RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND TRAINING
_Puritanism is not of the Nineteenth Century, but of the
Seventeenth, the grand unintelligibility for us lies there. The
Fast Day Sermons, in spite of printers, are all grown dumb. In
long rows of dumpy little quartos they indeed stand here bodily
before us; by human volition they can be read, but not by any
human memory remembered. The Age of the Puritans is not extinct
only and gone away from us, but it is as if fallen beyond the
capabilities of memory itself; it is grown what we may call
incredible. Its earnest Purport awakens now no resonance in our
frivolous hearts, ... the sound of it has become tedious as a
tale of past stupidities.
--Oliver Cromwell's Life and Letters. Thomas Carlyle, 1845._
The religious aspect of the life of children, especially in early
colonial days, and most particularly in New England, bore a far
deeper relation to the round of daily life than can be accorded to
it in these pages. The spirit of the Lord, perhaps I should say the
fear of the Lord, truly filled their days. Born into a religious
atmosphere, reared in religious ways, surrounded on every side by
religious influences, they could not escape the impress of deep
religious feeling; they certainly had a profound familiarity with
the Bible. The historian Green says that the Englishman of that day
was a man of one book, and that book the Bible. It might with equal
truth be said that the universal child's book of that day was the
Bible. There were few American children until after the Revolution
who had ever read from any book save the Bible, a primer, or
catechism, and perhaps a hymn book or an almanac.
The usual method at that time of reading the Bible through was
in the regular succession of every chapter from beginning to
end, not leaving out even Leviticus and Numbers. This naturally
detracted from the interest which would have been awakened by a
wise selection of parts suited to the liking of children; and many
portions doubtless frightened young children, as we have abundant
record in the writings of Sewall and Mather. J. T. Buckingham
stated in his _Memoirs_ that he read the Bible through at least
a dozen times before he was sixteen years old. Some portions,
especially the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John, filled him
with unspeakable terror, and he called the enforced reading of them
"a piece of gratuitous and unprofitable cruelty." He was careful,
however, to pay due tribute to the influence of the Bible upon his
literary composition and phraseology. The constant reading of the
beautiful English wording of the Bible influenced not only the style
of writing of that day, but controlled the everyday speech of the
people, keeping it pure and simple.
[Illustration: Mrs. John Hesselius and her Children, John and
Caroline]
There was one important reason for the unfailing desire of English
folk for the Bible and the employment of its words and terms;
it was not only the sole book with which most English readers
were familiar,--the book which supplied to them sacred hymns and
warlike songs, the great voices of the prophets, the parables of
the Evangelists, stories of peril and adventure, logic, legends,
history, visions,--but it was also a new book. The family of the
seventeenth century that read the words of the small Geneva Bibles
in the home circle, or poorer folk who listened to the outdoor
reading thereof, heard a voice that they had longed for and waited
for and suffered for, and that their fathers had died for, and a
treasure thus acquired is never lightly heeded. The Pilgrim Fathers
left England for Holland before King James' Bible, our Authorized
Version, had been published. The Puritans of the Boston and Salem
settlements had seen the importation of Geneva Bibles forbidden
in England by Laud in 1633, and the reading prohibited at their
meetings. They revelled in it in their new homes, for custom
had not deadened their delight, and they were filled with it; it
satisfied them; they needed no other literature.
Though Puritanism in its anxious and restricted religionism denied
freedom to childhood, yet the spirit of Puritanism was deeply
observant and conservative of family relations. The meagre records
of domestic life in Puritan households are full of a pure affection,
if not of grace or good cheer. The welfare, if not the pleasure of
their children, lay close to the heart of the Pilgrims. Their love
was seldom expressed, but their rigid sense of duty extended to duty
to be fulfilled as well as exacted.
Governor Bradford wrote in his now world-famous _Log-book_, in
his lucid and beautiful English, an account of the motives of the
emigration from Holland, and in a few sentences therein he gives one
of the most profound reasons of all, their intense yearning for the
true welfare of their children:--
"As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced
to be such, not only to their servants but in a sorte, to
their dearest children; the which as it did not a little wound
ye tender harts of many a loving father and mother, so it
produced likewise sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many
of theier children, that were of best dispositions and gracious
inclinations, having lernde to bear the yoake in their youth
and willing to beare parte of their parents burden, were often
times so oppressed with their hevie labours, that though their
minds were free and willing yet their bodies bowed under ye
weight of ye same, and became decrepid in their early youth, the
vigor of nature being consumed in ye very budd as it were. But
that which was more lamentable and of all sorrows most heavie to
be borne was that many of their children, were drawne away by
evill examples into extravagant and dangerous coarses, getting
ye raines off their necks, and departing from their parents."
This country was settled at a time when all English people were
religious. The Puritan child was full of religious thoughts and
exercises, so also was the child of Roman Catholic parents, or one
reared in the Established Church. The diarist Evelyn was a stanch
Church of England man, no lover of Puritan ways, but he could write
thus of his little child:--
"As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture
upon occasion and his sense of God. He had learned all his
Catechism early, and understood all the historical part of the
Bible and New Testament to a wonder, how Christ came to redeem
mankind, and how comprehending those messages himself, his
godfathers were discharged of his promises.
"He would of himself select the most pathetic psalms and
chapters out of Job, to read to his maid during his sickness,
telling her, when she pitied him, that all God's children must
suffer affliction. He declaimed against the vanities of the
world before he had seen any. Often he would desire those who
came to see him to pray by him, and a year before he fell sick
to kneel and pray with him alone in some corner."
It was not of a Puritan dame that this was written:--
"Her Maids came into her Chamber early every morning, and
ordinarily shee passed about an howr with them; In praying, and
catechizing, and instructing them: To these secret and private
Praiers, the publick Morning and Evening praiers of the Church,
before dinner and supper, and another form, together with
reading Scriptures, and singing Psalms, before bed-time, were
daily and constantly added."
This zealous Christian was Letice, Lady Falkland, a devoted Church
of England woman; so strict was she that if she missed any from the
religious services, she "presently sent for them and consecrated
another howr of praier there purposely for them." A strenuous
insistence showed itself in all sects in the new world. The
"Articles Lawes and Orders Divine Politique and Martiall for the
colony of Virginea" were unrivalled in their mingling of barbarity
and Christianity by any other code of laws issued in America. No
Puritan dared go farther than did the good Episcopalian Sir Thomas
Dale. For irreverence to "any Preacher or Minister of Gods Holy
Word" the offender was to be whipped three times and thrice to
ask public forgiveness. Any one who persistently refused to be
instructed and catechized could be whipped every day. Rigidly were
all forced to attend the Sunday exercises.
There is one name which must appear constantly on the pages of any
history of New England of the half century from 1680 to 1728,--that
of Cotton Mather. This reference is due him not only because he
was prominent in the history of those years, but because he is the
preserver of that history for us. From his multitudinous pages--full
though they be of extraordinary religious sentiments, strained
metaphors, and unmistakable slang--we also gain much to show us
the life of his day. The man himself was not only a Puritan of the
Puritans, but the personification of a passionate desire to do good.
This constant thought for others and wish to benefit them frequently
led him to perform deeds which were certainly officious, ill-timed,
and unwelcome, though inspired by noble motives.
His son Samuel wrote a life of him, which has justly been
characterized by Professor Barrett Wendell as the most colorless
book in the English language; but even from those bleached and dried
pages we learn of Cotton Mather's love of his children, and his
earnest desire for their education and salvation. His son's words
may be given as evidently truthful:--
"He began betimes to entertain them with delightful stories,
especially Scriptural ones; and he would ever conclude with
some lesson of piety bidding them to learn that lesson from
the story. Thus every day at the table he used himself to tell
some entertaining tale before he rose; and endeavor to make it
useful to the olive plants about the table. When his children
accidentally at any time came in his way, it was his custom
to let fall some sentence or other that might be monitory or
profitable to them.
"He betimes tried to engage his children in exercises of piety,
and especially secret prayer.... He would often call upon them,
'Child, don't you forget every day to go alone and pray as
I have directed you.' He betimes endeavoured to form in his
children a temper of kindness. He would put them upon doing
services and kindnesses for one another and other children. He
would applaud them when he saw them delight in it. He would
upbraid all aversion to it. He would caution them exquisitely
against all revenges of injuries and would instruct them to
return good offices for evil ones.... He would let them discover
he was not satisfied, except when they had a sweetness of temper
shining in them."
His thought for the young did not cease with those of his own
family; he never failed to instil good lessons everywhere; and a
special habit of his on visiting any town was to beg a holiday for
the school children, asking them to perform some religious task in
return.
[Illustration: Charlotte and Elizabeth Hesselius]
Another Puritan preacher, Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, was so laden with the
fruit of the tree of knowledge that "he stoopt for the very children
to pick off the apple ready to drop into their mouths." When they
came to his study, he would examine them, "How they walked with God?
How they spent their time, what good books they read? Whether they
prayed without ceasing?" He wrote to a brother minister in 1657:--
"Do your children and family grow more godly? I find greatest
trouble and grief about the rising generation. Young people are
little stirred here; but they strengthen one another in evil by
example and by counsel. Much ado have I with my own family; hard
to get a servant that is glad of catechizing or family duties.
I had a rare blessing of servants in Yorkshire, and those that
I brought over were a blessing, but the young brood doth much
afflict me. Even the children of the godly here, and elsewhere
make a woful proof."
These ministers lived at a time when New England Puritanism in its
extreme type was coming to a close; but parents and households thus
reared clung more rigidly and exactly to it and instilled in it a
fervent hope of giving permanency to what seemed to their sad eyes
in danger of being wholly thrust aside and lost. Such religionists
were both Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall, "true New-English
Christians" they called and deemed themselves. They were very gentle
with their children; but a profound anxiety for the welfare of those
young souls made them most cruel in the intensity of their teaching
and warning; especially displeasing to modern modes of thought are
their constant reminders of death.
When Cotton Mather's little daughter was but four years old he made
this entry in his diary:--
"I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and then I told
my child I am to dye Shortly and shee must, when I am Dead,
remember Everything I now said unto her. I sett before her the
sinful Condition of her Nature, and I charged her to pray in
Secret Places every Day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ
would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when
I am taken from her she must look to meet with more humbling
Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide
for her."
The vanity of all such painful instruction, harrowing to the father
and terrifying to the child, is shown in the sequel. Cotton Mather
did not die till thirty years afterward, and long survived the
tender little blossom that he loved yet blighted with the chill and
dread of death.
The pages of Judge Sewall's diary sadly prove his performance
of what he believed to be his duty to his children, just as the
entries show the bewilderment and terror of his children under his
teachings. Elizabeth Sewall was the most timid and fearful of them
all; a frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating sweetheart,
an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children; but
always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear
of death and the future life, until at the age of thirty-five her
father sadly wrote, "God has delivered her now from all her fears."
The process which developed this unhappy nature is plainly shown by
many entries in the diary. This was when she was about five years
old:--
"It falls to my daughter Elizabeth's Share to read the 24 of
Isaiah which she doth with many Tears not being very well and
the Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears
from me also."
The terrible verses telling of God's judgment on the land, of fear,
of the pit, of the snare, of emptiness and waste, of destruction and
desolation, must have sunk deep into the heart of the sick child,
and produced the condition shown by this entry when she was a few
years older:--
"When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry
and told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the
Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some
signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner
she burst into an amazing cry which caus'd all the family to
cry too. Her Mother ask'd the Reason, she gave none; at last
said she was afraid she should go to Hell, her Sins were not
pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr.
Norton's; Text, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And
these words in the Sermon, Ye shall seek me and die in your
Sins, ran in her Mind and terrified her greatly. And staying
at home, she read out of Mr. Cotton Mather--Why hath Satan
filled thy Heart? which increas'd her Fear. Her Mother asked her
whether she pray'd. She answered Yes, but fear'd her prayers
were not heard, because her sins were not pardoned."
Poor little wounded Betty! her fear that she should go to hell
because she, like Spira, was not elected, was answered by her father
who, having led her into this sad state, was but ill-fitted to
comfort her. Both prayed with bitter tears, and he says mournfully,
"I hope God heard us." Hell, Satan, eternal damnation, everlasting
torments, were ever held up before these Puritan children. We could
truthfully paraphrase Wordsworth's beautiful line "Heaven lies about
us in our infancy," and say of these Boston children, "Hell lay
about them in their infancy." The lists in their books of the proper
names in the Bible had an accompanying list--that of names of the
devil.
A most painfully explicit account of one of the ultra-sensitive
natures developed by these methods is given by Cotton Mather in his
most offensive style in a short religious biography of Nathaniel
Mather. The boy died when he was nineteen years old, but unhappily
he kept a diary of his religious sentiments and fears. He fasted
often and prayed constantly even in his sleep. He wrote out in
detail his covenant with God, and I cannot doubt that he more than
lived up to his promises, as he did to the minute rules he laid out
for his various religious duties. Still this young Christian was
full of self-loathing, horrible conceptions of God, unbounded dread
of death, and all the horrors of a morbid soul.
A letter written by an older Mather (about 1638), when he was twelve
years old, shows an ancestral tendency to religious fears:--
"Though I am thus well in body yet I question whether my soul
doth prosper as my body doth, for I perceive yet to this very
day, little _growth_ in grace; and this makes me question
whether grace be in my heart or no. I feel also daily great
unwillingness to good duties, and the great ruling of sin in my
heart; and that God is angry with me and gives me no answers
to my prayers; but many times he even throws them down as dust
in my face; and he does not grant my continued request for the
_spiritual blessing of the softening of my hard heart_. And in
all this I could yet take some comfort but that it makes me to
wonder what God's _secret decree_ concerning me may be: for I
doubt whether even God is wont to deny grace and mercy to his
chosen (though _uncalled_) when they seek unto him by prayer for
it; and therefore, seeing he doth thus deny it to me, I think
that the reason of it is most like to be because I belong not
unto _the election of grace_. I desire that you would let me
have your prayers as I doubt not but I have them, and rest
"Your Son, SAMUEL MATHER."
A strong characteristic of English folk at the time of the
settlement of the American colonies was superstition. This showed
not only in scores of petty observances but in serious beliefs, such
as those about comets and thunder-storms. It controlled medical
practice, and was displayed in the religious significance attributed
to trifling natural events. It was evinced in the dependence on
dreams, and the dread of portents. Naturally children were imbued
with the beliefs and fears of their parents, and multiplied
the importance and the terror of these notions. It can readily be
seen that religious training and thought, such as was shown in the
families of Samuel Sewall and Cotton Mather, joined to hereditary
traits and race superstitions, could naturally produce a condition
of mind and judgment which would permit such an episode as that
known as the Salem Witchcraft. Nor is it anything but natural to
find that those two prominent Bostonians took such important parts
in the progress of that tragedy.
[Illustration: Charles Spooner Cary, Eight Years Old, 1786]
It was my intent to devote a chapter of this book to the results
of the study of the part borne by children in that sad tale of
psychological phenomena and religious fanaticism. The study proved
most fascinating, and research was faithfully made; but a stronger
desire was that children might find some pleasure in these pages
in reading of the child life of their forbears. Such a chapter
could neither be profitable to the child nor comprehended by him,
nor would it be to the taste of parents of the present day. It was
a sad tale, but was not peculiar to Salem nor to New England. The
Salem and Boston settlers came largely from the English counties of
Suffolk and Essex, where witches and witch-hunters and witch-finders
abounded, and Salem children and parents had seen in their English
homes or heard the tales of hundreds of similar obsessions and
possessions.
New England children were instilled with a familiarity with death
in still another way than through talking and reading of it. Their
presence at funerals was universal. A funeral in those days had an
entirely different status as a ceremony from to-day. It was a social
function as well as a solemn one; it was a reunion of friends and
kinsfolk, a ceremonial of much expense and pomp, a scene of much
feasting and drinking.
Judge Sewall tells of the attendance of his little children when
five and six years old at funerals. When Rev. Thomas Shepherd was
buried "scholars went before the Herse" at the funeral. Sargent, in
his _Dealings with the Dead_, tells of country funerals in the days
of his youth:--
"When I was a boy and at an academy in the country everybody
went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population
was small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have
excited remark and the boys were dismissed for the funeral....
A clergyman told me that when he was settled at Concord, N.H.,
he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The body was borne
in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers, the oldest not
thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before they left
the house a sort of master of ceremonies took them to the table
and mixed a tumbler of gin, sugar and water for each."
A crisis was reached in Boston when funerals had to be prohibited
on Sundays because the vast concourse of children and servants that
followed the coffin through the streets became a noisy rabble that
profaned the sacred day.
Little girls were pall-bearers also at the funerals of their
childish mates, and young unmarried girls at those of their
companions. Dressed in white with uncovered heads, or veiled in
white, these little girls made a touching sight.
Religious expression naturally found its highest point in Puritan
communities in the strict and decorous observance of Sunday. Stern
were the laws in ordering this observance. Fines, imprisonment,
and stripes on the naked back were dealt out rigorously for
Sabbath-breaking. The New Haven Code of Laws with still greater
severity enjoined that profanation of the Lord's Day, if done
"proudly and with a high hand against the authority of God," should
be punished with death. This rigid observance fell with special
force and restriction on children. A loved poet, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, wrote of the day:--
"Hush, 'tis the Sabbath's silence-stricken morn,
No feet must wander through the tasselled corn,
No merry children laugh around the door,
No idle playthings strew the sanded floor.
The law of Moses lays its awful ban
On all that stirs. Here comes the Tithing-man."
There were many public offices in colonial times which we do not
have to-day, for we do not need them. One of these is that of
tithing-man; he was a town officer, and had several neighboring
families under his charge, usually ten, as the word "tithing" would
signify. He enforced the learning of the church catechism in these
ten homes, visited the houses, and heard the children recite their
catechism. These ten families he watched specially on Sundays to
see whether they attended church, and did not loiter on the way. In
some Massachusetts towns he watched on week days to keep "boys and
all persons from swimming in the water." Ten families with many boys
must have kept him busy on hot August days. He inspected taverns,
reported disorderly persons, and forbade the sale of intoxicating
liquor to them. He administered the "oath of fidelity" to new
citizens, and warned undesirable visitors and wanderers to leave the
town. He could arrest persons who ran or rode at too fast a pace
when going to meeting on Sunday, or who took unnecessary rides on
Sunday, or otherwise broke the Sunday laws.
Within the meeting-house he kept order by beating out dogs,
correcting unruly and noisy boys, and waking those who slept. He
sometimes walked up and down the church aisles, carrying a stick
which had a knob on one end, and a dangling foxtail on the other,
tapping the boys on the head with the knob end of the stick, and
tickling the face of sleeping church attendants with the foxtail.
Some churches had tithing-men until this century.
A Puritanical regard of the Sabbath still lingers in our New England
towns. There are many Christian old gentlemen still living of whom
such an anecdote as this of old Deacon Davis of Westborough might be
told. A grandson walked to church with him one Sabbath morning and a
gray squirrel ran across the road. The child, delighted, pointed out
the beautiful little creature to his grandfather. A sharp twist of
the ear was the old Puritan's rejoinder, and the caustic words that
"squirrels were not to be spoken of on the Lord's Day."
With all the religious restriction, and all the religious
instruction, with the everyday repression of youth and the special
Sabbath-day rigidity of laws, it is somewhat a surprise to the
reader of the original sources of history to find that girls
sometimes laughed, and boys behaved very badly in meeting. The
latter condition would be more surprising to us did we not see
so plainly that the method of "seating the meeting" in colonial
days was not calculated to produce or maintain order. Boys were
not separated from each other into various pews in the company of
their parents as to-day; they were all huddled together in any
undignified or uncomfortable seats. In Salem, in 1676, it was
ordered that all the boys of the town "sitt upon ye three paire of
stairs in ye meeting-house"; and two citizens were deputed to assist
the tithing-man in controlling them and watching them, and if any
proved unruly "to psent their names as the law directs." Sometimes
they were seated on the pulpit stairs, under the eyes of the entire
audience; more frequently in a "boys pue" in a high gallery remote
from all other Christians, the "wretched boys" were set off as
though they were religious lepers.
In Dorchester the boys could not keep still in meeting; the
selectmen had to appoint some "meet person to inspect the boys in
the meeting house in time of divine service." These guardians had to
tarry at noon and "prevent disorder" then. By 1776 the boys were so
turbulent, the spirit of independence was so rife and riotous, that
six men had to be appointed to keep order, and they had authority to
"give proper discipline" if necessary.
[Illustration: Margaret Graves Cary, Fourteen Years Old, 1786]
It is not necessary to multiply examples of the badness of the
boys, nor of the unsophisticated artlessness of their parents.
Scores of old town and church records give ample proof of the traits
of both fathers and sons. These accounts are often as amusing as
they are surprising in their hopelessness. The natural remedy of
the isolation of the inventors of mischief, and separation of
conspirators and quarrellers, did not enter the brains of our
simple old forefathers for over a century. Indeed, these "Devil's
play-houses," as Dr. Porter called them, were not entirely abolished
until fifty years ago. The town of Windsor, Connecticut, suffered
and suffered from "boys pews" until the year 1845.