University of Virginia Library

COUNTRY CHURCHES AND PREACHERS.

I am not going to make any madrigal of summer
woods and Sunday quiet; I leave that for the
young poets; the days of my madrigals and milkmaids
are gone by, Fritz. Their memory may
serve to brighten our talk over a tankard of your
harvest cider, but will come poorly into my didactic
studies. Nor must it be understood that it is with
any unworthy, or irreverent motive, that I put a
seeming spice of pertness into my talk of churches.
Flippancy as little becomes the topic, as mawkish
verse; but there is a way of calling things by their
right names,—unfortunately too little known now-a-days,—which,
however roughly it may bear on
the attenuated sensibilities of my squeamish readers,—is
yet as far removed from impertinent gossip,
as it is from that deferential cant, which possesses
neither earnestness, nor vitality.

There has been heretofore very little poetry about
our two-story country churches; and I must say,
that with all their adopted richness of modern style,
they have only got hold of the measure of the verse,
without any of the soul that makes it buoyant.
They give us an infinitude of gables, and of carved

crosses, and colored windows,—very rich all of
them, in their way,—but not adding materially,
in their present stage of adaptation, either to ventilation,
comfort, or Christianity.

We have a fashion in churches, as we have a
fashion of Newport, and a fashion for wives; and
we have fashionable country gentlemen, who having
seen somewhat of cities, instruct the country-livers
as to how many windows will make a Christian
temple fashionable, how many angels will
make it Evangelical, and how much ultra-marine
will make it à la mode. The ladies accept it—on
paper; the deacons, or vestry men assent with a
shrug;—the architect complies with a leer; and
the builder leaves them—in debt.

I do not mean to quarrel at all with the new
spirit in this matter, which has latterly infected
the country. Nothing can be prettier, and more
appropriate than the adoption of the forms of those
old English country churches, which have become
classic by age, and interesting by association.
There seems a touching, and a holy propriety in
worshipping as our fathers worshipped: and there
seems to me something more than tasteful, in
stretching only a simple raftered roof between the
devout and heaven;—and I could heartily wish
that it were all the impediment that lay between.

I have a strong liking for the deep-stained glass,
throwing colors of `promise' (much needed) upon
the chancel, or the altar: nor have I any great
apprehension that a cross, whether of stone or of
wood, will gravitate very strongly downward; or
that the Devil has yet wrought that symbol—whatever
some Divines may think,—upon his saddle
cloth, or his game bag.

But after all, there is a kind of bodily comfort,
which it is inhuman to lose sight of: and to stew
honest country people, in a poorly ventilated chapel,
under an August sun,—whatever point it may give
to the Doctor's talk of perdition,—does seem to me
as unnecessary, as it is untasteful, and unchristian.
In this matter, as well as in sundry others of recent
importation, we are dealing with the crudities of
the mere form, before we have learned adaptation.
And I would respectfully recommend to vestrymen,
and building committees generally, to pay
some little attention to the laws of climate, to
habit, to the Christian Almanac, and to transpiration,
while they are stuffing their brains with
crotchets, and finials.

Because a window of Gloucester, although close-screened,
and closed, may serve the Gloucester
worthies for ventilation, it by no means follows that
the same will serve in such western city as Rochester;

and, if I might be believed, the worshipful
chapter of Cirencester can keep themselves cooler
on the damp pavements, and under the scraped
columns of their minster, than they ever could,
with all their British phelgm, upon the carpeted
floors of the mock minsters, which lie broiling on
the New England hill-sides. I would respectfully
entreat of the benevolent gentlemen—to whom I
render all honor—who are desirous of canonizing
themselves by church erections, to secure agreeable
recollections of such temporal saintship as they
may attain, by a regard for the comfort of the
worshippers. And I would assure them that it is
much better to gain the gratitude of sober content,
than the heated canonization of a Purgatoria.

Of the preachers, I would speak with a charity,
that is as much their due, as it is their need. Let
me not be understood either, in any degree to impugn
Christian motive: a high motive is worthy of
all regard, and its redeeming excellence will save
even mediocrity from condemnation. But as I
have already intimated to you, Fritz, I can see nothing
in the sacerdotal covering, from the white of
a Philpotts, to the black of a Princeton student,
that should forbid analysis or inquiry.

It may be a gratuitous regret, and one which
may be thrown back cavalierly on my hands—but

it is none the less sober—that our country pulpits
lack sadly force and mental calibre: and lacking
these, they lack adaptation, energy, width, influence,
everything in short that should adorn the
highest office that a man can take upon himself.
A little personal dignity, and a little punctilious
investiture, seem to be all that are demanded, to
establish the claims, and to stamp the capabilities
of our country divines.

Blackstone somewhere says that some kind of
special training, or peculiar mental qualities are
reckoned essential to almost every profession, except
that of legislator; but every man thinks himself
born a law-maker. I am afraid that there are
great numbers of Divinity students, who are laboring
under a kindred delusion, and obstinately think
themselves born—preachers. Even unfortunate
aspirants to the honor of good farming, or good
house-carpentery, are turned over, with a three
years skimming of Hebrew roots, and unproductive
polemics, to teach the world its duties. They may
make good witnesses for the heathen; but they
will make a sorry set of Pauls for the Athenians.

It is true that the demand upon a preacher's labor
is absurdly great; and an absurd demand weaklings
will best supply. None but a fool can write
two sermons a week. A strong man wants time to

digest his fullness, and to mature his thought: but
an empty man may talk forever, without any cognizance
of his crudities, or any sense of depletion.
We are a progressive people, and I have a fear that
we are leaving the talk of the pulpit behind us:
it is certain that very little of that kind of vigor
which sets our ships afloat, is electrifying country
church-goers. That vitality which makes itself
felt by the strong throbs of enthusiastic action, does
not seem to invest very richly our country clergy.
There is a forgetfulness that men are awake and
active; and that the days of cramming children
with Westminster catechisms, and `reasons annexed'
and of breaking their piety upon the pillory of
Saturday `sundown,' are gone by.

You shall hear prudent preachers, as the world
goes, wearying a mortal hour with a very strategic
assault upon some old bugbear of infidelity, that
is as dead as the sermon that combats it. Poor
Voltaire is brought ghostly from the tomb, to be
made the martyr of some clumsy spike of a quill;
and Hume is resuscitated, that some tyro theologic
sportsman, fresh from his rhetoric, may shoot down
the dead man.

I do not mean to express my sympathy with the
absurdities of philosophers: but I mean to say,
gentlemen—(and if any man ought to be a gentleman,

it is the clergyman)—that your labor is lost.
The rational world is perfectly certain that the
pop-guns of Chubb and Tindal could not batter
down the bulwark of Christian faith: the booksellers
of London and New York have long ago, with
the brief of their trade-lists, closed the case:—and
judgment has been heard. Your antagonists are
damned. Christianity is believed. The weapons
are in your hand, clear and bright: there is work
enough for them on new foes, without any showy
butchery of old ones; and if you cannot make
them felt, it must needs be credited to a little weakness
of the elbows.

There is something in the language of the country
pulpits, which it seems to me could bear the
electrifying touch of vitality. I know no reason in
the nature of things, why the sleepy catechism-y
strain, should not give place to a little of the strong
breath of nervous and eloquent language. Language
in these days of type, is as strong as a leviathan,
and as quick as light. Its force and richness
are on the growth; and its stores are at the command
of whoever will make his study earnest, and
his resolution intense.

What possible sense can there be in pouring from
the pulpit the old short-ranging, six pound balls of
cant terms, and dogmatic expressions, when the

Paixhan gun fairly mounted, will throw such terrific
shot as the modern vocabulary supplies? There
is not a science or a pursuit, which is not adding
honor and grace to its exhibitions, by that wealth
of allusion which new inquiries in every department
of knowledge have afforded: and yet our
Divine, too nice for the wholesome homeliness of
Taylor, and not even with the spirit of the time,
guards his cant, and exercises his ingenuity in
speculations about the infusoria that float in the
muddy waters of his scholastic lore. But it may
be signified to me, that the Doctrine is old, and
unchangeable; be it so—unchangeable as the hills,
and beautiful as the morning. But therein lies no
reason for not showing forth that permanence, by
those thousand aids of adornment and illustration,
which would give to what is old, the attractions of
what is new. The Doctors need have no fear that
their eloquence of life, or language, can mar or obscure
the integrity of the tidings they bear. There
is much that is akin to genius—if it be not the
thing itself—in so wrapping old truth in the garment
of language, that men shall rush toward it,
as toward a new friend to be greeted, or a new hero
to honor. A man may indeed blunder to the truth
through a slough of words; but build for him a
good bridge of well-jointed periods, and as truly as
he loves ease, he will be quicker in his approach.

In all this, I yield no iota in veneration, to the
staunchest of the doctors. It would surely be a sad
reproach upon the Deity, to believe that he had
given soul, with such curious capacity for developement
and growth, and yet given it with no
purpose toward the fuller and richer illustration
of His Providence. Christian truth, it seems to
me, is no dried up mummy, to be eternally
swathed in the musty linen bandages of the ancients;
but it is a live creature, to be clothed over
with the richest dressings of humanity, and to be
crowned—if crowned it can be—with the most
glorious accomplishments of learning.

These periods, and this train of thought, have
chased me, Fritz, into the small hours `ayont the
twal:' a day-light revision might take off a little
frill from the dressing; but, upon my conscience,
the color would not change.