The Cure Of Souls
THERE were many religious denominations in America in the eighteenth
century. The Congregationalists predominated in New England, but outside
of that region they found little support. The Church of England was
dominant in the South and by 1750 had established itself in every colony
from New Hampshire to Georgia. This growth was due in part to the fact
that most of the Huguenots and many of the Lutherans went over to
Anglicanism, but also in largest measure to the activities of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, generally known as the
"S. P. G." but frequently called the "Venerable Society."
The Dutch in their Reformed Church constituted the oldest body of
Calvinists in America. The Germans — some of them also Calvinists in their
own Reformed Church — were in many cases Lutherans or Moravians, chiefly
in New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and in other cases were
tinctured with pietism and mysticism. The Scotch-Irish were of a sterner
religious temper than any of these and, tracing their spiritual ancestry
back to the Presbyterianism of Scotland and the north of Ireland, they
looked upon their religion as a subject worthy of constant thought and
frequent discussion.
Among the denominations associated with no particular race or locality,
the Baptists were nevertheless most strongly entrenched in Rhode Island,
with a somewhat precarious hold on other parts of New England and on South
Carolina. The Friends or Quakers, finding their earliest home also in
Rhode Island, became specially prominent in the Middle Colonies, Virginia,
and North Carolina, where their meetinghouses were often "in lonesome
places in the woods. " The Methodists, at this time with no thought of
becoming a separate denomination, began their career as a spiritual force
in America with Robert Strawbridge in western Maryland about 1764. Most of
the Roman Catholics were to be found in Maryland and a few in other
colonies; the Jews had synagogues in Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and
Charleston; but there was no separate African church until the first was
set up in Williamsburg in 1791.
Of all these denominations the most powerful and influential were the
Congregational and the Anglican, so that the meetinghouse in New England
and the church in the Southern Colonies came to be distinctive and
conspicuous features in the religious life of America. The meetinghouse,
usually built of wood but toward the end of the period sometimes of brick,
was situated in the center of the town. It was at first a plain,
unadorned, rectangular structure, sometimes painted and sometimes not,
without tower or steeple, and not unlike the Quaker meetinghouse and the
Wesleyan chapel of a later day. Later buildings were constructed after
English models, with the graceful spire characteristic of the work of Sir
Christopher Wren, and represented a type to which the Presbyterian and
Dutch Reformed churches tended to conform. At one end of the building rose
the tower and spire, with a bell and a clock, if the congregation could
afford them; at the other end or at the side was the porch. In addition to
the pleasing proportions which the building as a whole showed, even the
doors and windows manifested a certain striving for architectural beauty
of a refined and rather severe kind. The interior was usually bare and
unattractive; the pulpit stood on one side, high above the pews, and was
made in the shape of an hourglass or with a curved front, and stood under
a sounding board, which was introduced less perhaps for its acoustic value
than to increase the dignity of the preacher. The body of the house was
filled with high square pews, within which were movable seats capable of
being turned back for the convenience of the worshipers, who always stood
during the long prayers. The pews were the property of the occupiers, who
viewed them as part of the family patrimony. Assignment of pews followed
social rank; front seats were reserved for the deacons; convenient
sittings were set apart for the deaf; the side seats were for those of
lesser degree, and the gallery for the children. There were no free seats
in colonial days, except for the very poor. In these meetinghouses there
were neither fires nor lights, with the result that evening services could
not be held. In the winter season the chill of the building must have
wrought havoc upon tender physiques and imperiled the lives of those
unlucky infants whose fate it was to be baptized with icy water.
ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, CHARLESTON, S. C.
Drawing from photograph.
THE MEETINGHOUSE, HINGHAM, MASS.
Drawing from photograph.
"It was so cold a Lord's Day," says Checkley in his diary (Jan. 19. 1735),
"that the water for Baptism was considerably frozen."
THE CURE OF SOULS 165
The journey to meeting was frequently an arduous undertaking for those
living in the outlying parts of a township, as they sometimes were obliged
to cross mountains and rivers in order to be present. From distant points
the farmers drove to meeting, bringing their wives and children and
prepared to spend the day. In summer they brought their own dinners with
them; in winter they found refuge in the "Sabba' day" houses or were
entertained at the fireside of friends who lived near the meetinghouse.
The gathering of the townspeople at meeting was a social as well as a
religious event, for friends had an opportunity for greeting each other,
and the farmers exchanged news and talked crops during the noon hour, in
the shade of the building, under the wagon sheds where the horses were
tied, or sitting on the tombstones in the burying ground near by, while
their wives and daughters gossiped in the porch or even in the pews, for
in New England no one looked upon the meetinghouse as merely a sacred
place. One of the earliest steps taken in the formation of a new town in
New England was the erection of a separate meetinghouse for the members
who lived too far away for convenient and regular attendance.
The minister was truly the leader of his people. He comforted and reproved
them, guided their spiritual footsteps, advised them in matters domestic
and civil, and gave unity to their ecclesiastical life. He was the chief
citizen of the town, reverenced by the old and regarded with something
akin to awe by the young. When a stranger asked Parson Phillips of the
South Church at Andover if he were "the parson who serves here, " he
received the reply, "I am, Sir, the parson who rules here, " and the
external bearing of this colonial minister lent weight to his claim. It
was the habit of Parson Phillips to walk with his household in a stately
procession from the parsonage to the meeting-house, with his wife on his
right, his negro servant on his left, and his children following in the
rear.
When he entered the building, the congregation rose and stood until he had
taken his place in the pulpit. Though he preached with an hourglass at his
side, he never failed to run over the conventional sixty minutes. His
sermons, like nearly all those preached in New England, were written out
and read with solemnity and rarely with attempts at oratory. They were
blunt and often terrifying; they laid down unpalatable ethical standards;
they emphasized rigid theological doctrines; and in language which was
plain, earnest, and uncompromising, they inveighed against such human
weaknesses as swearing, drunkenness, fornication, and sleeping in church.
Mather Byles of Boston, another colonial pastor, preached an hour and then
turning over the hourglass said, "Now we will take a second glass."
Sermons of two hours were not unknown, and there were those who "in one
lazy tone, through the long, heavy, painful page" drawled on, making work
for the tithingman, whose fur-tipped rod was often needed to waken the
slumbering. The thrifty colonial preacher numbered his sermons, stored
them away or bound them in volumes, and often repeated them many times.
The hardships of the New England minister were many. Jonathan Lee of
Salisbury, Connecticut, occupied, until his log house was finished, a room
temporarily fitted up at the end of a blacksmith's shop with stools for
chairs and slabs for tables. He even had at times to carry his own corn to
the mill to be ground. As country parishes were large and rambling and the
congregation was widely scattered, the minister often preached in
different sections and was obliged to ride many miles to visit and comfort
his parishioners. His salary was small, fifty pounds and upwards, with
more if he were married. Jonathan Edwards in 1744 wrote to his people in
Northampton that he wanted a fixed salary and not one determined from year
to year, as he had a growing family to provide for. Many a minister
received a part of his stipend in provisions and firewood, and eked out
his meager salary by earning a little money taking pupils. Yet in spite of
these hardships men stayed long in the places to which they were called.
Pastorates of sixty years are known; Eliphalet Williams of Glastonbury
served fifty-five years, and his grandfather, father, and son each
ministered half a century or longer. Three generations of Baptist
clergymen in Groton served one church 125 years.
The New England ministers did not limit their preaching to the Sabbath day
or their sermons to theological and ethical subjects. They officiated on
many public occasions — at funerals, installations, and ordinations, on
fast days, Thanksgiving days, and election days — and often forced the
Governor and deputies to listen to a sermon two or three hours long. Many
of these sermons were printed by the colony, by the church, by
subscription, or in the case of funeral sermons by special provision in
the will of the deceased. Parson Phillips had twenty such sermons printed,
and on the title-page of one dealing with some terrifying topic appears an
ominous skull and crossbones. Funeral discourses and election sermons are
among the commonest which have survived, but, taken as a whole, they are
unfortunately among the least trustworthy of historical records.
The Anglican churches in the eighteenth century were generally built of
brick but varied considerably in size, shape, and adornment. Except for a
few — such as Trinity Church, Newport, which followed the Wren model,
King's Chapel, Boston, which was of hewn stone, and McSparran's
Narragansett church, which is described as a very dignified and elegant
structure — the buildings of this denomination in New England were small
and unpretentious and constructed of wood. In the South they were more
stately and impressive in both external appearance and internal adornment.
St. Mary's at Burlington, Christ Church and St. Peter's at Philadelphia,
St. Anne's at Annapolis, Bruton Church at Williamsburg, St. Paul's at
Edenton, and St. Philip's at Charleston were all noble structures, and
there were many others of less repute which were examples of good
architecture. Often these churches were surrounded by high brick walls and
the interior was fitted with mahogany seats and stone-flagged aisles.
Conspicuous were the altar and pulpit, both richly adorned, the canopied
pew for the Governor, and on the walls the tablets to the memory of
distinguished parishioners. Not a few of these old churches displayed in
full view the royal arms in color, as may still be seen in the church of
St. James, Goose Creek, near Charleston. Bells were on all the churches,
for the colonists had come from England, "the most bellful country in the
world," and they and their descendants preserved to the full their love
for the sound of the bell, which summoned them to service, tolled for the
dead, or marked at many hours the familiar routine of their daily life.
Christ Church, Philadelphia, built in 1744, was distinguished by
possessing a set of chimes.
Many a church had its separate vestry and sheds; and in large numbers of
Southern parishes there were chapels of ease, small and built of wood, for
those whose habitations were so remote that they could not come to the
main church. Even so modest a structure as that at Pittsylvania Court
House in Virginia — built of wood, with a clapboard roof, a plank floor, a
pulpit and desk, two doors, five windows, a small table and benches — had
its chapel of ease built of round logs, with a clapboard roof and benches.
Though the New England minister was given a permanent call only after he
had been tried as a candidate for half a year or some such period, the
Anglican clergyman was generally appointed without regard to the wishes of
the parishioners, often by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
as one of its missionaries, in Maryland by the Proprietor, in the royal
colonies by the Governor. Many of these clergymen were possessed of
superior culture and godly piety and lived in harmony with their vestries
and people; but in the South and in the West Indies to an extent greater
than in New England, men of inferior ability and character crept into the
rectorships and proved themselves incompetent as spiritual guides and
unworthy as spiritual examples. But the proved instances of backsliding
south of Maryland are not many and one ought not from isolated examples to
infer the spiritual incompetency of the mass of the clergy in a colony. On
the other hand it is not always safe to take the letters which the
missionaries wrote home to the Venerable Society as entirely reliable
evidence of their character and work, else the account would show no
defects and the burden of defense would rest wholly with the colonists.
John Urmston of Albemarle, for example, is known to North Carolinians as a
"quarrelsome, haughty, and notoriously wicked clergyman," yet Governor
Eden gave him a good character and the Society was satisfied that the
fault lay with the country and the vestry. Clement Hall of St. Paul's
Church, Edenton, was found to have officiated less than twenty-five
Sundays in the year 1755; his salary was reduced accordingly and a new
arrangement was made whereby he was to be paid only for what he did; yet
Hall was looked upon as one of the most devoted and hard-working
missionaries that the Society ever sent to America. Fithian speaks of
Parson Gibbern of Virginia as "up three nights successively, drinking and
playing at cards, " and he characterizes Sunday there as "a day of
pleasure and amusement, " when "the gentlemen go to church as a matter of
convenience and account the church a useful weekly resort to do business,"
yet this testimony, as the observation of a graduate of the College of New
Jersey and a not unprejudiced witness, must be construed for what it is
worth.
With the clergy in Maryland the case was somewhat different, and the
illustrations of unspiritual conduct are too numerous to be ignored.
Maynadier of Talbot County was called "a good liver" but a "horrid
preacher,' and his curate a "brute of a parson." William Tibbs of St.
Paul's parish, Baltimore County, was charged by his vestry with being a
common drunkard, and Henry Hall was on one occasion "much disguised with
liquor to the great scandal" of his "function and evil examples to
others." The people of St. Stephen's parish, Cecil County, complained that
their rector was drunk on Sundays, and Bennet Allen, the notorious rector
of All Saints, Frederick County, who afterwards fought a duel with a
brother of Daniel Dulaney in Hyde Park, London, was not only a
cold-blooded seeker of benefices but, according to many of his
parishioners, was guilty of immorality also. The letters of Governor
Sharpe disclose numerous other cases of "scandalous behavior," "notorious
badness," "immoral conduct," and "abandoned and prostituted life and
character" on the part of these unfaithful pastors; and by witness of even
the clergy themselves the establishment of Maryland deserved to be
despised because "it permitted clerical profligacy to murder the souls of
men. " The situation reached its climax in the years following 1734, when,
by the withdrawal of the Bishop of London's commissary, all discipline
from the higher authorities of the Anglican Church was removed and the
granting of livings was left solely in the hand of the dissolute Frederick
Lord Baltimore until 1771, when, after the death of that degenerate
proprietor, the Assembly was able to pass a law subjecting the clergy to
rigid scrutiny and to the imposition of punishment in case of guilt.
On the whole it is probably safe to say that there was less religious
seriousness and probity of conduct among the Southern clergy and
parishioners than among the parsons and people of New England. One cannot
easily imagine a New England woman writing as did Mrs. Burgwin of Cape
Fear: "There is a clergyman arrived from England with a mission for this
parish; he came by way of Charles Town and has been in Brunswick these
three weeks. No compliment to his parishioners; but he is to exhibit here
next Sunday. His size is said to be surprisingly long, I hope he is good
in proportion. "
Sermons occupied a less conspicuous place in the Anglican service than in
those of other denominations. The lay reader did not preach, and the
sermons of the ordained clergyman were not often more than fifteen or
twenty minutes in length. They seem to have been carefully prepared and
many are spoken of in terms of high approval; they dwelt, however, less
upon the infirmities of the flesh and more upon the abiding grace of God
and the duties and functions of the Church. They were therefore rarely
denunciatory or threatening but partook of the character of learned
essays, frequently pedantic and overladen with classical allusions or
quotations from the theological treatises written by the clergy in
England. Not only were sermons provided for by will, as in the North, but
they were also preached before the House of Burgesses in Virginia — which
unlike most legislative bodies in the colonies had its chaplain—before
Masonic lodges, and to the militia on Muster Day. Thomas Bray, commissary
for Maryland, had many sermons printed, and the Reverend Thomas Bacon, to
whom Maryland owes the earliest collection of her laws, printed four
sermons preached in St. Peter's Church, Talbot County, two to "black
slaves" and two for the benefit of a charitable school in the county. But
the number of printed sermons in the South was not nearly as large as in
the North.
It was not only in matters of ritual and vestments that the Anglican
churches differed from those of nearly all the other denominations. While
New England was engaging in a bitter controversy over the introduction of
musical instruments into its public worship as well as what was styled the
new way of singing by note instead of by rote, the leading Anglican
churches were adding richness and beauty to their services by the use of
organs and the employment of trained organists from England. The first
organ used for religious purposes in the colonies was that bequeathed by
Thomas Brattle, of Boston, to the Congregational Church of Brattle Square
in 1713.' But, as that society "did not think it proper to use the same in
the public worship of God," the organ, according to the terms of the will,
went to King's Chapel, where it was thankfully received. This instrument,
after a new organ had been purchased for King's Chapel in 1756, was
transferred to Newburyport and finally to Portsmouth, where it is still
preserved. In 1728 subscriptions were invited for a small organ to be
placed in Christ Church, Philadelphia, but probably the purchase was never
made, though it is known that both Christ Church
The Reverend Joseph Green of Salem was in Boston on May 29, 1711, and
while there heard an organ played. The instrument was undoubtedly that of
Brattle. Essex Institute, Historical Collections, vol. x, p. 90.
THE CURE OF SOULS 177
and St. Peter's in that city had organs before the Revolution. Bishop
Berkeley gave an organ to Trinity Church, Newport, as early as 1730, and
six years later an organist "who plays exceedingly fine thereon" arrived
and entered upon his work. The organ loft in Christ Church, Cambridge, was
a very fine specimen of Georgian correctness and grace, superior in its
beauty to anything of its kind in the colonies at that time. The first
organ in the South was installed in 1752 in Bruton Church, Williamsburg,
and Peter Pelham, Jr., whose father married as his second wife the mother
of Copley the painter, was the first organist. All the organs used in
colonial times, however, were very small, light in tone, and deficient in
pipes.
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