USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Beverly > An address delivered in the First Parish, Beverly, October 2, 1867 : on the two-hundredth anniversary of its formation > Part 4
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he would be if they lay in this parish, but, if rented out, only half as much ; married women to be seated agreeably to the rank of their husbands, and widows in the same degree as though their husbands were yet living ; that the foremost magistrate seat (so called) shall be the highest in rank, and the other three in successive order ; that the next in rank shall be in the foremost of the front seats below, then the fore- seat in the front-gallery, then the fore-seat in the side-gallery ; that the side-seat below shall be for elderly men, the foremost first or high- est, and the others in order ; that the seats behind the fore-front seat below shall be for middle-aged men, according to their degree ; that the second or third seats in the front and side galleries shall be for younger men, to rank the second first, and the third next."
Males were separated from females in location, and seats were assigned to the latter, corresponding to the rank fixed for them by the rules just stated. A grave objection to this arrangement was the separation of the children and youth from the parents, their natural guardians and regulators. Here the boy-genus was - what in all ages and states of society I suppose it has been found to be - a serious element of disturbance. Children were mostly disposed of on benches in the aisles, or on the stairs. A portion of the boys, including, it may be presumed, the most unruly, were placed on the pulpit staircase, where they were under the eye of the minister and exposed to the gaze of the whole congregation. But this did not suffice to prevent or suppress insubordination in this least interesting part of the human creation. Such was the alarming height to which juve- nile misdemeanors in the midst of divine service had attained, that the town authorities were led to deliberate and take sum- mary measures respecting them. At one time it was " ordered by the selectmen, that the hinder seats of the elders' gallery be altered, and the boys are to sit there, and Robert Hubbard to have an eye out for them ; and for the first offence to acquaint their parents or masters of it, and, if they do offend again, to acquaint the selectmen with it, who shall deal with them accord- ing to law." Another time the town - being then, as to such matters, in all but name the parish - voted, " That the' select- men make such orders as convenient for the prevention of boys
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and idle persons from sitting in such places, in our meeting- house, wherein they are out of public view, and so, in time of public worship, spend much of their time in play and disorder." By no means let it be understood that the evil was confined to the limits of this parish. Our Salem mother, staid and vener- able as she might have been expected throughout to be, endured the same affliction. There, in 1676, an order was passed, " that all the boys of the town are and shall be appointed to sit upon the three pairs of stairs in the meeting-house on the Lord's day ; " and two persons were appointed to the charge of them, - one " to look to the boys that sit upon the pulpit stairs," the second " for the other stairs, to look to and order so many of the boys as may be convenient, and, if any are unruly, to pre- sent their names, as the law directs." Very many, not to say all, other parishes, before and ever since, have in like manner been troubled and tried by their " coming men."
For various well-known purposes, especially for the right ordering of the sanctuary, the office of sexton has, from time im- memorial, been considered essential. The dread presence of that official, in particular when acting as tithing-man, will be remem- bered by not a few, in looking back to their youthful days, and might now often be needed, and be of salutary effect. Whether the duty of watching the drowsy worshippers and keeping them awake, which in some places was required of some one, devolved on him, does not precisely appear. But the turning of the glass specially belonged to him. An hour-glass was placed in a posi- tion where it could be observed by all present. Just as the ser- mon commenced, the sexton turned the glass. " If the minister completed his discourse before the sands had all run out, he was admonished that he had not complied with the reasonable expec- tations of his hearers, whether sleeping or waking, - both classes having tacitly contracted for an hour's enjoyment in their own way. If his zeal inclined him to go beyond the standard measure, the turning of the glass by the faithful sexton reminded him that he was asking more of the patience of his hearers than they had tacitly agreed to give. But instances were not rare in those days, when long sermons were less alarming than in this
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age of dispatch, in which, as has been facetiously remarked, both preachers and hearers were well content to take a second, and even a third, glass together." By the substitution of clocks (to which, it is to be feared, eyes of weariness, more than of delight, now turn), if not before or otherwise, this custom has long since ceased ; and so the sexton's office was shorn of one of its chief distinctions. That office in this parish, for more than two cen- turies, has been filled by only seven individuals; it might almost be said by six, one of them having, within less than two months after he was appointed to it, dropped dead while ringing the evening bell. Of the first, the high praise is recorded, that, after a twenty years' service, it was required of his successor " that he should do, in all respects, as Goodman Bailey had done ; " and that he fulfilled the requirement we may infer from the fact, that he continued in office for over sixty years. The last sexton has served a quarter of a century, and is still active and useful in the performance of his duties. Many of us remember, with sincere regard and regrets, Thomas Barrett, his immediate predecessor, who officiated for about fifty years, - who was ever so orderly and punctual, so respectful and reverential, so thoughtful and kind toward the living, so tender of the dead. Few more than he could truly and from the heart say, " I love the habitation of thine house : how amiable are thy tabernacles unto me, O God !" Seldom have I been more touched than when I saw his funeral procession wind around the front of this temple, which he had loved and served so well, and, entering the ancient first burial-ground, pass to the only vacant space for a grave ; which, long before, he had reserved for himself, that he might be buried by the side of the wife of his youth.
Music has from the first been here made an important part of public worship. Very different, indeed, have been the styles in which it has been performed. "Deaconing" the psalm was that which prevailed in the primitive and several succeeding ages. It was so termed because the " musical exercises of the sanctu- ary, according to the custom of the times, were conducted by one of the deacons, who officiated as chorister to the congrega- tion. He read the hymn, line by line, and set the tune, in
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which each member joined by rote, in key and measure not always the most exact or harmonious." Various were the modi- fications this custom underwent. In 1764, it was voted, that singers be selected, and seated together, " that the spirit of sing- ing psalms might be revived, and that part of worship conducted with more regularity." Ten years later, the parish voted to locate the choir in the front gallery, opposite to the pulpit, and constituting a sort of correlative department with that, and com- missioned with full powers " to pitch the tune and take the lead in singing." Such changes were not effected in this generally esteemed important matter without serious discussions and con- flicts of opinion, and even strenuous resistance. Similar difficulties and controversy existed in regard to the collections used in the singing. Thus when, a century ago, Watts's Psalms and Hymns were introduced in place of the antiquated version previously in use, one man at least was so strongly moved as to take his hat, and walk hurriedly out of the assembly ; not quite so formal and dignified a protest as that which, on a like occasion, at a later period, was entered against what by some (and not a few) was considered an alarming and monstrous innovation, - an aged member of the second parish in this town rising amid its wor- shipping congregation under high excitement, and asserting, with utmost gravity and earnestness, that, if Solomon had beheld what they had then seen and heard, far from him would it have been to say, " There is nothing new under the sun." After an experience of more than a half century here, during which it was felt by many, that, admirable and excellent as is much of the devotional poetry of Watts, there is also much that accorded with neither their views nor taste, a change was imperatively demanded. Still there was a respectable minority, unwilling to have the book, with which were linked such hallowed associa- tions, superseded and banished from the sanctuary. Therefore a compromise was agreed on, by which the Watts' collection was to be used alternately with another (the West Boston one), which, while retaining some of the best in the former, omitted the most objectionable. But this, like most compromises, re- sulted fatally to the yielding party; the giving up of a part
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having been soon followed by a concession of the whole, and the old supplanted altogether by the new. Any changes since made in your psalmody or hymnology, being such as were required by progress in intellectual and literary culture and devotional senti- ment, have been accomplished with little or no agitation or dis- sension. And as for your choir, from its first institution, charged with giving voice and expression to the words of poets, inspired and uninspired, it has had less of the discord, in feeling and action, naturally expected from the association of a delicate and sensitive organization with musical taste and skill; while, com- posed as it ever has been almost entirely of your own members, among them some of the most respectable and worthy, as well as gifted and proficient in the science of sweet sounds and grand harmonies, they have not failed of their high duty of ministering, for themselves and others, to the sacred melody of the fervent and devout heart.
Witchcraft, or rather notions and practices relating to it, constituted a chief disturbing element in this society's first age. While the tempest, which demonology had from all times and lands, and the four winds of heaven, been gathering, burst in the immediate vicinity, this place must of necessity share in the wreck.and ruin wrought by one of the direst commotions that ever raged in a community with any pretensions to being termed civilized or Christian. As we review the authentic accounts of the great drama enacted in 1692, with its reign of terror and awful tragedies, a nightmare seems upon us ; and we pass, as it were, through a horrid dream. Ishmaelitish, in fact, a large portion of the people of this region had become, - their hands against every man, and every man's hand against theirs. Some of the strongest bonds by which society is held in unity, peace, and order, appeared about to be dissolved, and its very existence to be in jeopardy, - threatened with fast-approaching dissolu- tion. Panic, mutual accusations, arrests, imprisonments, pre- vailing distrust and jealousies, wide-spread and untold anguish in individuals and families, the whole vast mass of misery and evil resulting from what we feel justified in pronouncing the witchcraft delusion, were not confined to this particular neigh-
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borhood. Elsewhere, scarcely less than in this devoted locality, the social fabric reeled and rocked on its apparently insecure base. Andover caught the contagion, having been visited by some of the propagators of the delusion direct from the district peculiarly infected : and a visitation truly it proved, not of angel strangers, but their opposites in human shape; and their visit did indeed cost dear, being followed by some of the worst calami- ties growing out of the scourge they brought. Prisoners by the hundred were lodged in jails, not in Salem only, but in Ipswich, Boston, and Cambridge. There they were immured in damp and loathsome cells, enduring grievous privations, looking back with harrowing regrets to the homes from which they had been torn, the friends from whom they had been abruptly and cruelly sun- dered, and forward with dreadful anticipation of capital trials, in which just and established rules of evidence, with the principles on which they are founded, would be ignored or set at nought ; in which the most trivial, irrelevant, and absurd testimony would be freely admitted, and, in short, conviction of guilt be a fore- gone conclusion. The first victim of such trials - and, with such, truth obliges us to class the Salem trials for witchcraft - was Mrs. Edward Bishop, a member in full communion with this church. She was a woman of marked peculiarities in man- ners, style of dress, and mode of living, and quite independent of the opinions and fashions of her time. One of the witnesses against her "mentions, as corroborative proof of Bridget Bishop's being a witch, that she used to bring to his dye-house 'sundry pieces of lace,' of shapes and dimensions entirely outside of his conceptions of what could be needed in the wardrobe, or for the toilet of a plain and honest woman. He evidently regarded fashionable and vain apparel as a snare and sign of the Devil." If such proofs were still held to be allowable and convincing, they would bear hardly on many fine ladies of our day, who would thus be shown to be in a league, of which they could not be supposed ambitious to form a component part. Eccentric, self-reliant, firm in asserting and maintaining her rights, and, if need were, - as sometimes happened, - courageous in resisting interference with them, Mrs. Bishop's character had those salient
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points on which a persecution, mainly composed of superstition, fanaticism, vanity, spiritual pride, personal hostility, and private vengeance, was exactly adapted to fasten. Accordingly, at differ- ent times in a series of years previously to her final accusation and arraignment, she had been charged with egregious offences, especially with that most heinous sin of having conspired with Satan against the peace and welfare of mankind in general, and of God's elect in particular. She had, however, continued in regular standing with this church ; and had been sustained and exculpated, under the heavy charges brought against her, by the members, including the minister, up to the time of her arrest by civil process. Among the saddest of stories is that of the closing scenes of her life, which yet may be told in a single and not very lengthened sentence. Dragged from her domestic retreat, with its appliances and comforts ; brought into the crowded assembly ; confronted there on the one hand by the examining magistrates in solemn state, and on the other by her false and infatuated accusers ; on the wretched pretences there made committed to a dungeon; borne thence, solitary and alone, through streets thronged with a promiscuous multitude of the horror-stricken, the sad (some wisely sad), and the jeering and scoffing, to the court, where on testimony mostly frivolous, none of it relevant or well-substantiated, she was condemned to an ignominious death on the scaffold ; and which having suffered, she was buried at the foot as it were of her cross, - all this, passing and endured within a few swiftly-fleeting weeks, into which were crowded the excruciating agonies of months and years. Thus passed away and perished one, a sincere, high- spirited, and Christian woman, whose blood has since flowed, and continues to flow, in the veins of some of the oldest and most respectable families in this vicinity. Thus perished the first of the twenty who - in that day, darkened by delusion and superstition of deepest dye, who, protesting uniformly conscious innocence - laid down their lives, and left their bodies to be deposited amid the crevices of the rocks, and scantily covered by earth, in the place of execution. On the rocky height selected for the purpose, and known by the interchangeable names of
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Witch and Gallows Hill, with a grand surrounding expanse of town and country, sea and land, it may have been intended to set up a beacon of warning against all demoniacal approaches, wiles, and machinations ; but, if it were a light set on a hill, it was one that shone with an ominous, a lurid, dismal radiance, and was wholly destitute of a cheering beam or genuine spiritual illumination.
One of the aggravating circumstances in the bitter experience of the first sacrifice to that mockery of justice, the Salem trials for witchcraft, was, that her own minister, who on former like occasions had stood up for her defence and succeeded in her rescue, testified at the last against her, and thus effectively aided in sealing her deplorable fate. For his conduct in this case, and the general countenance he gave to the delusion when at its height, Hale has been the subject of strong animadversion, - been charged, indeed, with gross inconsistency. Judging, however, from the character accorded to him by his contempo- raries, for integrity, for high and varied excellence, I incline to believe that the inconsistency, apparent or actual, involved only the effects of the overshadowing and controlling power of theo- retical error and sympathetic excitement, not of intentional wrong. But if the discernment and wisdom, attributed to him by some of the leading minds of his time, for a while were overborne and deserted him, the scales were soon made to fall from his eyes, and many beside his, by the evil being brought home to his own door. Perhaps the extreme had been reached, from which a recoil was inevitable. However that may have been, the re-action, whether begun then or before, was greatly accelerated when accusations were pointed at Mrs. Hale, whose superior worth was acknowledged and highly appreciated, as it was widely known. The commotion subsided by an almost instant collapse. Accusers became the accused. Those lately leaders were in their turn cried out against, and reproached in no measured terms as deceivers, by the deluded. Judges were severely judged, - some of them, like Sewall, coming out and manfully confessing the egregious errors into which they had fallen. Others there were who -instead of being incensed,
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or prompted to attempts at self-justification, by the reproaches heaped upon them as the aiders and abettors of the delusion, and therefore authors of so much mischief and suffering - set calmly and humbly about a review of the whole subject, taking for the guidance of their search the combined lights of experi- ence, philosophy, and religion. Prominent among such was John Hale. Several years after the convulsions and horrors of 1692 had passed, when the excitement attendant and conse- quent on them had been allowed sufficient opportunity to sub- side, he published the results of his investigation in a small volume, highly commended at the time, and bearing the stamp of an intelligent, candid, earnest spirit. In that he takes dis- tinctly the ground, that the witchcraft prosecutions were pushed to unjustifiable extremes. His reasons in reply to the question, " How it doth appear that there was a going too far in this affair," certainly have point and force. Briefly they are these : The great number of the accused, the quality or character of several of them, the number (fifty at least) of the afflicted, un- qualified denial of guilt by all who were executed, and finally that Satan had been chained, so that accusers and accused had been quiet, for the five years and more that had elapsed since the last of the trials.
That book was shortly followed by another, which had great influence in enlightening and settling the public mind, - pre- pared by a Boston merchant, Robert Calef, and entitled "The Wonders of the Invisible World." Its spirit, far from being calm, gentle, reserved like the former, was free, outspoken, with a strong admixture of the indignant. He speaks without hesi- tation or qualification of the chief actors in the tragic scenes, which were then fresh, and bitter as they were fresh, in the recollection of multitudes, as " these criminals and their bloody principles." His summing up I give in substance, and nearly in his own language : -
" As long as Christians, real or nominal, deem the law of the Lord imperfect, not describing in this matter the crime punishable with death ; the Devil a power above and against nature ; the witches to commission him ; the Devil's testimony to be preferred, invariably
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and whatever the trustworthiness of the arraigned, to their plea of not guilty ; life and liberty depending on confession of guilt ; that the accused should undergo hardships and torments ; teats for the Devil to suck be searched on the body as tokens of guilt ; the Lord's prayer to be adopted, in a manner by which it is profaned, for a test ; witch- craft, sorcery, familiar spirits, necromancy, with many other proofs alike fanciful and frivolous, to be used in discovering witches, - while such things, that had been lately witnessed, and the effects of which were far from having died away, are believed, said, and done, so long it may be expected the innocent will suffer, God be dishonored, and his judgments contemned."
Cotton Mather, incensed at the rough handling this little book gave him and his coadjutors in promoting the witchcraft delu- sions and persecutions, was betrayed by his indignation into exclaiming, with one letter dropped from the name of its author, " that Calf." There is a copy of the volume in the Massachu- setts Historical Society's library, which once belonged to Mather himself, in which, on the inside of the cover, is quoted in his own handwriting, from the Book of Job, the passage, " Would that mine adversary had written a book ! surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me." An ad- versary of his Calef clearly was, -an opponent not wholly free from acerbity, because, with enlightenment on the subject he treated, superior to most of that of his age, he smarted under a sense of the errors, misdeeds, and cruelties of any and all engaged in bringing on, keeping up, and heightening the delu- sion. But the quotation just repeated, and under the circum- stances made, would seem a lucus a non lucendo, - the accepted phrase for denoting words used to signify the opposite of their literal or derivative sense. At any rate, the wish so expressed by Mather he might, were he among us and so far as his credit for wisdom and right conduct is concerned, gladly reverse, making it to run thus : " Would that my friend had not writ- ten a book !"- in view of one recently issued, in which, with no other than friendly feelings, but with the higher love of truth, the shameful part borne by him in fostering the delusion and pursuing its victims is faithfully depicted. I refer, it hardly
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needs be said, to Upham's "History of Witchcraft," - a work truly admirable for the thorough research, and the varied and ex- tensive learning it displays, for its elegant and captivating style, its vivid and fascinating descriptions, and above all the practi- cal value of its teachings, - leaving little to be desired, and still less to be anticipated, from future gleanings in the field surveyed.
I have been led further into this subject than at first con- templated, by the important bearing it was found to have on the early history of this parish, - entering largely into the opinions and feelings, the customs, habits, and experiences, of its people, involving the sacrifice of the life of one at least, and disturbing the peace and jeopardizing the lives of many, of its members. Its first minister, we have seen, was extensively implicated in the responsibilities, and connected with the scenes of persecution and horror, which arose amid the distractions of the time; and creditable as in some respects was his course in that day of severe trial, in others it required, if not censure, to be explained, and, as far as might be, vindicated. The position of his wife throughout, and especially in the climax of the fanatical excitement, was most honorable to herself and her sex. May we not rejoice, with something of local and paro- chial pride, that one of the sorest plagues with which humanity was ever visited, should have been in no small degree stayed and turned back by the delicate hand, the gentle spirit, and recognized virtues of that noble, Christian woman ? From examples like hers we may learn the great lesson, that there is no power on earth to be compared with rectitude and conscious virtue, either in resisting temptation, and, as the strong language of Scripture has it, "in quenching the fiery darts of the wicked ; " or in standing calm and firm, undaunted and unharmed, amid the tumults and rage of the people. And there are other lessons, which we of this age and all ages may well draw and apply with close self-application. They spring up and present themselves at the most impartial review of the ground which we have just traversed. While we view with unqualified admi- ration the grand and lofty position taken and sustained by some,
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