File:Old New England churches and their children (1906) (14581164019).jpg

Identifier: oldnewenglandchu00bacouoft (find matches)
Title: Old New England churches and their children
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Bacon, Mary Schell (Hoke), 1870-
Subjects: New England -- Church history
Publisher: New York, Doubleday, Page
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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flat and poverty-stricken as languagecan well fall. Certain of their habits of thoughtimpress one as most peculiar; to them neithermarriage nor death was an occasion of specialsacredness. Marriage at that time could not besolemnised by a religious ceremony; it was simplya civil contract, precisely as we have learned nowto regard it. It is strange that it should havebeen so in the light of a later theological enthu-siasm. One does not wonder at the absenceof the marriage ring; it was too symbolical andsmacked of heathenism. In regard to death —sincethey only lived to die—it still seems inappropriatethat burial should not have been accompanied bya religious ceremony. It is useless to try to reconcile the deeds withthe theories of those people. They hated theCatholic Church, as the Devil hates holy water,because of its symbolism, which the Puritansregarded as too perfunctory for hot results; andyet they substituted an absolutely unlimitedsymbolism for the extremely limited one of the
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First Church, Boston, Mass. 5 Catholics. Thunder was symbolic of Gods anger;a failure of crops was symbolic of his wrath; anearthquake was symbolic of his displeasure;everything was symbolic of one thing—a vin-dictive God, and they were put to it to find enoughsynonomous words to express Gods attitude. They lived vipon spiritual symbolism, and asthat of the imagination is without limit, theysimply outdid the Catholics on their own ground;only to the Puritan the Catholic seemed to havevulgarised his imaginings by giving them form. The autumn which followed this organisationof the First Church was gentle, and the winterwas not too protractedly severe. Blackstone,who was settled on the peninsula, welcomed thestragglers most hospitably as they graduallydrifted thither. But the ecclesiastical elementwhich they brought with them was too much evenfor Blackstone, who was himself a clerical; hencehe left them and struck out anew into the wilder-ness, where he could be quit of ministers as we

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