Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to
watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my
chamber window. First the weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter
lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower
and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to
the gilded figure of the hour. Now the loftiest window gleams, and now
the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out.
At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven comes down the
stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowing with fresh
radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the
nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same sun brightens
it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of
brightness for the Sabbath.
By dwelling near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for the
edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls and
its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and
somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our
thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind
comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small
concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the few
that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their separate
and most secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings abroad the
hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither have gladness
and festivity found a better utterance than by its tongue; and when the
dead are slowly passing to their home, the steeple has a melancholy
voice to bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human
interests, what a moral loneliness on week-days broods round about its
stately height! It has no kindred with the houses above which it
towers; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare—the lonelier because
the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance at the body
of the church deepens this impression. Within, by the light of distant
windows, amid refracted shadows we discern the vacant pews and empty
galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit and the clock which
tells to solitude how time is passing. Time—where man lives not—what is
it but eternity? And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up
throughout the week all thoughts and feelings that have reference to
eternity, until the holy day comes round again to let them forth. Might
not, then, its more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town,
with space for old trees to wave around it and throw their solemn
shadows over a quiet green? We will say more of this hereafter.
But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a
holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices
on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business
anywhere but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether
I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across
the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the
figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still I recognize the
Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions—and this
among them—are the shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit around me
or seem to close their evil wings and settle down, but so long as I
imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven retains its
sanctity on the Sabbath—while that blessed sunshine lives within
me—never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith. If it have
gone astray, it will return again.
I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind
the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot so near
the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple
should be deemed consecrated ground to-day. With stronger truth be it
said that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil
one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has no such
holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious, potency. It must suffice
that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church,
while many whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats have left
their souls at home. But I am there even before my friend the sexton.
At length he comes—a man of kindly but sombre aspect, in dark gray
clothes, and hair of the same mixture. He comes and applies his key to
the wide portal. Now my thoughts may go in among the dusty pews or
ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come forth again to enjoy
the music of the bell. How glad, yet solemn too! All the steeples in
town are talking together aloft in the sunny air and rejoicing among
themselves while their spires point heavenward. Meantime, here are the
children assembling to the Sabbath-school, which is kept somewhere
within the church. Often, while looking at the arched portal, I have
been gladdened by the sight of a score of these little girls and boys
in pink, blue, yellow and crimson frocks bursting suddenly forth into
the sunshine like a swarm of gay butterflies that had been shut up in
the solemn gloom. Or I might compare them to cherubs haunting that holy
place.
About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the bell
individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is
invariably an old woman in black whose bent frame and rounded shoulders
are evidently laden with some heavy affliction which she is eager to
rest upon the altar. Would that the Sabbath came twice as often, for
the sake of that sorrowful old soul! There is an elderly man, also, who
arrives in good season and leans against the corner of the tower, just
within the line of its shadow, looking downward with a darksome brow. I
sometimes fancy that the old woman is the happier of the two. After
these, others drop in singly and by twos and threes, either
disappearing through the doorway or taking their stand in its vicinity.
At last, and always with an unexpected sensation, the bell turns in the
steeple overhead and throws out an irregular clangor, jarring the tower
to its foundation. As if there were magic in the sound, the sidewalks
of the street, both up and down along, are immediately thronged with
two long lines of people, all converging hitherward and streaming into
the church. Perhaps the far-off roar of a coach draws nearer—a deeper
thunder by its contrast with the surrounding stillness—until it sets
down the wealthy worshippers at the portal among their humblest
brethren. Beyond that entrance—in theory, at least—there are no
distinctions of earthly rank; nor, indeed, by the goodly apparel which
is flaunting in the sun would there seem to be such on the hither side.
Those pretty girls! Why will they disturb my pious meditations? Of all
days in the week, they should strive to look least fascinating on the
Sabbath, instead of heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival
the blessed angels and keep our thoughts from heaven. Were I the
minister himself, I must needs look. One girl is white muslin from the
waist upward and black silk downward to her slippers; a second blushes
from top-knot to shoe-tie, one universal scarlet; another shines of a
pervading yellow, as if she had made a garment of the sunshine. The
greater part, however, have adopted a milder cheerfulness of hue. Their
veils, especially when the wind raises them, give a lightness to the
general effect and make them appear like airy phantoms as they flit up
the steps and vanish into the sombre doorway. Nearly all—though it is
very strange that I should know it—wear white stockings, white as snow,
and neat slippers laced crosswise with black ribbon pretty high above
the ankles. A white stocking is infinitely more effective than a black
one.
Here comes the clergyman, slow and solemn, in severe simplicity,
needing no black silk gown to denote his office. His aspect claims my
reverence, but cannot win my love. Were I to picture Saint Peter
keeping fast the gate of Heaven and frowning, more stern than pitiful,
on the wretched applicants, that face should be my study. By middle
age, or sooner, the creed has generally wrought upon the heart or been
attempered by it. As the minister passes into the church the bell holds
its iron tongue and all the low murmur of the congregation dies away.
The gray sexton looks up and down the street and then at my
window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he
has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies
asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me,
and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties. Oh,
I ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising congregation
reaches my ears. They are standing up to pray. Could I bring my heart
into unison with those who are praying in yonder church and lift it
heavenward with a fervor of supplication, but no distinct request,
would not that be the safest kind of prayer?—“Lord, look down upon me
in mercy!” With that sentiment gushing from my soul, might I not leave
all the rest to him?
Hark! the hymn! This, at least, is a portion of the service which I can
enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir and
the massive melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me. At
this distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my
heart-strings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be
praised! I know nothing of music as a science, and the most elaborate
harmonies, if they please me, please as simply as a nurse’s lullaby.
The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful
echoes till I start from my reverie and find that the sermon has
commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to fructify in a regular way by
any but printed sermons. The first strong idea which the preacher
utters gives birth to a train of thought and leads me onward step by
step quite out of hearing of the good man’s voice unless he be indeed a
son of thunder. At my open window, catching now and then a sentence of
the “parson’s saw,” I am as well situated as at the foot of the pulpit
stairs. The broken and scattered fragments of this one discourse will
be the texts of many sermons preached by those colleague
pastors—colleagues, but often disputants—my Mind and Heart. The former
pretends to be a scholar and perplexes me with doctrinal points; the
latter takes me on the score of feeling; and both, like several other
preachers, spend their strength to very little purpose. I, their sole
auditor, cannot always understand them.
Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me still behind my
curtain just before the close of the afternoon service. The hour-hand
on the dial has passed beyond four o’clock. The declining sun is hidden
behind the steeple and throws its shadow straight across the street; so
that my chamber is darkened as with a cloud. Around the church door all
is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the threshold. A
commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down and the pew doors thrown
back; a multitude of feet are trampling along the unseen aisles, and
the congregation bursts suddenly through the portal. Foremost scampers
a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense and dark phalanx of grown
men, and lastly a crowd of females with young children and a few
scattered husbands. This instantaneous outbreak of life into loneliness
is one of the pleasantest scenes of the day. Some of the good people
are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that they have been wrapped,
as it were, in a sort of holy trance by the fervor of their devotion.
There is a young man, a third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always
to flourish a white handkerchief and brush the seat of a tight pair of
black silk pantaloons which shine as if varnished. They must have been
made of the stuff called “everlasting,” or perhaps of the same piece as
Christian’s garments in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, for he put them on
two summers ago and has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a
great liking to those black silk pantaloons. But now, with nods and
greetings among friends, each matron takes her husband’s arm and paces
gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away after arranging
sunset walks with their favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve
of love. At length the whole congregation is dispersed. No; here, with
faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable
gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his severe
visage and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them the most
captivating picture of bliss in heaven is “There we shall be white!”
All is solitude again. But hark! A broken warbling of voices, and now,
attuning its grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ.
Who are the choristers? Let me dream that the angels who came down from
heaven this blessed morn to blend themselves with the worship of the
truly good are playing and singing their farewell to the earth. On the
wings of that rich melody they were borne upward.
This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few of the
singing-men and singing-women had lingered behind their fellows and
raised their voices fitfully and blew a careless note upon the organ.
Yet it lifted my soul higher than all their former strains. They are
gone—the sons and daughters of Music—and the gray sexton is just
closing the portal. For six days more there will be no face of man in
the pews and aisles and galleries, nor a voice in the pulpit, nor music
in the choir. Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice to be a
desert in the heart of the town and populous only for a few hours of
each seventh day? Oh, but the church is a symbol of religion. May its
site, which was consecrated on the day when the first tree was felled,
be kept holy for ever, a spot of solitude and peace amid the trouble
and vanity of our week-day world! There is a moral, and a religion too,
even in the silent walls. And may the steeple still point heavenward
and be decked with the hallowed sunshine of the Sabbath morn!