charged with an intense and individual vitality.
Scant justice has been rendered to the intellectual and business activity, to the far-reaching enterprise and the domestic inventiveness of many of the best New England villages, after they had fairly emerged from the barbarous age of struggle with nature, and the military age of battle with the Indians and the French, and the maturing age of separation from England. In some of these villages in the old time of their isolation and consequent internal self- reliance and enterprise almost every one of the trades
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was represented by some conspicuous workman, whose work was honestly and honorably done, and whose name was a pledge of its fidelity and trustworthiness. Now and then a single merchant in an inland village has made himself conspicuous by a successful business adventure in the West or East India trade. From not a few New England towns before the Great West or even Western New York was heard of, regular outfits were sent forth to the fabulous South, which allured many a promising young man to its profitable traffic and opened the way to large fortunes. When Vermont, New York, and Northern Ohio displayed in the eyes of New England the tempting promises which have become such splendid realizations, there were found in the most secluded New England vil- lages hundreds and thousands of youth who were intelli- gent enough to appreciate their significance. When sub- sequently the prairie States and still later the mining territories repeated these promises, wherever there was the New England intelligence and the New England enterprise, whether in the New England at home or the emigrant New England abroad, there was a ready and bold response. It has come to be a proverb to those who have studied into this New England life, that the more remote and lonely is the hamlet at home, the more widely has its stock been expanded abroad, first through the counties of Litchfield and Berkshire, then through the settlements of Vermont and Western New York, then into Northern and Central Ohio, then into Michigan, then into Iowa and Minnesota, and still onward through Dakota, Montana, and Oregon. But wherever it goes, it carries with itself, the self-reliance, the mother wit, the helping hand, the sympathizing heart, the quickened conscience, the fear of God which the meeting house wrought into the original life of the little village; which
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has sent forth the threads of this mysterious life all over the continent and even across the seas.
But nothing more forcibly illustrates the excellent quality of this old village life than the development of the villages into the large and wealthy manufacturing towns and cities of New England itself. Scores of such towns and cities might be named which once yielded scanty returns from the hard hillsides and scanty valleys, but are now abundant in the profits of active invention and the accumulation of capital, all developed and gath- ered from within themselves, the growth and accumula- tion of which are to be distinctly traced to the individual genius or enterprise of some farmer's son-whom the school and the meeting house and the village life first stimulated and trained to his self-reliant enterprise and his indomitable public spirit.
The meeting house has fulfilled other functions than those directly and indirectly religious and intellectual. It has been also the political home of the community. For many generations the town meeting was held within its capacious enclosure. That a political meeting should be held in a house devoted to public worship now seems a grave offence to the conscience of some people of culture, and at all events a grave and rustic indecorum which is worse than a sin. The New Englander of the old time could think no such thing, for to him at first the church and the organized town consisted of the same persons. Subsequently also the doctrine was distinctly held that the town existed and should be controlled for the good of the church. From this point of view it was impossible to see any incompatibility between a town meeting and a meet- ing house.
It is a mistake, however, to suppose that this is a New England notion, and that no other people are guilty of
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sacrilege in this particular. So soon as houses of worship were erected for Episcopalians, special pains were taken to claim them for a special sacredness. The story is told of a company of boys who found themselves in the gallery of a new Episcopal church, several of whom were some- what boisterous and irreverent, when one of them re- monstrated with angry reproof: I say, boys, I'd have you to know that this is not a Presbyterian meeting house. The notion which was formerly rather industriously diffused, that political and secular meetings are never held in the houses of worship belonging to the Church of England, does not happen to be correct. The author of John Halifax writes as follows: "The poll was to be held in the church," that is, for a parliamentary election-a not uncommon usage in county boroughs. Not very long since a message came from Boston in Lincolnshire to Boston in Massachusetts, that the same was true of St. Botolph's church in the mother city in England.
But whether or not the town meeting might properly be held in the meeting house, there can be no doubt that it was held there in fact for many generations, and that it did good service for the church and for the world. In the better days the town, and other political meetings were opened with prayer, and not unfrequently the free- men of the town were treated to a sermon. I have before me printed copies of two sermons delivered in the same meeting house before the freemen of one town-the one in 1774 on the sin of the slave trade as allowed by the state of Connecticut, and the other in 1813 on the solemnity and obligation of the freeman's oath, which was then exacted of all voters in the commonwealth.
Nor did the minister confine his political discourses to the town or freemen's meeting. Here and there a bolder spirit did not hesitate to carry politics into the pulpit in
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his regular ministrations, but these exceptions were few. The New England clergymen were usually gentlemen, and observed the rules of a somewhat punctilious decor- um. I need not repeat what is familiar to all, that the town meeting of New England is the one institution of all others that has been efficient in maintaining on the part of all the voting members of the commonwealth a sense of their duty to watch the officials who are called to public trusts, and on the part of the officials of their duty of rendering an account of their doings to those who in- trust them with office. Every citizen is concerned to know how his money is spent for bridges and roads, for schools and the poor, and it is desirable that he should be able to ask for any explanation from the official whom he elects to discharge these trusts. The New Englander has been able to do this from the beginning, and the training of the town meeting has made many a man to be, in the best sense of the term, a statesman. Political fidelity signifies honesty in the discharge of public trusts, and honesty supposes that the trustee understands the busi- ness which he undertakes, and can to some extent explain it to others. The New England meeting house has had ample opportunities to inculcate the doctrine that there is but one kind of honesty known to man, and that its lessons are the same for political as for ordinary duties. The meeting house, so far as we know, has never been the worse for the town meetings which have been held in it, and the town meetings have certainly been the better for the meeting houses in which they have been held. The New England pulpit may have been at times mis- taken in its utterances in respect to public duty, but never in respect to the truth that political actions and interests should be subject to the law and kingdom of God.
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There have been times, and these not infrequent, when it was most befitting that the town meeting should be held in the place of public worship. From those earliest days, when the few Connecticut and the Massachusetts towns were summoned to send their strength into the field against the Pequots, to the days when hundreds of towns from the same commonwealths were summoned to send their tens of thousands to assert and defend the authority of the nation, the occasions have been many when the town meeting held in the house of God has been as serious and solemn as if God had spoken in it with an audible voice. The best soldiers in all these wars have been the men who first looked their fellow citizens in the face and read therein, as it were, the message from God that they were called to go into the field. In every one of these great crises the troops have gathered within the meeting house and upon the meeting house green to invoke the blessing of Heaven. The most cheering thought to many in the field, the hospital, and the prison house has been the thought that every Sunday they were remembered in the public prayers of the congregation. In the war of our independence, the last news from the camp was the theme of anxious discussion between the Sunday services, and during our latest war the services themselves were sanctified by prayer and praises for the life of the nation. This was no less true, when in colonial times the strength and beauty of the New England vil- lages were sent to Lake George and Louisburg to battle and die for what was thought in very deed to be the redemption of this continent for the true gospel. When the first meeting house was built there were seats assigned in it for soldiers who went armed to the house of God, and it will be a long time, we trust, before it shall cease to be ready to bless them, in the cause of good govern-
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ment at home or against any invading foe from abroad.
The military spirit did not always die out with the return of peace. It was upon the meeting house green that the appointed trainings and reviews were held, and upon the meeting house steps that the pastor implored the blessing of God upon the train bands of the village and township. We may not forget the half-yearly sports of ball and quoits, to say nothing of the wrestling matches which were observed under the shadow of the sacred edi- fice on the weeks of the spring Election and of the autum- nal Thanksgiving, when the old men vied with youth in earnest and good-natured strife, and the whole township was moved with active sympathy.
Now and then, but rarely, a wedding would be sol- emnized in the meeting house. Less rarely a funeral, when some grave and eminent pillar in the church or the town, or the pastor mourned by his flock and his fellow elders, or some youth cut down by an illness that moved for weeks his associates in tearful sympathy, or called out of life in a moment by fatal accident. On all such occasions the meeting house would be crowded to the utmost, illustrating the power of a common sympathy to move an entire community. When some mother in Israel has been taken away, a lonely widow, but with a heart large enough to respond to the joys and sorrows of the whole village, or some bedridden invalid whose suffering pa- tience for a score of years has been a constant sermon of patience, the Sunday sermon that followed the burial has left impressions and kindled aspirations which have made the town better for the year following, and made the gospel of patient endurance and Christian hopes a living reality for all the life time of many who listened with their hearts softened by personal sympathy.
As we visit the old village or township we shall be told
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perhaps that the old meeting house does not hold the same place in the respect of the community which it once did, that advanced thinkers such as formerly kept their denials and sneers to themselves, openly proclaim their contempt for the worship of what they call an un- known God, and boldly act it out, by ostentatious neglect of the Sunday worship, or that those who still hold fast their allegiance to the ways of their fathers, have relaxed very much from the earnestness and fervor of former times. What is practically most serious of all the signs of evil, is that by the removal of the population, the emigration to the manufacturing centers, to the large cities and the inviting and endless West, the old congrega- tions are greatly diminished, the resources of many once thriving parishes are weakened, and as a consequence the old meeting houses are more or less neglected at a time when the culture of the times requires that they should be made more neat and attractive.
In many towns the old meeting house has survived its best usefulness and a better one should take its place. It is gratifying to know that there is scarcely a parish in New England, however scanty its population or re- sources, that cannot count among its sons, more than one, sometimes more than a score, who is well able to supply all its reasonable needs, and who if he should be- think himself of what the old meeting house has been to a former generation and of what by his aid it may be- come to another, would deem it an act of filial piety to replace the old meeting house by one that is new. No monument to one's name can be so noble as that provided by the repair or erection of a place of worship in our early home. No service that can be attended with such grateful recollections as that which may be rendered to the town or the village of our birth and youth. No epitaph
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more touching than this can be inscribed over the portals of a house of prayer in connection with one's name, for he loveth our nation and bath built us a synagogue.
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