Home as Found by James Fenimore Cooper (diy ebook reader txt) 📕

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.

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