University of Virginia Library

MARGARET TO ANNA.

We have digested and adopted a system of Christ-Church
Festivals. Mr. Evelyn observed the extent and influence of
these things in the Old World, and, after due sortings and
siftings, we thought something of the kind might be produced
in the New. The idea, he says, is a good one, but the manner
in which the thing has been managed is open to reprehension.
Festivals, he says, have been instituted by Kings and
Popes, for Machiavellian purposes, or any other than Christian
or human; that they have never been the offspring of a free
and enlightened mind, but either the enforcements of arbitrary
power, or the expedients of priestly art. Christ-Church Festivals
have at least this merit; the people were cognizant of
their incipiency, assisted in each step of their progress, and

gave their suffrages to the entire plan. Ecclesiastical Holidays,
Mr. Evelyn says, are also open to exception in their subjects.
Why should we observe the Purification of the Virgin
Mary, St. Michael's Day, or Ash-Wednesday? Or why,
neglecting more affecting and spiritual events, should we make
use of the Circumcision of Christ? We cannot, of course,
with the English Church, keep the Gunpowder Plot and King
Charles's Martyrdom. Our Festivals are twelve in number, one
for each month of the year. Three of them are such as have
already become national or at least New England, the Spring
Fast, Independence and the Autumnal Thanksgiving; three
more are founded on the Beatitudes, and are named as follows,
the Festival of the Poor in Spirit, that of the Peacemakers,
and of the Pure in Heart. There is the Festival of Charity,
or Christian Love, from I Cor. xiii. Then from the life of
Christ, are Christmas, drawn from his birth, etc. Childmas,
which refers to his holy Boyhood and Youth; the Festival of
the Crucifixion, which comprises his strong crying and tears
in the flesh, his temptation, his bearing his Cross, his agony
in the garden and his death; that of the Resurrection, which
includes his transfiguration, his spiritual anastasis, his being
the Life of the soul, and his rising from the dead. Then we
have the Festival of the Universal Brotherhood, taken from
Christ's interview with the Samaritan woman, and the declaration
of Paul, that in Christ all are one. We have also twelve
other Festivals in the monthly recurrence of the Holy Communion.
Our Bishop has also prepared a system of Sabbaths,
which he pursues with tolerable regularity. He has given us,
Baptismal Sunday, founded on Christ's Baptism; Children's
Sunday,—his blessing the little children; Unity Sunday; Atonement
Sunday—“that they may be one in us;” Regeneration
Sunday—“except a man be born again;” Repentance Sunday,
etc. etc.

Christmas, if you please, leads the signs in our evangelical
Circle, is the beginning of the Christian year; this falls in
September; the Pure in Heart, in October; Thanksgiving in
November; the Festival of the Universal Brotherhood, which
also includes All Saints, is given to December. In January is
the Peacemakers, when we decorate the Church with evergreens,
have the Lion and Lamb symbolized, and make our
endeavors for private and universal Peace. We seek forgiveness
and proffer restitution. To February, the Poor in Spirit
is assigned; the Crucifixion to March; and in April is Fast.
May gives us Childmas, which is peculiarly for the children;

June, the Festival of Love; July, Independence, social, political,
mental, moral, religious; this is also the Anniversary of
the Erection of the Cross. The year closes in August, with
the Resurrection.

The time of Christmas was changed for the following reasons;—that
the month and season of our Saviour's birth are
not known; that the 25th of December, the Calendar day, is
of Gentile origin, which indeed were not an insuperable objection,
provided it were recommended by any intrinsic propriety.
But this is not the case. The Festival to which that
day refers, obtaining among Northern nations, is only adapted
to a Northern latitude. The sun's annual return, which they
were wont to celebrate, gave them a cause of gratulation, at
the expense of their trans-equatorial brethren, who at the same
moment are mourning its withdrawal. Such an arrangement
would not be cosmopolitan and universal enough for ChristChurch.
Therefore we selected an equinoctial point when it
shines with the same strength on all portions of the globe.
So far as Livingston is concerned, there were few or no preexisting
Ecclesiastical prejudices to be affected, and the people
were at full liberty to select what time they chose. This Festival
with us is not taken up solely with the Birth of Christ, it
contemplates in addition his Second Coming, i. e. his spiritual
revelation in the hearts and lives of his disciples. So looking
both backward and forward, it may well occupy some central
point.

On most of our Festivals, there is a short religious exercise
in the Church. The Poor in Spirit is a season of sober introspection,
humility and prayer. The Crucifixion has for its
objects to effect within us a crucification to the world and of the
world to us. We become truly partakers of the sufferings of
Christ, his temptation, his reproach, his cross-bearing, his
dying. Childmas, in May, gives several holidays to the children.
They have a May-pole, May-dances, and a Queen of
May. They go into the woods for evergreens and flowers.
In the evening the Band play for them, and they dance with
their parents on the Green. You will see them, going down,
in the morning, from Breakneck and Snakehill, blithe as the
birds about them; the girls dressed in white, and the boys in
blue-checked linen. This Festival is also devoted by the
people at large to ornamenting the streets, replenishing the
flowers of the Cemetery, and planting shrubbery about their
houses. Independence day, the 4th of July, we have an Oration,
a rural dinner and a dance in the evening at the Masonic

Hall. This is a superb room, over the Town House, which
the Masons have freely relinquished to our use whenever we
want it. They always unite with us in keeping this Festival.
The Resurrection, in August, seeks to realize for us that
spiritual resurrection from sin which St. Paul strove to attain,
and which Christ so perfectly enjoyed. It also looks to the
final elimination of the spirit from the body. The Festival of
Love in June would advance us in that love which thinketh
no evil, beareth all things, is the bond of perfection, the seal
of our being born of God, and fulfils the law. The Pure in
Heart among other things, is devoted to a general School visitation.
The School-houses are filled with parents and friends;
the scholars examined, and addresses made. The election of
the May Queen is made to turn somewhat on these examinations.
She who received the crown this year was Delinda,
daughter of Zenas Joy. Peacemaker's, coming the first of
January, is supplied with whatever of interest attaches to that
day. Thanksgiving is observed agreeably to immemorial New
England usages, bating the Turkey-shoot at No. 4, and Horseracing,
which are abolished; and the Ball at Mr. Smith's has
been supplanted by a general dance at the Masonic Hall.
Our Festivals are not put by for Sunday, but when they fall
on that day, which not infrequently happens, the Bishop prepares
discourses accordingly. Thus is the whole year interwoven
and girded about by our beautiful Festivals; some of
them exceedingly joyous and gay, others more sedate and reflective.
What Herbert says of them I dare not;—
Yet we do love them, and that, because we love God, and
Christ and Happiness.

The sectaries have sought to introduce themselves among
us. Our Bishop freely offered them his pulpit, but they refused
to occupy it; he has proposed exchanges, but those they
declined. They would not join in our Communion, although
the emblems are tendered to all who love the Lord Jesus
Christ. They kept aloof from our festivals. We have all
been baptized, and nearly two hundred the Bishop has immersed.
What could they want! They came, nearly forty
of them, preachers and all, from Dunwich, one night, to
Snakehill. The superintendent of the Schools in that
District had orders to open the School-house to them.

Our Bishop, Mr. Evelyn, Deacon Bowker and several went
up; the room was full. Our Bishop said we should be glad
to hear anything they had to say, and hoped they would express
themselves freely. One began to say something, but he
appeared embarrassed and stopped. Then one of their leaders
fell upon his knees, and said, “Let us pray,” and pray he
did, nearly half an hour, and with a most stentorian voice.
Such a prayer may it never be my lot to hear again! He
argued with us, philippized us, denounced us, and as Nimrod
said, “whipped us over God Almighty's back!” Has the
Prince of Puppetdom in reserve a more horrid piece of drollery?
Deacon Whiston could not contain himself; like
Elijah of old he mocked them, and said, “Cry aloud, for he is
a god; either he is deaf, or is talking, or is on a journey.”
“There is no voice, nor any that answereth,” added our
Bishop. The effect was irresistible. The meeting was
broken up, and those most misguided people mounted their
horses and made all haste to depart. They would convert us,
from what? Christ himself! To what, in the name of all
that is good? To John Wesley, or John Calvin! They
would save our souls. These are already saved, or at least
Christ is doing that work for us hour by hour. They have
been in various parts of the town endeavoring to ply the
ridiculous enginery of God's wrath and eternal damnation.
They are eighteen hundred years behind the age, our Christian
age at least. As Nimrod says, they “are barking up the
wrong tree.” I have no grudge against these people. Some
of them have excellent private qualities. Whatever there is
of the Christian in them I like, and there we and they agree,
and that ought to be a common foundation broad enough for
us all to stand upon. But the Ism is the difficulty. This
governs their action, this they would thrust upon us. Their
Ismaticalness conceals and extrudes the Christian. We meet
them as Christians, they meet us as Ismatics. It is Christ
versus Isms. Which shall prevail?

Lycurgus forbade the entrance of strangers into Laconia,
and the departure of his subjects. He was afraid of contamination.
The gates of Livingston are ever open, come in, go
out, who will. “The Lord encampeth round about them that
fear him,” was our Bishop's text last Sunday. We have thus
far been delivered from serious evil. We are not afraid of the
world, only the world must expect to get most condignly meal-powdered,
if it undertakes mischief against us. We have, in
Livingston, nine hundred members of Christ-Church, bold

hearts, true hearts, completely clad in the armor of God, ready
for any battles of the Lord; and equally ready to die at the
stake, if needs be. “If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he
would not have received a burnt-offering at our hands, and
showed us all these things,” our Bishop says. “Cursed cows
have short horns,” Deacon Ramsdill says. And plantain
thrives best when it is most trod upon, that I know. Pray
for us that we may be able to go safely through all fiery trials.

It is related that the Cyclops for their savageness and
cruelty were condemned to Tartarus; but that Tellus, the
Goddess of the Earth, persuaded Jupiter it would be for his
interest to employ them in forging thunder-bolts, and other
instruments of terror with a frightful and continual din of the
anvil. When I call to mind certain kinds of preaching I
remember to have heard, and which I am told everywhere
abound, I reflect that Christ banished all such things from his
kingdom; but the gods of this lower world have persuaded
themselves it would be for the interest of the Supreme to have
these Cyclops recalled, and our pulpits are full of their din!
Where, alas! where is the sweet, gentle, loving voice of
Jesus, a voice that would not lift itself up, nor cry, but did
sometimes weep!

The Preacher, he whom I first heard in the woods some
years ago, acts singularly. He hovered about Livingston,
peeping in upon us, and then running away. He said he believed
the Latter Days were come; then he hid himself in the
woods, and nobody heard from him for a long time. At last
he came to the village, is now an attentive waiter on our
Bishop's ministrations, and says he is resolved to become a
Missionary, and disseminate the principles of Christ-Church in
the world.

We have had various sorts of people among us within two
or three years, and with an equal variety of motives; Congregationalists,
Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Armenians,
Russians, Greeks, Jews, Mohammedans, Hindoos. The latter
were foreigners, gentlemen travelling the world in pursuit of
knowledge. We had most of them at our house. What
should happen one Sunday, but a venerable Presbyterian
Doctor of Divinity, a Jew, and the Mohammedan, should set
in the same pew in Christ-Church, and as it was Communion
day, they all partook of the Sacrament together, and after service,
came to Mons Christi in company! The Doctor remarked
he had always preached faith in Christ, and the

regeneration of our natures, “but I declare,” said he, “I
never understood these things before, or saw them so happily
exemplified.” The Jew said, laughing, if it were not for our
pig-pen, he believed he should be a Christian. The Mohammedan
published an account of his travels, and from Teheran
in Persia, I received a copy done in Arabic. We taxed our
wits, and at the same time gratified our vanities, in translating
it. The chapter on Livingston would amuse you. The
author has even given a description of me! This is a precious
tidbit, and I shall not endanger it by committing it to
the post-rider. You shall see it, when you visit us. One of
the Hindoos—there were two of them in company, and Brahmins,
I believe—said he would leave with us words from their
sacred books; as follows. “Truth, contentment, patience,
mercy, belong to great minds.” “A man of excellent qualities
is like a flower, which whether found among weeds, or
worn on the head, still preserves its fragrance.” An Episcopal
Bishop was here, and he said that sooner than deny the Apostolic
authority of our Bishop, he would forego his own. He
said this to us, but whether he wished it to go abroad to the
world, is more than I know. Such are some of the pleasant
records of visits we have had. That other things of a very
different nature have been said and done, I cannot deny. But
I should tire you by reporting all the evil there is in the world,
or the want of love which many betray, who come here.
“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do!” What
a prayer was that! Let us aspire to it.

Here is another affair for you. One day there came to our
house a gentleman with a letter from his Holiness Pope Pius
VII, addressed to us as his dear children, and recommending
to us the bearer, and his objects. The bearer was a Roman
Cardinal, and his objects thus appeared. He said the Pope
had learned that we had erected the Cross, and that he hoped
to find us obedient children of the Holy Catholic Church.
We told him that we belonged to that Church. He said he
hoped to effect our affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church.
We told him that we fellowshipped all churches in which was
the spirit of Christ, and that so far as the Roman Church possessed
that, we were happy to belong to it. He then said
something about allegiance. “What,” said Mr. Evelyn, “to
Pope Pius?” “Not exactly that,” replied the gentleman.
“To the Council of Trent?” persisted Mr. Evelyn. “I perceive
I have made a mistake,” said the gentleman, and making
a very polite apology started to leave. “Give our sincere

respects to the Pope, “said Mr. Evelyn, “tell him we pay him
the allegiance due to him, that contained in the Apostolic
direction, to honor all men. If he should come this way we
hope he will give us a call.” The Cardinal had not reached
the door when an Armenian Prelate was announced from
Syria. He said he had understood we were Monophysites,
and came to see if we were not a lost branch of their Church
established in this country centuries ago. While he was yet
speaking a Patriarch of the Greek Church came in. He said
he had been told we denied the Procession of the Holy Ghost
from the Son, and hoped to find us identified with his order.
Presently we had them all three seated and pleasantly talking
together. We sent for our Bishop, and they all dined with us.
The Greek made the sign of the cross with three fingers, the
Armenian with two, and the Catholic with his hand indiscriminately.
We took them in our carriage to the village and
about the town. They passed the night at our house. We
had other friends with us, and could not give them each a
room; and the Roman Cardinal and Greek Patriarch slept in
the same bed; an event, Mr. Evelyn said, that had probably
not happened since the year 1054, when Pope Leo X. and the
Patriarch Cerularius excommunicated each other. At our
devotions in the morning, the Greek read the hymn, the
Armenian read the Scripture, and the Catholic made the
prayer. They left us, and we have heard nothing from them
since. I hope, when these gentlemen reach home, they will
not suffer, as did that Timagorus; who, sent on an embassy to
Persia, for conforming to some of the usages of that Court,
on his return, was put to death by the Athenians, who thought
the dignity of their city compromised by his conduct.