LXXI.
THE PURITANS’ SABBATH.
If all the little boys and girls in America to-day knew how the people in the New England states were compelled by law to keep the Sabbath day I think they would realize how much better it is to be living in these days and times than to have lived in those.
The laws concerning the keeping of a New England Sabbath were very severe—that is, before the Revolutionary War, when what was called colonial rule was in force.
No manner of work was allowed to be done; no visiting, no playing, no gaiety of any kind was permitted; just think, boys and girls, it is said that one man was brought to trial and fined for kissing his wife on a Sabbath morning.
Slowly and solemnly, just as if they were going to a funeral, the families all walked to the meeting house on Sundays, some of them having to walk many and many miles.
On reaching the church the men took their places on one side of the house and the women on the other—they didn’t allow men and women to sit together. The children, also, had to sit by themselves, and there was a man appointed to keep them quiet. This man carried a long stick with a hard knob at one end and a little feather brush at the other. The feather end of this stick he would use to tickle the faces of the men and women who might chance to get sleepy and go to nodding during the preaching. The other end he used on the children.
I guess this poor man must have kept busy all the time, for the sermons were very long, lasting for whole hours. Sometimes a man would begin a sermon in the morning and preach up to dinnertime; the congregation would then go out for dinner, and come back and sit for hours during the afternoon to hear the sermon concluded.
The men carried their muskets to church with them, so that they might have them ready in case of an attack from the wild Indians.
The meeting houses were not warmed even in very cold weather; the people thought that in some way it would make them better Christians if they bore such discomforts without a murmur. Of course we know better now, and wouldn’t think of doing such a foolish thing.
After a time the people began to carry hot bricks and stones to keep their hands and feet from freezing, and by-and-by they carried foot stoves. These stoves were little tin boxes, with holes in the side, a cover, a door, and handles with which to carry them. In these boxes were put live coals and in that way the fire would last throughout the sermon.
I fear many and many a little boy and girl dreaded to see Sunday come, for, as a rule, it was a long, dreary day, and I am sure that they must have been glad when it was over.
I know you must be glad that people no longer have the idea that Sunday should be such a dismal, sober day; and I believe that our Heavenly Father is much more pleased to see the children spending the Lord’s day happily in their homes with their mothers and fathers, their little brothers and sisters.
Of course no Christian boy or girl even now believes in making Sunday a day of riot and fun; and no Christian man or woman believes in having the saloons open on Sunday anywhere. But most of us are away beyond the old Puritan idea of sadness and gloom for the Sabbath.
Next Sunday, boys and girls, when you enter your pleasant Sunday school rooms and find your schoolmates and teachers so glad to see you, and where everything is bright and pleasant, think of those poor little children who had no books and cards and no pretty songs and who were made to pass the whole day without even being allowed to laugh.