SOMETHING UNDER THE SOFA.
Not more than twenty-five miles from New York city, and not more than two
years ago, there stood a church in which occurred a novelty. We promised
not to tell; but as we omit all names, we think ourselves warranted in
writing the sketch. The sacred edifice had stood more than a hundred years,
until the doors were rickety, and often stood open during the secular week.
The window glass in many places had been broken out. The shingles were off
and the snow drifted in, and the congregation during a shower frequently
sat under the droppings of the sanctuary. All of which would have been a
matter for sympathy, had it not been for the fact that the people of the
neighborhood were nearly all wealthy, and lived in large and comfortable
farm houses, making the appearance of their church a fit subject for
satire.
The pulpit was giving way with the general wreck, was unpainted, and the
upholstery on book-board and sofa seemed calling out with Jew's voice, "Any
old clo'? Any old clo'?" One Sabbath, the minister felt some uneasiness
under the sofa while the congregation were singing, and could not imagine
the cause; but found out the next day that a maternal cat had made her nest
there with her group of offspring, who had entered upon mortal life amid
these honorable surroundings.
Highly-favored kittens! If they do not turn out well, it will not be the
fault of their mother, who took them so early under good influences. In
the temple of old the swallow found a nest for herself where she might lay
her young; but this is the first time we ever knew of the conference of
such honors on the Felis domestica. It could not have been anything
mercenary that took the old cat into the pulpit, for "poor as a church
mouse" has become proverbial. Nothing but lofty aspirations could have
taken her there, and a desire that her young should have advantages of high
birth. If in the "Historical Society" there are mummied cats two thousand
years old, much more will post-mortem honors be due this ecclesiastical
Pussy.
We see many churches in city as well as town that need rehabilitation and
reconstruction. People of a neighborhood have no right to live in houses
better constructed than their church. Better touch up the fresco, and put
on a new roof, and tear out the old pews which ignore the shape of a man's
back, and supersede the smoky lamps by clarified kerosene or cheap gas
brackets. Lower you high pulpit that your preacher may come down from the
Mont Blanc of his isolation and solitariness into the same climate of
sympathy with his audience. Tear away the old sofa, ragged and
spring-broken, on which the pastors of forty years have been obliged to
sit, and see whether there are any cats in your antediluvian pulpit.
Would it not be well for us all to look under our church sofas and see if
there be anything lurking there that we do not suspect? A cat, in all
languages, has been the symbol of deceit and spitefulness, and she is more
fit for an ash barrel than a pulpit. Since we heard that story of feline
nativity, whenever we see a minister of religion, on some question of
Christian reform, skulking behind a barrier, and crawling away into some
half-and-half position on the subject of temperance or oppression, and
daring not to speak out, instead of making his pulpit a height from which
to hurl the truth against the enemies of God, turning it into a cowardly
hiding place, we say, "Another cat in the pulpit."
Whenever we see a professed minister of religion lacking in frankness of
soul, deceitful in his friendship, shaking hands heartily when you meet
him, but in private taking every possible opportunity of giving you a long,
deep scratch, or in public newspapers giving you a sly dig with the claw of
his pen, we say: "Another cat in the pulpit!"
Once a year let all our churches be cleaned with soap, and sand, and mop,
and scrubbing brush, and the sexton not forget to give one turn of his
broom under the pastor's chair. Would that with one bold and emphatic
"scat!" we could drive the last specimen of deceitfulness and skulking from
the American pulpit!